Would you want to live forever?

[LeviathanX]

As a non-believer in the afterlife I would take the better of two choices, (1) to die and experience nothingness, or (2) to live and at least receive some remote stimulation.

I think life could get extremely boring, and eventually the rest of the human race would disappear, but as long as you have some form of perception I think it would be worth it. It is hard to imagine, my mind might change if I were in that position, but I think I would always choose life over death.

 

[Spartacus]

double it

On a related note...lets just presume that our average lifespans were 150 yrs instead of the 75 or so now..for the sake of argument we will age about the same rate proportionately(i.e. at 40 with a span of 150 years I would be like a 20 year old with a span of 75 years)...Ok here is the question...would anyone realistically expect to stay married to the same person? Are you gonna marry at 25-35 or so and stay with that person for the next 100 years give or take? I know what my answer would be and it probably coincides with the lion's share of the posters on this board. So then marriage to one for life is just a question of time?

 

[8-]]

Some people also get married (or form long-term partnerships) to have kids, and it is still better for women to have kids at an earlier age. Unless that changes people will still try to have kids when the woman is younger.

 

[absolute hardgainer]

LeviathanX: Good point, if death is just nothingness - which would imply that we only exist physically and do not have a soul then I would also choose life over death in any case.

However, in this great universe of ours I just can't seem to accept that life and all existence is just a temporary physical state without any point.

hardgainer (bump)

 

[Burning_Inside]

I would never want to live physically forever, in fact i'd love to just have a ton of cash and live a fast fun filled life for about the next 10 years and just drop dead so i don't have to worry about anything anymore.

 

[BackDoc]

I remember reading The Elric Saga when I was a teenager. In one of the books there was a man doomed to live forever. I think it was there that I first realized that living forever might not be such a good thing. For one, the mystery that persons having died and gone on to a possible afterlife will be difficult to overcome at least in the realm of thinking of Christians or other religious believers, I would think. It would be like all of your loved ones knowing the answer to a riddle except for you. Ultimately, I think some people would want to know for sure.

Living to 150 years, I can see that being more possible in the next several decades when more of the components of cellular breakdown and aging have been determined and can be postively or negatively affected to some degree (even to both degrees). Science understands that DNA plays a heavy role in aging. There are even genetic diseases that cause the very reverse to happen...for life to speed up and aging to be accelerated (Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome). So based on this occurrence and the fact that aging can be accelerated, I also think the corellary can be achieved, that aging can be slowed down.

We already have tissue that is capable of extending lifespan--or even living forever. It's called cancer. I have been reading texts on the molecular basis of cancer and I'm coming to the conclusion that perhaps (perhaps!) it's an attempt by certain parts of the body to try and live forever (continued telomerase activity). However, it is faulty in that it can kill the host if it grows too much, as we all know. Identifying how to increase telomere activity without activating cancer activity will be a major milestone in lifespan in my op, so long as our bodies don't find fault with this process and simply develop a repressor protein and wiping up out for tampering with it.

If the normal life expectancy begins to increase and average 150 or more years at some point, then I think this will be wonderful. However, if it only happens to a few random people then I think it will increase factors of unhappiness in some people. And that in and of itself may play a role in ultimate longevity. So if it happens to only a few I think the human experience remaining the same will lead to depression concomitant with living longer than one's peers. However, if the next generation learned of a way to increase lifespan to 150 years I think the experiential aspect of life would be not much different. Perhaps maturity would slow down as well as responsibility based on age. So then it would be a transfer of time. Animals with shorter lifespans live accordingly. They mature faster and get on with life. As they age they slow down. So to say that animals with shorter lifespans are unhappy is not applicable. We don't think they can reason akin to our questioning of our world. However, both animals and man have the ability to instintually want to survive. Look at the mouse, lives frantically for 1.5 years. Look at the Galapagos Turtle, lives in slow motion for 200 years or more. Who has the better quality of life? Aging takes place and as this happens the quality of their life takes a dip. Aging then death. The rate is the only difference, maybe. So if we can live to be 150 and still be relatively youthful in energy then I'm all for it. But not if the aging process is spread out or prolonged.

 

[booger]

Cancer

I liked your comments on cancer. I've been trying to tell people that for years and they've just given me this strange look. But I always add that the Blob was once a man who just turned into a big chunk of cancer just to make them think I'm not totally crazy. And that story about Steve McQueen dying of cancer down in Mexico was really just a hoax. He became the Blob. And the laetril(sp) in the apricot pits is really just the chemical used to reprogram the genes for cancer activity. That's the part of the movie that they cut.

 

[william2000]

I would definitely want the option of continous living as long as youth and health came with it . . . I would not want to be like Sybil who when granted long life by Apollo (as many years as Grains of sand in his hand) forgot to ask for youth with it . . .

 

[Evloks]

Only If my friends and family could live forever with me.

 

[diamonddiceclay]

only if I could be healthy when I got old