Perception of death if we were "medically immortal"

[Martoon]

Let's say medical science had this enormous breakthrough that allowed us to cure any illness and completely stop aging, cheaply and easily. No more death by natural causes. For the sake of this discussion, let's say overpopulation isn't an issue (we've developed interstellar travel and are filling up other planets, or we have dimensional phase shifting that allows multiple people/things to occupy the same space simultaneously and independently - or whatever).

Even though people would no longer die of natural causes, people could still be killed (accidents, homicide, war, etc.). I read a little sidebar article in a magazine a while back. It said that the chance of an adult in the U.S. getting killed in any particular year was some small fraction of 1%. Taking the inverse of that, it came out to something like 1400 and some odd years being the average lifespan if old age and disease didn't kill people.

If people only died from non-disease related extreme physical trauma, what would our perception of death be? As it is, we seem to view the tragedy of death as being somewhat proportional to the remaining years that were taken from a person. If someone dies at 60, we see it as very sad, and it doesn't seem right. But if someone dies at 30, we generally perceive that as more tragic (she was so young, I can't believe she was taken at that age, etc.). And if a child is killed, we see that as even more tragic.

If people lived indefinitely until they were killed by something external to them, how would we view death differently than we do now? How would safety concerns be different? What about war?

 

[white]

It'd make dying a lot more painful physically, since there is no fading away.

It'd also mean perhaps, for the survivors, we'd never be prepared / never really have a chance to say goodbye, since the death will be a violent one.

It could also mean we'd always have to be prepared then, to say goodbye.

Perhaps it'd make us live harder, faster, for the first few hundred years, since you know you're practically immortal.

Thereafter, comes a period for reflection, thought. We'd slow down. Be more at peace with ourselves. Or perhaps, merely satiated with sensations, and jaded.

After, if any reaches, mayhaps enlightenment. Neither fearing death, nor seeking sensations. Just a state of being.

I'd always viewed death as a mercy.

Living for 1,400 years is a blessing only if you've enough to fill that time with.

Re war: Perhaps more of it. The younger a nation. The more it will wish to fight. "Liberty is a whore that must be bedded on a mattress of corpses" Also. The longer one lives, perhaps the cheaper life becomes. There'd be more people to waste anyway.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I think that suicide would become by far the biggest cause of death. After all, in a life of hundreds of years, one is bound to exhaust a lot of life's excitement. I think it would even become somewhat routine and lose a lot of its current stigma; it would become an event free of the traditional sadness. Suicide would be more of an "I've had enough now, thanks" thing than a rash act of despair, although that kind of suicide would likely increase as well. I can imagine people hosting going away parties for themselves before the act and planning a suicide like they plan a wedding. This view of suicide would dovetail nicely with the increasing sense of self-determinism in the world today.

 

[white]

^ yes, FM. Suicide becomes the ultimate symbol of self-expression and free choice, isn't it.

Because there is no natural death. You have to choose it.

Technically. It'd mean that those who cannot make up their minds, would live forever?

We'd have a world dominated by Ps. Well done.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

...As it is, we seem to view the tragedy of death as being somewhat proportional to the remaining years that were taken from a person...

That would suggest it would be seen as an even greater tragedy - considering the increased lifespan. I wonder if people might become more neurotically cautious against external dangers? I think I might.

 

[Athenian200]

I think that if this were the case, death would be inexcusably tragic... simply because we know it wasn't inevitable, and something/someone caused it. Basically, all death would seem emotionally similar to a teenager or child being killed.

I would probably be a lot more patient if that was the case. I prefer taking a lot of time to contemplate my actions, and hate feeling so rushed by my short life-span. There are many things I would have spent 20 years instead of 2 months planning if I could live that long. We could have school assignments that took a year instead of a week. We might have the same classmates for whole decades. We would finally have the opportunity to focus on quality instead of quantity. The way our lives are now, we don't have time to learn everything we might need to know to make particular insights. There are probably things that we could know easily if we just had time to learn them. That 100 year cap is harsh. Imagine if we could instead spend 100 years studying one idea! I'm excited by the thought.

So I would see the effect as being beneficial overall, provided we didn't run into space/resource limitations.

But my ideal world would be one where death and aging beyond 20 don't occur at all, and no new people are ever born.

 

[CzeCze]

I think it could make people take things for granted and also make them paranoid. Everything loses perspective and meaningless. Plus, the world would get awfully crowded fast and you probably would have a lot of people dying from 'external' causes like riots and murder and assassination. I think if this immortality were sudden, it would throw the world in chaos. I would take a few generations for people to sort things out, which would apparently be a century?? as opposed to less than a hundred.

I don't like the idea of immortality. I imagine it would make you wasteful, cruel, frustrated, and spoiled. Like vampires.

Life is only precious for the fact that it's fleeting and unpredictable. Can you imagine living forever and saying, "I'll do it tomorrow" everyday? Oh man. What level of purgatory is that.

Wait, I just read the 'interstellar travel' -- even if population density isn't a problem, quality of life is. Can you imagine someone being poor and exploited for 250 years straight? That's fucking inhumane. Not to mention it would shoot holes through any idea that with hard work everyone gets a fair shake. And considering the great majority of world wealtha and resources are hoarded by a very small minority/elite -- I really just see 'immortality' making current system untenable. I can't imagine people wanting to wait 100 years to inherit wealth or paying their dues for 50 years to get that corner office.

Also if there were no mortal repercussions to vice, mang -- I'm just imaging a planet of narcotics saturated, oversexed, chain smoking, permanently inebriated, morbidly obese peoples...hmm...nice.

 

[mooky]

I recon it would be great! No more feeling gulity for being in bed at 12pm LOL

But seriously, if theres no death, what would drive us to do anything?

 

[white]

I recon it would be great! No more feeling gulity for being in bed at 12pm LOL

But seriously, if theres no death, what would drive us to do anything?

Jness.

Ps would dither happily for most of their lives until they get hit by a truck I guess.

 

[mooky]

Jness.

Ps would dither happily for most of their lives until they get hit by a truck I guess.

That would be me :hi: Just lazy i guess

 

[Nocapszy]

Uhm... oxygen is what causes aging. I'm almost positive if we found a way to remove that, we'd die faster.

I would like to live longer than 15000 years. I'll go for 3k if I can.

It would probably be the same like you said now -- assume the average is 14000, and the further you are from that, the more tragic it is. Theoretically, people could live that long anyway except that oxygen thing. The proportions would be different I guess.

I'm guessing people would kill themselves much faster -- drinkers, smokers... I think that 1% thing would go way the fuck up once a few of these chain smokers got to be 110 or so. Same with exposure to driving. Statistically, the more exposure you have, the more likely it is you'll have an accident. The entire equation changes once people can live forever.

Presumably, war wouldn't be a problem, or at least not a big one anyway, because somehow, I don't think we're going to have much of a good shot of colonizing other planets if we've not got an, at least *mostly* peaceful world down here on earth. There would be a lot of thwarting of other nation's effort and such otherwise.

But you might say "if and when we run into extra terrestrials there'll be a war." No there won't. If they're curious enough to be colonizing planets too, they'll want to study us more than they'll want to kill us. Think about it -- if the scientists of earth would rather study things for advancement of technology and understanding, why would they be any different? Seems like curiosity would beat out fear. Chances are, they'd only attack, if they felt threatened -- maybe not... I don't really know, but I don't think they'd be smart enough to build a ship, but dumb enough to think they need to kill all other ships that came near with no reason.

"But nocapszy, wut if we travel to the home planet of another race and they haven't learned about space travel yet?" Well, chances are, if they're going to attack us, but didn't have space weaponry we could:
A. Leave
B. Beat them

Seems like a win win.

So war isn't a problem. It's not a *major concern* At least not until we run into another goliath intergalactic force and start squabbling over planets. At that point, I'd make sure I was dead, because I'd be too embarrassed show my face as one of the races who does that bullshit.

The trick is to cut and run. Compromise. That way, we don't lose our civilians and soldiers -- and subsequently our reason for colonizing in the first place LOL -- trying to take something from another force that they could easily snatch back up in a year or two.

So, I'm going to assume that we've lucked out, and gotten diplomats smart enough to know how to handle these things.

At this point, we can only destroy ourselves. And boy is that easy folks. Alcohol and cigarettes. Expeditions gone wrong. Car wrecks, that one's been mentioned. Rate of exposure goes up and statistically you're more likely to have a fatal wreck as the years go by -- granted it's not a guarantee, but it does become likely.

I think the real causes of death will be those things that take a very very long time to kill us. Like McDonalds. And smoking, like I've said. McDonalds will be the biggest threat to all humans in this world.

Brace yourselves.

 

[matmos]

Unless you eliminated risk *completely* you would almost always die in an accident under these rules. Crossing a road, getting in a car, flying, going into the wrong bar, all carry small but significant risks. If you add up all the risks and came up with odds of "1:1,000,000 of having a fatal accident on any given day" you would, on balance, not live beyond 1,000,000 days, perhaps sooner if a comet crashed into your house! If you attempted to eliminate all risk (impossible) you would be a very sorry character. Ergo, the quality of life would be inversely proportional to it's quantity - something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy...

 

[sassafrassquatch]

Family: Right now a person will most likely know their great grandparents and later their great grandchildren. After immortality I think a person would maintain those number of relationships. Living 1,400 years you would have a lot of decedents and a lot of grandparents. Your great-great grandchildren/grandparents only share 1/16th of your DNA, at that distance I think the familial bonds are pretty stretched. So three generations up and three down, broadening nearer the individual's generation to include aunts, uncles and cousins seems reasonable.

Marriage: Living for 1,400 years could render marriage obsolete as a social institution. Some might spend their entire lives together but most will probably do serial monogamy as they do now. Some might do 25 year marriages to raise children and then split up.

Life: Now you spend 20 years growing up and going to school then you work for 45 years then you retire and spend the next 20 slowly decomposing on the couch watching Matlock then you die. With no retirement, no burden of caring for the elderly, no medicare and such would put a lot of money and productive capacity back into the economy.

Mentally: I have no idea how the human mind would cope with 1,400 years of youthful life. We evolved as hunter gatherers who die at 45 if we're lucky. We seem to be having trouble with 75 years.

Myself, I would like to live forever just to see how humanity's shenanigans turn out, to know what happens next.

Edit: I just realized that had nothing to do with the topic at all. I need more coffee. Maybe less.

Death: We'll be fucked up for a week or so depending on how close the person was to us then get over it. Just like now.

 

[GZA]

Well... one could theoretically control their age. For example, if someone wanted to be 8 years old for a hundred years -they could! You can control your aging, remmeber, so I assume this applies, as well. Then they'd say "I've had enough of third grade" and stop taking the meds for a few years. Now they are 17, just got their drivers liscence... now they are going to be a pot smoking teenager for the next 40 years. Then one day they decide to be a college freshman, so they stop taking meds for a few years and spend one year as a freshman at each college they can find. Then they stop the meds again untill they are 30, ect, ect.

If someone wanted to live forever, they could. They could age themselves to be like 70. Who kills a seventy year old? I think if people did age themselves to the right age where it is unlikely someone will kill them (I'm sure there are some age groups that get killed more than others of non-natural causes), they could essentially live forever.

I think suicide would go up, a lot. I might even commit suicide. There are already elderly people who say they have lived a good life and want to die, so they kill themselves, so imagine how much this would go up after that. I think the perception of death would be that it is just the end of the road that you are building every minute. I think the perception of life would change. It would perhaps become meaningless. Whats the point in living if there is no limit, no end, and essentially no consequence? When are you going to start your work if theres no deadline?



Now... imagine if you could also reverse your age! I think people would end up living to be old, becoming young again, going to another planet or whatever, living a full life there, ect. Or more suicide, whatever.

 

[Seanan]

Perish the thought! Shades of green as in Soylent. Where will all the food to feed these masses come from.. well "accidents" of course. Oh, well, at least the oil needs would be solved that way.