Do you want immortality?

I recently read a graphic novel that touched on this: House of Secrets. I won't say much because it's full of surprises... but there is a place of judgment and sentencing. Those that succesfully plead their case get sentenced to "Natural Death". Those that fail get sentenced to "Eternal Life".
 
Beleth said:
In my earlier days I posited that maybe there's just one soul, and that it not only hops between people who have just died and people who have been conceived, but that it jumps backwards in time too, so that this one soul, at the end of everything, will have lived every life ever. But it was kind of a goofy idea.
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I had a similar idea as this but my one incorporated the many worlds theory, so that in any world where you died, all your memories became part of the master version of yourself. When all the other versions had died in their worlds, what would be left is the one world where immortality existed and a means to harvest information from your other versions using some sort of advanced technology, so you would end up with the Ultimate Being version of yourself that knows everything there is to know. Also equally goofy, but what the hell.
 
Kopji said:
Ok. Humm. The thing I think that would keep us from killing ourselves from boredom would be 'shared consciousness'. Many of the holy grails of woodom today could be accessed with technology: Telepathy especially, sharing experiences on an entirely new and more direct level via new interfaces with the brain.
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Agreed. Here’s a movie excerpt that moved me:

We are alone. For millions of years
we've searched the cosmos... and
after all the suffering, after all
the chaos and desolation of the void
-- the one thing we've found that
makes the emptiness bearable is each
other. That's why I sent the
message. That's why I made contact.


Kopji said:
Without gaining more access to each other, eternal life would be like living the movie Groundhog Day: taking only slightly longer to resolve all the permutations. (Eternity is a really long time compared to the longest finite).
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I agree. Don’t get me wrong, I like “Groundhog Day” re-runs but to live it; forget it – leave it to Murray. Telepathy is good… a Bluetooth version, so I can wander off and have my privacy.

I think you were blurring the lines between a shared conscious and a shared link between consciousnesses. The shared link is crucial for more efficient communication – our current version of such an animal being the internet. No disagreement here. Shared consciousness is something more. Do you have one supercomputer that doles out Consciousness-Per-Units (CPU) time to networked individuals (sounds precarious) or maintain autonomy but encourage interconnectedness between consciousnesses. I’m prejudiced towards the latter. It would really suck if we end up becoming dummy terminals, plus having one supercomputer runs the risk of Jeff Goldblum uploading some pesky virus. I hope we’ll be running Linux then.
 
It seems that what most people are talking about here is everlasting life, not immortality. To be immortal, one has to have been an immortal all along within the time reference of timelessness.

Everlasting life is not immortality. Within a Christian frame of reference, everlasting life (not immortality) is received when the individual, who, after having faith or aligning the heart with the Love of Christ, receives the Spirit of God into the heart/soul/psyche/consciousness by and through the "connection" Christ has with/as God the Father: Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh. How the "soul" continues on with everlasting life is not known exactly, however, one would surmise that everlasting life in the Love of God as a Spirit regenerated "soul" would be blissful and easily tolerated throughout eternity.
 
gnome said:
I recently read a graphic novel that touched on this: House of Secrets. I won't say much because it's full of surprises... but there is a place of judgment and sentencing. Those that succesfully plead their case get sentenced to "Natural Death". Those that fail get sentenced to "Eternal Life".
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Zardoz
 
Serenity - 'yeah'. There would need to be a whole new ethic of privacy established if we could share our thoughts. Telepathy or 'mind reading' is a kind of mental violation or assault if it really existed as some people think it does.

Ruach - I think what I really mean is eternal youth. You can't be twenty on sugar mountain. If we are not happy about how eternity is being spent, it's probably not going to matter much whether we call it one thing or the other.

This was a question I used to pester my Sunday school teachers about - 'what are we going to do with all that time?' This btw, is not that huge a trick question for Mormon types because there is an idea that 'heaven' is not a static place of blissful clouds and harps, but a place of new challenges and adventure, etc.

The difference between saying 'eternal life' and 'life everlasting' seems entirely aesthetic to me. Maybe if science delivers on it, it will be called eternal life, and if religion delivers it, it will be called life everlasting.

Back to my earlier comment tho, I do not see how can get anywhere by discussing the infinite in a predictive sense. Any connection of the finite and infinite is chaotic. It only seems like a tiny leap but is really an entirely different universe. Trying to draw a line from here to there may entertain us but is ultimately doomed.

I don't see any way of meaningfully saying that in some way what we do will ever matter compared to the rest of our (proposed) everlasting life. A super intelligent deity-like alien scientist who would determine our 'reward' that way is not good or evil, but chaotic.
 
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Kopji said:
Ok. Humm. The thing I think that would keep us from killing ourselves from boredom would be 'shared consciousness'. Many of the holy grails of woodom today could be accessed with technology: Telepathy especially, sharing experiences on an entirely new and more direct level via new interfaces with the brain.
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Yick.

Mobile phones are bad enough. I don't want to know what most people are thinking.

How about email?
 
What _I_ would want ?

Reincarnation.

Not the crappy (sorry Ryokan) buddhist type where you don't remember your past lives... no no. The kind where, once you die, you get to CHOOSE your next species, and then you remember SOME of your past lives, but only completely between lives. Of course, that'd be MY first choice only because I'd get to try new cool things... unfortunately, death is the only choice for us.... so sad.
 
Belz... said:
unfortunately, death is the only choice for us.... so sad.
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Depends how you look at it. If I believed in reincarnation I would spend a lot of time preparing for it. I don't believe in reincarnation, therefore I believe that I only get one shot at life. Makes me appreciate my time here more. I'd rather spend my time making this life the best I can.
 
CheeseDude said:
Depends how you look at it. If I believed in reincarnation I would spend a lot of time preparing for it. I don't believe in reincarnation, therefore I believe that I only get one shot at life. Makes me appreciate my time here more. I'd rather spend my time making this life the best I can.
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So ? Death is still the only outcome, no matter HOW you look at it or WHAT you believe in.
 
Belz... said:
So ? Death is still the only outcome, no matter HOW you look at it or WHAT you believe in.
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I agree. But many believe that there is something after death even if you and I see no evidence for this. I maintain that life is more precious when you only get one shot at it.
 
I suppose if the universe is infinite and we did have some type of immortality available, there just might be an infinite number of challenges out there...but I don't think that I am up to it at my age.

To live with immortality, our minds would have to change to accommodate what we now would perceive as boredom ....erase that and it might be tolerable. (don't sign me up tho...)

Need to be able to drink wine too.


A good read: "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson

second choice: "The World at the End of time" Frederick Pohl


glenn:boxedin:
 
Immortality, be it earthly or heavenly, poses the same problem to me. What purpose is life if there is no death? The whole human (and other animal) existance is to be born, to bear, and to bow out. All three are symbiotic. There is no other reason for our existance.

Would I prefer an everlasting existance here on earth while others kept coming and going? I think I would feel too left out of things. I would know that to attach myself emotionally to anyone would end in pain and suffering for both of us. After a few times of trial and unchanging results I would withdraw into a shell and insulate myself from the whole mess.

Where is the reward in that?
 
Death, from a family perspective the idea of seeing your children grow up and have some, hopefully, of their own is wonderful. The appeal of immortality is lacking. I would rather live my years and pop off at my allotted time.

Being alive forever, now do you age if you do at some point you will become too frail to do anything for yourself. To stay the same age as you are now, no it is plain wrong. I find the whole idea of immortality freaky and somewhat sickening.

I like the order of things as they are now, birth, growth and death.
 
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