Is Immortality a Curse or a Blessing? Or is it somewhere in between.
This question has been around for a long time.
I think it's time it came to facepunch.
The Immortality I'm talking about is living forever, you're also indestructible and you don't feel physical pain. Your physical state can change though, you can gain and lose weight. Your resting heart beat can change.
You don't know if you'll die when the Universe ends. For all you know you'll just live past it in darkness.
In my opinion I think it's a curse. Sure you can be all badass and jump off of a plane without a parachute and not get injured.
But is that worth seeing everyone you love die? Could you trust yourself with the power of Immortality?
Well I can't say myself because I haven't got the chance to be an immortal, but I assume it'd be a curse.
It'd be a blessing until you get stuck in some situation that is impossible to get out of. Like floating in space, or trapped deep underground.
I find that immortality is a worse fate than death, being trapped in eternal youth and attending millions of funerals is a nightmare of tragedy.
Yeah, I'd imagine it would be a mixed bag. You could have the power to influence the world in ways no other man has, and you can see the rise and fall of various ideas, places, or things. However, you will have to live on knowing that you are one of the only constants of the universe, as you will live and keep on living after everything around you has died, including the planet, solar system, and the universe. However, it'd probably be one hell of a ride, and I'm sure that one could reach some sort of mental peace of mind.
It's a curse (in my opinion).
Since you're immortal, one day, you'll have done everything it could have be done, seen all you could see, etc. Since everything except that life has an end, it won't have any reason to continue, or anything to do after, deprived of all sounds, images and else.
After a while, would be driven by madness, and become sort of brain dead (yes, that still fits in that description of immortality, since that doesn't reflect on any physical destruction, just your own self-identity would colapse).
space travel with a ship that has no life support anyone?
I've debated this before with friends. I'm in the minority that wants to live forever. There are different variations you live your life as.
Think of how many different fields of work you can learn, how many foods to try, how many people to meet.
Yep, I would not mind living forever. Even if in the end you are floating in darkness. You would evolve to a point where you wouldn't notice it.
I think I would get bored of doing everything I've wanted to do. I'd hate to see all the people I care about around me die off and I'm still left. So I would say it's more of a curse, when it's time to die, it's time to die. :v:
It depends on the situation. That's what I would say were it not for the alternative; utter annihilation of your consciousness once your ephemeral flesh fails to sustain the brain. Not even dreamless sleep graces one's soul if it is annihilated, because you simply do not exist.
For those saying that immortality would be a living nightmare, I say this; when you weary of reality, you should sleep on it. When everything feels the same and you are bored/wearied of the world you live in, find somewhere safe and isolated so you may enter a deep sleep for a long duration, and when you awaken after decades/centuries/millennia of undying slumber, the world will have changed. And hopefully, with a mind well-rested for time beyond reckoning, you should in theory be able to experience the world in a new fresh light.
Also, if you are an immortal, you have a duty to ensure the continued existence of mortals, to protect them from the sinister machinations of things that do not play by the rules. For example if your world is threatened by some sort of dragon-god that has shrouded the Earth in eternal sunlight, with the world doomed to roast to death unless the shroud is lifted and the grace of night's shadow returned to the skies, as an immortal you should fight the forces that threaten to wipe out all life, since you cannot die to the dragon-god (or at least remain dead for long in the cases where you can die yet return to life as you please), and a being that cannot die is an unstoppable force if they are truly determined to tear you asunder.
Even if you are world-weary when eldritch horrors threaten to destroy the planet, take care of the horrors BEFORE you sleep for aeons. It's basic priorities as an immortal to resolve the problem before you focus on personal problems like "ugh i'm weary of this world; I wanna go to bed for another 100 years" or "what's the point in living when everyone I love will eventually die?". Focusing on yourself when you're an immortal being is even more selfish than if you were mortal, since without your intervention the forces of chaos would faceroll all over mankind, when you could just as easily keep on coming at them and never stopping until the threat has been reduced to bloody ribbons and/or red-hot ashes. Leave the moping and grumpiness until AFTER you've smashed the Old One into an ichorous pulp with your bare fists; it's just common courtesy to do so.
I'd enjoy it. Then I would have time to play all the games I buy in Steam sales.
A curse. Everyone you know would die, and I dont think anyone could really take that kind of pain so many times.
[QUOTE=ironman17;41811379]It depends on the situation. That's what I would say were it not for the alternative; utter annihilation of your consciousness once your ephemeral flesh fails to sustain the brain. Not even dreamless sleep graces one's soul if it is annihilated, because you simply do not exist.
For those saying that immortality would be a living nightmare, I say this; when you weary of reality, you should sleep on it. When everything feels the same and you are bored/wearied of the world you live in, find somewhere safe and isolated so you may enter a deep sleep for a long duration, and when you awaken after decades/centuries/millennia of undying slumber, the world will have changed. And hopefully, with a mind well-rested for time beyond reckoning, you should in theory be able to experience the world in a new fresh light.
Also, if you are an immortal, you have a duty to ensure the continued existence of mortals, to protect them from the sinister machinations of things that do not play by the rules. For example if your world is threatened by some sort of dragon-god that has shrouded the Earth in eternal sunlight, with the world doomed to roast to death unless the shroud is lifted and the grace of night's shadow returned to the skies, as an immortal you should fight the forces that threaten to wipe out all life, since you cannot die to the dragon-god (or at least remain dead for long in the cases where you can die yet return to life as you please), and a being that cannot die is an unstoppable force if they are truly determined to tear you asunder.
Even if you are world-weary when eldritch horrors threaten to destroy the planet, take care of the horrors BEFORE you sleep for aeons. It's basic priorities as an immortal to resolve the problem before you focus on personal problems like "ugh i'm weary of this world; I wanna go to bed for another 100 years" or "what's the point in living when everyone I love will eventually die?". Focusing on yourself when you're an immortal being is even more selfish than if you were mortal, since without your intervention the forces of chaos would faceroll all over mankind, when you could just as easily keep on coming at them and never stopping until the threat has been reduced to bloody ribbons and/or red-hot ashes. Leave the moping and grumpiness until AFTER you've smashed the Old One into an ichorous pulp with your bare fists; it's just common courtesy to do so.[/QUOTE]
That's very cool and all but how do you propose to tackle something you can't hope to challenge? Immortality doesn't magically give you superpowers.
That may be true, but that doesn't matter because you still have an obligation to keep your world safe. You really don't have a choice in the matter, since refusing to intervene when your involvement could save everyone is one of the biggest dick moves imaginable.
When you're immortal, it is your JOB to protect mortals, it is a thing you simply HAVE to do, since otherwise you're no better than those multi-billionaires who don't help people even though they have more money than God. In fact you're WORSE than them because there is NOTHING that can stop you forever; yes you can be stalled or delayed, but in the end the confrontation is going to end only one way, with you absolutely destroying the threat. It doesn't matter when or where, you'll eventually be able to rip an Old One's skull in half and scatter their armies to the winds.
Refusing to help when you could easily bring an end to the conflict is simply not on; you're going to help destroy the forces of chaos whether you like it or not, and once the job's done, THEN you can brood and mope in your tower for a hundred years. It's your duty to help, there is no other option.
Also, eventually the seemingly-insurmountable foe will grow weary and come to the realisation that there is no way they can stop you for good, and if you train yourself right, growing in power over the years, even after countless attempts you'll eventually succeed if you work out their weaknesses and how to exploit them. No matter how long it takes, eventually an unstoppable force will break through, even if it seems impossible earlier on.
It really depends on a lot of factors.
It's easy for us to say "a curse" because we conceptually think of a lot of the terrors of 'time piled upon time'. What we fail to grasp are the wonders that can be accomplished with an unending amount of time at your disposal. Space travel without FTL would cease to be madness, long term investing wouldn't be gambling against your mortality bracket, experiences could be accrued endlessly then forgotten and relearned on a whim instead of constrained by the hours of your day.
The downsides are there, but they are only the familiar downsides of the human element. The terror of your loved ones dying is irrelevant, because it happens often that people outlive their contemporaries. The abject horror of time marching on without you doesn't have to exist, if you're actually capable of adapting rather than being like the chinese farmer who committed suicide over the shame of not understanding a jim-jangled fucking iPhone.
Again, all of the 'curse' elements of longevity are consequential only as abstract concepts that you will endure even if you have a finite life. Meanwhile, the rewards of immortality are so spectacular that it's almost impossible to conceptually discuss them since we cannot experience them ourselves.
Particularly if you buy into the theory that when you die, it's all nothingness from there on out. Now, if you buy into an afterlife of any sort, the balance changes. But what's an afterlife if not conceptual immortality? Are all christians secretly wishing for the greatest curse of all to be laid upon them in death?
As far as I know, your brain would eventually become unworkable due to age - even if you don't physically get older you're still constantly taking in data and making new memories, and on a long enough time span degradation becomes inevitable. You wouldn't be able to remember things properly, you'll start start going backwards in faculties, etc. Just think of the effects of living for an extremely long period, like one hundred years or so, and magnify it once for every year the universe has until it tears itself apart.
So really, once your mind starts peeling away - and it's mathematically impossible for it not to - you'll die and leave behind an empty shell just like everyone else, at least in the philosophical sense.
[QUOTE=ironman17;41811623]That may be true, but that doesn't matter because you still have an obligation to keep your world safe. You really don't have a choice in the matter, since refusing to intervene when your involvement could save everyone is one of the biggest dick moves imaginable.
When you're immortal, it is your JOB to protect mortals, it is a thing you simply HAVE to do, since otherwise you're no better than those multi-billionaires who don't help people even though they have more money than God. In fact you're WORSE than them because there is NOTHING that can stop you forever; yes you can be stalled or delayed, but in the end the confrontation is going to end only one way, with you absolutely destroying the threat. It doesn't matter when or where, you'll eventually be able to rip an Old One's skull in half and scatter their armies to the winds.
Refusing to help when you could easily bring an end to the conflict is simply not on; you're going to help destroy the forces of chaos whether you like it or not, and once the job's done, THEN you can brood and mope in your tower for a hundred years. It's your duty to help, there is no other option.
Also, eventually the seemingly-insurmountable foe will grow weary and come to the realisation that there is no way they can stop you for good, and if you train yourself right, growing in power over the years, even after countless attempts you'll eventually succeed if you work out their weaknesses and how to exploit them. No matter how long it takes, eventually an unstoppable force will break through, even if it seems impossible earlier on.[/QUOTE]
someone puts you in a cage
good game you lost and you are now stuck for the next couple hundred thousand years, have fun.
Would it be a curse if you was able to die when ever you want?
Probably somewhere in between. And by the time immortality is something that a fair amount of people possess, all the concerns and questions like "when do you actually want to die then?" are probably dealt with already.
I mean, instead of a 50-year career, one could actually want to live for a couple of hundred years to continue his or her work. So I don't really see it as either a curse or a blessing, just yet another (incredible) achievement by humans. Immortality will certainly have its uses.
I'm in the small group of people who believe that immortality is a "blessing." I fear death and the fact that someday, years from now the "lights" will go out and I won't know. No one knows what happens after death, but I don't want to find out. We're able to attain immortality within our generation. Russia hopes to achieve this through an avatar within the next 5-10 years. We don't know if it will be mass produced for the populace, but it brings comfort to know within my lifetime we can achieve it.
Another thing to think about it preserving history. If someone from our time were to become immortal, we can bring what knowledge we have to share of the 21st century and share it with the 30th century and so on. It's a cool thing to think about.
preserving your persona on a computer would not preserve your consciosness
Since you're permanent, and others aren't, you'd be witnessing eventually, that everything you've known dissapear: friends, relatives, companies, states, etc, it means you're stuck witnessing people, objects, communities go away, so it will do a number on you, driving you into deep depression.
[QUOTE=Smas;41811050]Yeah, I'd imagine it would be a mixed bag. You could have the power to influence the world in ways no other man has, and you can see the rise and fall of various ideas, places, or things. However, you will have to live on knowing that you are one of the only constants of the universe, as you will live and keep on living after everything around you has died, including the planet, solar system, and the universe. However, it'd probably be one hell of a ride, and I'm sure that one could reach some sort of mental peace of mind.[/QUOTE] unless you can escape the ultimate fate of the universe how the fuck would you still be alive( unless there's MetaVerse thing is true)
[editline]12th August 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=TG Titan;41812930]I'm in the small group of people who believe that immortality is a "blessing." I fear death and the fact that someday, years from now the "lights" will go out and I won't know. No one knows what happens after death, but I don't want to find out. We're able to attain immortality within our generation. Russia hopes to achieve this through an avatar within the next 5-10 years. We don't know if it will be mass produced for the populace, but it brings comfort to know within my lifetime we can achieve it.
Another thing to think about it preserving history. If someone from our time were to become immortal, we can bring what knowledge we have to share of the 21st century and share it with the 30th century and so on. It's a cool thing to think about.[/QUOTE]
yea this I would love to talk to someone from ROME or better yet Spartacus :D
[QUOTE=Noi;41812572]Dunno, If I were immortal, I'd contribute a lot to science. As I live, my knowledge keeps growing. Maybe some day me and group of researchers could find a cure for, say, cancer.
It's not a curse in right hands, It's a chance to save lives of many other people.[/QUOTE]
Everyone in this thread should watch a man from earth. It's about an immortal man who's been alive for 10,000 years. The entire movie takes place in a room(Almost the entire movie) with him just talking to his friends for two hours. Anyway, a point they bring up in the movie is that, he can study a topic for 100 years, but what good would 100 years of research from the 1800s do for curing cancer? It wouldn't make you any smarter, only more knowledgeable. You only could stay up and be useful at one topic at any given time.
As you get older your perception of events would begin scaling to your "age", it already happens in our lifespans and is noticeable as early as your teenage years. That feeling that the summers as a kid felt like forever while now they feel like they go by alot quicker. Eventually, years, decades, centuries would be going by like nothing to you and at that point you're probably already insane or you've found a way to mentally sustain your sanity/isolate and remove the ability to become insane entirely. So really once you get used to it (maybe a few thousand years) you wouldn't feel very terrible about it and how your perception of time has been affected. I wouldn't say it's a curse or a blessing. It's neither, it's simply a different perspective of existence.
[QUOTE=Xane;41813429]Everyone in this thread should watch a man from earth. It's about an immortal man who's been alive for 10,000 years. The entire movie takes place in a room(Almost the entire movie) with him just talking to his friends for two hours. Anyway, a point they bring up in the movie is that, he can study a topic for 100 years, but what good would 100 years of research from the 1800s do for curing cancer? It wouldn't make you any smarter, only more knowledgeable. You only could stay up and be useful at one topic at any given time.[/QUOTE] I've been looking for a movie like that for awhile. also it was 14,000 Year's
i'm at the odd state where it wouldn't even matter if you may be "immortal" once dead, you probably just wouldn't be able to change anything then.
that being said, seeing as you can bend the world to your will while you're still living seems a lot like a blessing to me. (albeit impossible. it's like creating a time paradox. still if it was possible than yes.)
i want to live forever so in my opinion it would be a blessing
I think it would be a blessing for the world, but not for you.
You would get to be the most important being in existence, shedding your sage wisdom across generations and becoming the smartest person in existence; It might get rough and/or depressing, but you would be helping so many others.
I think anyone who took the time to realize just what complete eternal loss of consciousness implies would yearn for immortality, no matter the cost.
[QUOTE=The DooD;41810920]It'd be a blessing until you get stuck in some situation that is impossible to get out of. Like floating in space, or trapped deep underground.[/QUOTE]
I would rather be trapped with nothing to fear than cease to exist forever.
[QUOTE=BenjaminTennison;41811028]I find that immortality is a worse fate than death, being trapped in eternal youth and attending millions of funerals is a nightmare of tragedy.[/QUOTE]
Would you rather the memory of the people you cared about fade from existence mere decades after their death?
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