> Can physically and emotionally healthy people actually view death as a relief or escape?
I think before that should have come the question whether a person who is only invested in their own life, and not interested in the tapestry or river of life, for lack of a better word, could be considered emotionally healthy?
Yes, I want to see and experience life, my own and that of others, but I'd rather die at some point, and know other life will exist, than live forever and squat on it. We can't be forever young, that is, some things will never be new to us again. Yeah, life is still fun, but not as fun as it could be for someone else. To me, that matters.
> Arendt argues that human action is contained within the notion of plurality as the most basic condition of human life, which in turn rests on her concept of 'natality'. In an almost poetical way she writes in this same essay how the world is constantly being refilled by strangers, outsiders and newcomers who act and react in an unforeseeable manner, in ways that cannot be calculated or predicated by those already familiar and stationed there, who will eventually leave and be replaced by others. The very fact that we come into the world through natural birth shows that the world is continuously being transformed and renewed through birth. Thus, 'natality' highlights this emphasis on the capacity of new beginnings with each and every birth.
I'd say natality more than makes up for mortality, while immortality removes natality, and doesn't even begin to cover the loss.
I'd rather there is something beautiful I miss out on, than something mediocre I get to experience, doubly so if it's made mediocre by my insisting on experiencing everything that goes on. And on top of that, there is the mediocrity of the lens through which we experience things, our own mediocrity, that also should not be increased lightly. New life makes life, the universe and everything better, it just happens to not extend my own life to infinity. But I can't have it both ways, not in an intellectualy and morally honest way, they way I see it. If everybody was truly immortal, as we are now, and for the reasons we want it, everybody will start to suck super badly real quick, and they'll suck too much to even notice it. The majestic and ever fresh river of life would turn into a petty, stinky puddle. Or I could wish for immortality myself, and mortality for everyone else -- but what would that make me, and what about friendship and love?
you are positing that an extended amortal life is at the expense of someone elses' birth.
But why should it be?
If we're talking SF, we might as well agree on a method to handle that, e.g. force people to go off-planet at some age and make room for new people. The universe is big enough.
(I meant to write a novella on this for a long time :)
> you are positing that an extended amortal life is at the expense of someone elses' birth.
> But why should it be?
That's the default, considering we live on a finite planet with finite resources, and even without immortality on the expensive of others is already quite the thing. I'd say the burden is on showing how that could change, not to mention why it absolutely must and will change... rather than just assuming it.
> we're talking SF
I'm "just" talking immortality, that I take for granted in this context, not additional things. At the least, those additional things can't just go one way, just because assuming immortality is assuming something hitherto impossible, doesn't warrant assuming other impossible things, while dismissing other possibilities, both possible and hitherto impossible, just because they'd spoil the parade.
Why would some live at the expense of others, or prevent others being born? Well, having "eternity" to lose, one must not let anything unpredictable happen, one certainly must not let anyone have the ability to harm oneself. The universe is too big to let anyone just get away and potentially hatch unpredictability. That is certainly a way to look at it, and it only takes a few with enough power to have that outlook for my dystopia to occur -- while your utopia would require nobody with power going that route, everybody always agreeing on "playing nice".
We can't even agree on a way so people don't starve and die for lack of water, we can't exactly agree to not ruin the planet, potentially leading to catastrophic shifts in rather short timespans, we already live at the expense of those who might be born after us -- but we're going to handle immortality well, if only we had it? We're greedy and murderous about shitty trivialities, about trinkets -- but we'll play nice when it comes to something like living forever? Seems unlikely, certainly not a given.
The possiblity of immortality combined with the fact of ongoing concentration of wealth and power, plus automation, might lead to a rapid depopulation of the planet indeed, but not by moving anyone anywhere. Why keep people around that are nothing but a potential threat, that serve no use, that are not even an exploitable resource, because they take up more space and resources than means of production requiring no workers that are orders of magnitude more powerful, and after some point plain unnecessary either way? After people "have everything", not by being content and loving life and the world, but by owning it personally, what they still need is for nothing else to be able to rise up.
(I also meant to write a short story once, about a little girl who skipped the weekly dose of the government mandated antidote for the biological weapon terrorists supposedly unleashed, say, 150 years ago, because she wonders if it's even true that not taking it is lethal, since nobody she knows ever failed to take it even once. She manages to hide the pain and the skin discolorations that appear after a few days, finally staying up all night the last night gritting her teeth before the day the next weekly dose is given out, sneaking into the bathroom early to wash off her sweat, before her mother wakes her. It was supposed to begin with her vowing to never do that again, then starting to ask questions about the past, but I never got beyond that.)
Immortality + no other technology improvement is not a realistic assumption, that's why you get to a non-realistic result of "people have to die eventually" from it.
The immortality is not a thing you take and then have to kill others to not allow them to take it from you.
The only way to not die is to have a huge society that invents new treatments, discovers new physics, builds machines to prevent death from random comets, from earth's magnetic field running out, or sun exploding. The mere 7 billion we have now is not enough for any of this.
Nicely put. It is also my intuition that immortality would ultimately be very unhealthy for our species and environment. I tend to think about it in terms of morals and beliefs stagnation, or the death of new ideas but I like your argument.
When I was 9, I cried all night because I realized that one day, we might meet aliens and go to other galaxies and whatnot, and I would just be dust in the ground by then. The thought of thousands, millions of years of events and me just having been a blip, felt crushing. And there are many people I miss, and many people who died before I was born I would have loved to get to know; that I "made peace" with that doesn't mean it doesn't make me sad. It is sad, it's sad that people die, even after a long life. It's sad for friendships to end. But that I'm sad doesn't mean I'm not also happy and grateful, and prefer to be content with being a single finite thread in a much bigger tapestry of life, rather than just going on forever, kinda defacing that tapestry.
I mean, that's the binary "immortality" option. I'm not against medicine, or people living longer. But if someone genuinely wants to live forever forever, I really would question how much they thought it through.
It's not a binary immortality decision, luckily. It's just not comitting suicide (or dying in a car crash) every day. Most people will do that, given the choice.
I think before that should have come the question whether a person who is only invested in their own life, and not interested in the tapestry or river of life, for lack of a better word, could be considered emotionally healthy?
Yes, I want to see and experience life, my own and that of others, but I'd rather die at some point, and know other life will exist, than live forever and squat on it. We can't be forever young, that is, some things will never be new to us again. Yeah, life is still fun, but not as fun as it could be for someone else. To me, that matters.
from https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/20935/...
> Arendt argues that human action is contained within the notion of plurality as the most basic condition of human life, which in turn rests on her concept of 'natality'. In an almost poetical way she writes in this same essay how the world is constantly being refilled by strangers, outsiders and newcomers who act and react in an unforeseeable manner, in ways that cannot be calculated or predicated by those already familiar and stationed there, who will eventually leave and be replaced by others. The very fact that we come into the world through natural birth shows that the world is continuously being transformed and renewed through birth. Thus, 'natality' highlights this emphasis on the capacity of new beginnings with each and every birth.
I'd say natality more than makes up for mortality, while immortality removes natality, and doesn't even begin to cover the loss.
I'd rather there is something beautiful I miss out on, than something mediocre I get to experience, doubly so if it's made mediocre by my insisting on experiencing everything that goes on. And on top of that, there is the mediocrity of the lens through which we experience things, our own mediocrity, that also should not be increased lightly. New life makes life, the universe and everything better, it just happens to not extend my own life to infinity. But I can't have it both ways, not in an intellectualy and morally honest way, they way I see it. If everybody was truly immortal, as we are now, and for the reasons we want it, everybody will start to suck super badly real quick, and they'll suck too much to even notice it. The majestic and ever fresh river of life would turn into a petty, stinky puddle. Or I could wish for immortality myself, and mortality for everyone else -- but what would that make me, and what about friendship and love?