If you were granted immortality(the mechanism is irrelevant), how long would it take until you were utterly, completely, incurably bored.
A) A human lifetime or so
B) A century or two
C) Millennia
D) Never
B) I don’t think I would last more than 300 years before I would really want the ability to die.
You can never grow bored as long as other immortals keep com’n around trin’ to chop off your head,
With unlimited funds, I think I could keep myself amused for a very long time.
For clarification, does “immortality” also = immunity to all sicknesses, diseases, medical conditions of any kind?
If so, I’d keep myself amused mostly by fucking everyone I can.
This is something we really ought to ponder, because it seems as if it would be technically possible to extend life to some extent. What exactly would happen?
First of all, the mind isn’t really built for that kind of life-span, so it’s important to realize that it would require some significant mental adaptation. Our mind specifically ties its memories to the various events in our lives and who we are is largely defined as where we are in the beginning-to-end story of our lives. There’s a rising and falling action on both sides.
Being granted immortality would obviously change all of that. If I stay the same, then who am I really? There’s no end, so my life isn’t really like a story anymore. I’d essentially just be. And being would be all that you’d be able to do. Anyone could conceivably accomplish anything in the natural world given an eternity to do it. The only question that would remain would be would everyone else be immortal or not?
If the answer to that question is no, then you’ve got some serious problems indeed. I’m assuming you’d like to keep your immortality a secret because being the center of that kind of attention would be really hellish. Everyone would have their lifespans and you’d sadly have to see them come and go. That’s one thing that would never change. And then there’s only so much entertainment you could stomach. Life is pretty shitty when you’re totally bored. After a while, you’d be tired of all of it. You’d have life figured out and every thing that we all think is so important would seem utterly boring.
So yeah it sounds pretty horrific to continue to live on like that. On the other hand, what if there were a significant population to experience such a thing like that with? I would imagine things would be better. It would completely alter what we consider civilization, because modern life almost always assumes an end to life.
The only way I can imagine it might be any fun at all is if you can somehow wait until they are able to upload your consciousness to a computer at which point it could might later be possible to expand on your consciousness in more interesting and profound ways.
Somewhere between A and B. The idea of immortality bothers me more than death does.
I mean, it’s hard for me to comprehend ‘forever,’ but I think I could manage quite a long time, as events and circumstances change. Every day the world is different than the day before; there’s always something new to experience.
If eternal life came with eternal youth it would be something I would seriously consider. Being 26 for the rest of forever would be cool, but eventually winding down and falling apart with no death to save you from the ravages of age would be a horrible fate. If I did get to stay 26 or 30 or whatever for eternity I could probably move around every 5-10 years and make new friends and find new and interesting things to do before moving on to a new place. That could keep me entertained for hundreds of years, if not longer.
Millennia at least. Given the time, I would like to do everything that anyone has ever done, learn every thing (fact, skill and art) that anyone has ever learned, then start inventing a few of my own.
I think I could also probably be entertained by a few repeats of the above cycle too - and there are some things I cannot imagine ever becoming bored of, regardless of how many times they’re repeated - and I would doubtless discover more of these on my journey.
Suppose you resolve to visit every tourist attraction on Earth. Start at the North Pole, and work your way south.
By the time you are finished with Johannesburg, New York will have some new stuff to see. You will never live long enough to see it all.
There will always be one more place to visit, one more book to read, one more person to meet.
Boredom is for teenagers. The longer I live, the more interesting the world gets.
Millennia if not never. There’s always something new to learn. A new musical instrument to master. A new field of study into which to delve. New books to read. New places to visit. New people to meet.
I would always want to know the way in which I could die, or be killed. Even immortals have ways to die. I’d probably say until the earth is uninhabitable to humans. I could always find something to get into.
I wonder if many of us would succumb to boredom, sloth, procrastination and debauchery if we knew we could never die. It seems to me, in my life at least, that knowing I will die is a highly effective motivator.
The few short years that I have means that I need to choose well not only which subjects I learn and what skills and talents I develop; but also whom I choose to associate with. I think all this makes this adventure called “life” rather exciting.
I vote C) millenia. If could take it down a notch, to somewhere between a century or two and millenia, that would be perfect.
But yes, I need death. Hopefully not a long, drawn out, tormented death… more a blip disappearing off the screen kind of death.
Thanks for posting the question, I had never really pondered the ramifications of eternal life.
I have to say that sounds like a very limited view of immortality. All that could be accomplished in a few human lifetimes. What if you think further?
[purely speculative rant]
A million years later, you’ve walked the entire surface of the planet, swam in the deepest depths of the ocean, witnessed the end of life on Earth and maybe the end of this solar system. Now you’re just a body, floating around in space. Then what? It may be another million+ years before you crash-land on some foreign planet.
Then a billion years later, you’ve lived through the rise and fall of a couple thousand alien civilizations, witnessed the birth of death of a couple million stars, and traversed a big bunch of the nearby galaxies and everything is beginning to look awfully similar.
And a trillion years later, you’ve done all that a thousand times over and you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of your immortality. And if immortality lets you continue learning, your accumulated knowledge and technology might eventually give you god-like powers and you’d be able to manipulate worlds as you see fit, creating and destroying galaxies out of sheer boredom. There is no longer any challenge or goal to life, since anything you could possibly want, you can create yourself with little or no effort. As you once again float timelessly through the emptiness of space on the way to your next destination, futilely hoping for something, anything new, that familiar madness begins to creep in once more and you scream… will this ever end?!
No.
You’ve reached Nirvana, become a permanent resident in Paradise, uncovered Shangri-La, rented a room on Mt. Olympus, and you’ve reached the end of every alien religion you’ve ever come in contact with and the collective intelligence of all life no longer has anything new to offer you. You’re a god among gods, surrounded by what, to you, are mere bacteria. You begin to feel a kind of loneliness that no other life-form has ever felt, a kind of irreconcilable sorrow that comes from the certain knowledge that you will never find a peer. The universe is merely a playpen that you’ve long outgrown. Your near-omniscience grants you a harrowing certainty of the sequence of events to come, of the inevitable end of time itself. But with that loss of uncertainty comes the loss of hope.
The universe begins to wither. Life, in all its myriad forms that you’ve seen, has long since ceased and the energy around you, too, nears its death. You realize now that the end of ends is near… but not for you.
Not for you.
It is merely one more beginning, like the many you’ve seen before. Through sheer force of will, you reverse the process and jumpstart a new universe. At once, you split your infinite consciousness into the fabric of that universe so that you may once again experience the beautiful innocence of your youth. Life evolves, as you willed it to, and one day a part of you is born, and you grow, you learn, you live, you die. Ten times over. But your consciousness never dies, and slowly, over the course of countless millennia, the bits and pieces of the universe once again coalesce into one coherent whole – you – and you remember all the times you’ve done this before.
People, places, lives, worlds, and life itself has come and gone more often than you care to count. And in the end, you remain.
Then what?
[/rant]
Well, when you put it like that…
But how long until your grow tired of making new friends and significant others only to watch them grow old and die (cue Queen song)? And how long until you can’t even relate to mortal people anymore?
There’s a reason people like Connor McCloud spent a lot of time alone.
Presumably not aging is included in the deal, otherwise, you’d eventually become so withered you wouldn’t be able to move.
I don’t think I’d ever get bored. There’s always something new to do, new music, new books, new games, new technologies, etc. At least every 50 to 100 years or so I’d fake my death, move somewhere else, and start a new family. I’d probably spend some time alone in between, but I’d have a family most of the time. I don’t think I’d ever get to the point where I felt like I’d seen and done it all. Of course, the second or third million years might drag a bit…
An interesting thing to think about is: What if some calamity or other wipes out everyone else? It’s more than likely to happen at some point, there’s so many ways mankind could be snuffed out. Global Warming, Nuclear War, Rogue Asteroid, etc. What if everyone bites it except you, who’s forced to spin through all of eternity on your lonesome?
I choose D. Life keeps getting more and more interesting as I go along, and I can’t imagine any feasible way for that trend to reverse itself. I’m much more able to find meaning in things now than when I was a teenager. I’ve learned to like painting, sculpture, live drama, travel, many different sports, and a great deal more.
Beautiful! I would find it hard to deal with outliving everyone I ever cared about and loved.
That’s pretty much what I came in to say, although not that well and without the jumpstarting of another universe. I’ve always wondered what immortals would do once the universe itself finally ends. Or even Earth if for some reason no way of escaping to another planet has been discovered.
I’d take at least a millennium for myself, though, and see how it goes from there.