I have seen this scenario played out in Sci Fi several times, always as a male as I have seen it. Since women actually live longer than men, thought it would be interesting to mention that. 25 years old is 25 years old for either gender.
This is pretty much how I feel. I don’t think I have ever been bored, even as a teenager. When I hear people say they sit in front of the tv and flip thru the channels to find something to watch and then watch something they have seen a dozen times before, I am a little bit bemused.
I pretty much retired in my forties so I have had a lot of free time on my hands and I still don’t have time to do everything I want. I probably have 10 years of projects I want to do and have even bought the supplies to do them. The problem is, I keep coming up with new stuff that pushes the old stuff back.
I should have read further, you said it better than I did.
Meh. I’ve already got living fatigue.
You can sure see the difference in this thread between the people who are depressed / depressive and those who are not.
LOL, this is accurate regarding the replies. I think those who have had trauma, major life disappointments and mental health issues are far less likely to enjoy living forever.
Having said that even for mentally healthy, trauma free people, doesn’t going on vacation and trying new things get old eventually? supposedly many retired people only vacation the first couple years, then they get tired of it.
I think you have to take into account that travel becomes more difficult as a person ages, that can take some of the shine off vacationing.
I would look at the movie Groundhog Day, where the protagonist is trapped in a somewhat restrictive setting, but with some powers as well. I would hope that most of us would embrace it.
Keep in mind in the scenario of the OP, we effectively can’t kill ourselves, so we have no choice. Like in Groundhog Day, it would be depressing at times, though this scenario has far more opportunities than was in that movie.
As has been mentioned above, you need to get used to the idea that others will die while you never do. That doesn’t mean you can’t have relationships, but that the nature will be different. But that’s something that could be learned. Plenty of people have outlived many friends, peers, pets etc.
You need to be able to adjust and to strip off your old identity. No identity is going to be permanent, eventually you’re going to have to embrace something new. If you’re a career Army man, why not start over and give the Navy a try? But if you’re all caught up in not wanting to give up that Army identity, can’t let it go, you’ll struggle more with this scenario than others will.
Eternal periods and chance for pregnancy? Yay… Most women I know are relieved to reach menopause. I know I was.
I would even it up by making men responsible for any children they father. No skipping out. Need to be in their lives and financially support them. And no taking it with you, when you fake your death, the heirs get your property. Also birth control and abortion available for women at no health cost to themselves, per the OP.
Perhaps the wise person of either gender equipped with infinite lifespan will avoid the newbie mistake of creating unwanted progeny. If not in their first 50 years, certainly in their second.
Look, not to get all Downer Debbie on this conversation, but a raped woman doesn’t get to choose whether to conceive or not. If birth control and/or abortion are not available she doesn’t always get a choice about whether or not to reproduce.
Overall though, it would probably be a positive for most women to have no sense of urgency about having children.
As a guy, I am quite familiar with various doors closing on me as I get older, but the door to having children is essentially always open. Under the terms of the OP, virtually all the doors are open permanently for both genders.
Oh, and may I also suggest that the OP might want to just include that menstruation doesn’t happen or can be indefinitely postponed. Seems a small thing compared to the T-1000 healing abilities.
Count me among those who probably won’t get bored ever. There is just an endless number of things to learn and enjoy. Among other things I am quite big on nostalgia. I would be able to spend many, many hours recording and examining my own life at regular intervals.
An interesting thought I just had is: “How would nostalgia itself be different if you don’t age?”
All real-world nostalgia is tinged with “you can’t go back” because the rest of the world, the location, the other people have changed or disappeared. But more than that, you yourself are now older, wiser, and maybe more or less capable depending on who’s waxing nostalgic when about when.
For our hypothetical semi-immortal, that last factor will simply be absent. Want to spend 4 years orgying your way through college like you forgot to do 40 years ago? Go for it. Yes, you’ll still be older mentally, but after a certain point I don’t think being 250 yo versus 300 confers much additional wisdom or insight into the human condition.
Right that’s a whole 'nother issue. Being at risk for this forever. At least some of us get a pass on this as we get older.
And all these dudes who think that pregnancy was the whole point I was making. You try bleeding for 5 days a month for eternity. And having the accompanying discomfort and expense that goes with that.
I’m sure this isn’t much of an answer and certainly not a complete one, but I think it’s worth acknowledging that there would probably be certain scenarios in which a person who knows well that they cannot be killed or permanently harmed might be a less productive target for rapists.
How so?
How do you know they won’t be more attractive and they can be subjected to all sorts of gang rapes and abuses without the perpetrators needing to find a new “toy” when the one they’re using breaks/dies?
Could go either way.
Let’s say I am being confronted at knifepoint. I may tend to choose actions that I feel will minimise risk of immediate harm.
In the same situation, but knowing I cannot be killed, I may choose to fight back with everything I have.
But I don’t disagree that it could also go the other way
The degree of emotional attachments normal people have to pets isn’t the same as that we have for humans because they’re not humans , not because they’re short-lived. Because of human empathy.
Perhaps I omitted something important from my post. What I said about children might apply apply - to some extent only? - once you had passed multiple centuries and were becoming aware that you might continue much longer. With children living normal lifespans, how does an 80 year old life look to an 800 year old? I don’t know either, but it is definitely uncharted psychological territory.
Modern Western people are the overly fragile ones, in this regard,
Agreed.
Looking at the posited situation again, I would say that immortality is impossible - and in any case, how could you know? I think this question is better seen as prolonged youth and prolonged life. There are many questions concerning the aging process, and apparently there is an animal - I cannot remember which - that does not age. The options for an ultra-long life are either a very slow metabolism, such as the 10,000 year old sponges at the bottom of the sea in the Antarctic, or a means to prevent the degradation of our cells through faults in the renewal process. If the faults are eliminated, we can stay young and fit for - for how long?
I find the second option much more attractive than a few millennia at the bottom of a cold sea.
Next up; how would such a thing end? Maybe the mechanism fails one day, and then you have an experience like Dorian Gray and age very rapidly. Frankly, anything about immortality or being impossible to kill or in the realms of magic. I prefer to keep it to an extended life, without deterioration, and that only a few other people get this option, for whatever reason.
Back to the question of boredom. I think there would be a point when you would be totally jaded, perhaps terminally. You have done it all, seen it all, and you did and saw a great deal in your long life. It’s just that maybe enough is enough one day, and I say that without wanting it to sound depressing or suicidal…
And so much more to forget, to make room for new information. How much of your memory can you retain after a hundred years? Two hundred years? Five hundred years? A thousand years?