Or even a couple hundered years more... I'm talking under reasonable circumstances... people could still die in accidents, by murder or other unescapable fates.
2007-03-28 07:15:32 · 11 answers · asked by Brendan M 2 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
There's two ways to look at this.
One is supply and demand. If you have a million years to do stuff, is there any reason why you should ever do anything RIGHT NOW? In that sense, a huge supply of life makes any particular unit of it of infinitesimal value. It would be the converse of someone who finds out that he has only a week to live and treasures every second.
Whether this makes things better or worse would be a rather more protracted discussion. If nobody was ever in a rush to do anything, maybe it would be easier to get down to some of the comparatively more important things, you know? If you can advance your career any time, then who WOULDN'T spend time with their family? Of course for many people it is precisely the pressure of time that gets them to do ANYTHING... with no pressure, they may just spend their eternity just lying on the beach and watching clouds go by.
The other way to look at the whole picture would be from an accumulated value sense. Even if any particular unit of time becomes of low value, if you have enough time to accumulate value then the sum can be much, much greater.
For example, it's hard sometimes to think of other people as your family... but if you live long enough then you can know this to be almost literally true ("Oh! You're one of my four billion great-great-great- great-great-great- great-grandchildren!") - a small association snowballs into a big one. Likewise, we mourn for a child deprived of seventy years of life... how much greater would the tragedy be for someone deprived of seventy million years of life?
Of course, how people took it would probably be as varied as people themselves. A lot of people, when asked if they would want to live forever, say "no" for various reasons - they obviously see life as more of a curse than a blessing. I don't see why an infinite amount of life would change this outlook one way or another...
2007-03-28 08:19:43 · answer #1 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What is reasonable to me is dying, we all die. Either natural causes or disease or by someone murdering or committing suicide...they're all plausible so in that case, reasonable.
I also know that there is life after death so because it makes sense to me, it is reasonable. Whether there is something after that or a different role to play, I don't know...but I know that life is never a constant. If we ALL reach that same point of immortality, we will all have relationships, issues, thoughts, ideas just as we do now...I think life would go on as it is now, either destroying ourselves or furthering our evolutionary development.
If I was the only immortal being...I could see how it could become mundane and repetitious. But, if we'll all be together, I can hardly see a monotonous life if presently there is no such calmness to my life or anyone else's for that matter. I don't think anyone of us are the kind to just sit and not try something new or invent or think up new ideas or come to a certain degree of knowledge that advances us into something greater than just "living forever..."
Who knows what else is out there besides eternal life. Is there anything beyond that?
2007-03-28 14:32:46 · answer #2 · answered by Querida 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If we could live forever, I guess life would have less meaning, because after a very very long time people would be so tired of life that they'd become ultimately cynics. I think one of the reasons that make life so valuable and meaningful is that it has a beginning and an end, and you have to make the most of it.
2007-03-28 14:32:16 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
We can live forever! And when I discovered that it made a huge difference in my outlook on life!
Someone showed me Acts Chapter 2 in the Bible and I was amazed that I had never been taught that. Something so basic and so pure, without man's ideas, without any silly ceremony. Just the plain and simple truth from God.
I followed up and discovered for myself that it is indeed true, just as recorded in Acts. And that was just the beginning. This life is just our training ground!
2007-03-28 14:26:56 · answer #4 · answered by AK 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
less. how many people are actually living their lives to the fullest and pursuing their dreams and helping the global community in one way or another? not many, i would say. there are few people dedicated to making a difference in their lives or others' lives. in a way, people are just wasting their lives away as it it, so it would be a waste to live forever. having a set life span leads us to cherish things - or it should, at least. if we knew we were going to live forever we would probably not be making any effort to change things...we'd take for granted having endless years to live. we'd take for granted our loved ones knowing they will always be there. while it's nice not to lose loved ones, death makes us appreciate life.
2007-03-28 14:31:27 · answer #5 · answered by jamoncita 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I would stem this to the argument regarding happiness (or goodness) versus sadness (or evil.)
Without happiness, we would know no evil and without misery we would not know good. If we lived forever, we could experience all there was to experience in life and run out of new things to experience. Life would become so dull that because of human nature and the desire for new experiences, people would commit suicide just for something new to do. Then they would really have done it all.
That's my take.
2007-03-28 14:22:53 · answer #6 · answered by Chyvalri 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Eventually you would get so sick of everything, seeing everything as the same and nothing as new. This is why cycles are natural in life, this is why reincarnation makes sense, life in general is made up of cycles and when humans reach a point they must be renewed.
2007-03-28 14:20:08 · answer #7 · answered by Socrates 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Life would have more meaning because we would not the ugly thought of death hanging over our heads (its kind of like trying to take a test while your parents are hovering over you: you panic and don't get anything done).
2007-03-28 17:41:32 · answer #8 · answered by alexandria_bonaparte 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I think it would be like Lestat in the Anne Rice vampire novels...after about a hundred years you'd be begging for the sweet release of death....
2007-03-28 14:23:47 · answer #9 · answered by music junkie 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
You'd have more time to do things, learn, etc, so life for the individual would have more meaning.
2007-03-28 15:02:49 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋