A recent article ["Would it be boring to live forever"] raised the question that if science could resolve the problem of dying and prolong human life indefinitely, in a healthy state, would we become bored with such an existence and look at death more favorably.
The two perspectives are essentially expressed in the following quotes.
This is the concern of bioethicist Nigel Cameron who worries that extreme longevity will cause people to become listless and utterly dissatisfied with their existence owing to a complete lack of engagement, novelty — and purpose. It's the prospect of death, says Cameron, that spurs us to be motivated and to meaningfully engage in life.On the other hand, Dr. Mark Walker contends that this is largely an empirical question and consequently we simply can't know how people would truly react. However, he does grant that such changes would precipitate others to compensate for such feelings.
And because boredom is an inherently psychological issue, he speculates that future humans will choose to deal with the condition from a neurological perspective. "I can imagine, for example, a way to compartmentalize memory, "he said, "by putting blocks around memories so that we can revisit experiences as if for the first time."Despite whatever other problems might result from such longevity, the question, in this case, is confined simply to the proposition of being bored by living forever.
It would appear that the likely conclusion is that we are destined to be bored with such an existence. While we can't know with absolute certainty, even Dr. Walker's conclusion suggests that we must ultimately manipulate our own minds in an effort to make the concept palatable. If we were to "revisit experiences as if for the first time", then it fundamentally negates the reason to have them in the first place. In effect, we are fooling ourselves simply to prolong our lives.
If this degree of psychological manipulation is necessary in order to prolong our lives, then why not simply consider the psychological manipulations necessary to make death more acceptable? After all, if life is to simply be reduced to manipulated memories, then why choose one outcome over any other?
Of course, such psychological manipulation would also be the most intolerable sort of tyranny that one could imagine, because it would suggest that one could be made accepting of virtually any condition, since recollection of any previous experience could be removed. It's the perfect, "clean" way to create a permanent underclass, and make them happy that they are.
However, in the end, I think the question is largely rhetorical, because such immortality is unachievable. Regardless of the progress science may make in prolonging human life, it is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things because it can only address life from the perspective of aging.
Solving the "aging problem" isn't sufficient to ensure immortality. There are obviously issues surrounding accidents and the normal risks intrinsic in everyday life as well as the issue of disease or other conditions that fall into a completely different domain. This can range from dying from the flu to various cancers. Therefore to seriously consider immortality as an option in the future, then the level of control that humans must exert of their entire existence exceeds all likelihood of ever being achieved.
Moreover, such control would require controlling all the variables that could have an influence, including those that govern individual behaviors. In short, you would lose virtually all your freedom to actually "live" your life in an effort to control against the variables that could cause you to lose it.
From this discussion it illustrates even more how naivete enters such debates. It appears that regardless of which view one favors, we either have to contend ourselves with boredom or we have to fool ourselves into not being bored [and not having much of a live to lead]. The latter view sounds more reminiscent of "The Matrix" than a viable future.
Who knows? Perhaps science is leading us to the ultimate philosophical question; will we all just be a "brain in a vat"?
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