Can Humanity Handle Immortality?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Arrian
As for Ozzy's youth angle... well, there is something to what he says. Societal change does seem to be a generational thing. Would immortality result in stagnation?

-Arrian

It's not just that youth causes change. It's also that youth are far better equipped to mentally handle change. Since everything is new and exciting, those things that actually are new have less of a mental impact.

The older one gets, the more people get unsettled about how things aren't the way they used to be. If we lived forever, would we be in a constant state of confusion and befuddlement over these new fangled contraptions and those kids with their crazy noise and styles?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Wycoff
How do you figure?

This would be a precondition of the kind of longevity to aspire to. Prolonging incontinent wrinkliness is no good to anyone. 'Eternal Youth', or at least an extended one, is the objective.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by OzzyKP

Also, to add a youth rights critique, all progress depends on youth and on a changing of the guard generation wise. The real thing that has made society incredibly less racist over the last 50 years (American society at least) wasn't just the civil rights movement, but the fact that all the old racists have died off. With gay rights too, generally the younger you are the more supportive of it you are. Progress on this front ultimately depends on older generations dying off. Cynical, but true.

Generally people's political ideas don't change drastically over their lives. And putting aside issues of senility, people are generally slower to adapt to technology as they get older. With people living to be 200 I fear society will stagnate.

However it will be an interesting, and positively explosive contrast in that the "immortal" group stuck in the past and slow to adapt will control a good amount of the world's wealth and political power, whereas the majority of population will be more dynamic, numerous, and poor. Of course one could argue that is how life is today, but it'd be much worse.

Do you personally know any old people?

From what I've seen on average they moderate their stances in lock step with trends in larger society they are living in.

Just look at how racist and sexist entertainment was not that long ago and then try to find people who were alive then who think those attitudes are fine now. You may be surprised by how many of those people have moderated their views.

Sure there will be some stuborn holdouts but those people might well have cultivated those same attitudes had they been born later as well.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


It's not just that youth causes change. It's also that youth are far better equipped to mentally handle change. Since everything is new and exciting, those things that actually are new have less of a mental impact.

The older one gets, the more people get unsettled about how things aren't the way they used to be. If we lived forever, would we be in a constant state of confusion and befuddlement over these new fangled contraptions and those kids with their crazy noise and styles?

that's probably just because as we age the brain is slower than it was when it was younger making it physically less capable of dealing with change.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Cort Haus Prolonging incontinent wrinkliness is no good to anyone. 'Eternal Youth', or at least an extended one, is the objective.

I was making the assumption that the "Eternal youth" type is what we were talking about. Many people get set in their ways long before their slide into old age. 40 and 50 year olds are often as resistant to change as older people. That's a gross generalization, as not all people (even the very old) are set in their ways, but its been my experience that many are. Widespread changes in attitude tend to occur with generational cycles . I'm not that sympathetic to most of Ozzy's Youth agenda, but I think that his stagnation concerns are valid.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Just look at how racist and sexist entertainment was not that long ago and then try to find people who were alive then who think those attitudes are fine now. You may be surprised by how many of those people have moderated their views.

Sure there will be some stuborn holdouts but those people might well have cultivated those same attitudes had they been born later as well.

That goes against my personal experience. Most older people I know lament the new P.C. culture.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Arrian
To some, I suppose. I don't feel terribly empowered by the idea that "this is it!" I'm not depressed by it either. It simply is.

-Arrian

do you think if you really stared it in the face with contemplation it still wouldn't depress you?

I know it would depress me, which is the only reason I mentally change the subject when I've lingered on the concept too long.

Personally I think the most hopelessly depressing aspect of mortality is not the prospect of our own personal demise but rather the knowledge that everything we care about and even everything that will relate in some meaningful way to everything we care about will at some point cease to exist even as a memory or physical record.

Eventually not only will it all be dead and gone it will be so dead and gone that nothing will be able to determine that any of it ever existed.

It doesn't matter if it's 20 trillion years from now either. the moment you are personally dead those 20 trillion years might as well be a millisecond.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Wycoff


That goes against my personal experience. Most older people I know lament the new P.C. culture.

Partly because everybody laments the PC culture.

Witness the popularity of south Park. The most Un-PC shows seem to have young writers and young audiences on average.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Do you personally know any old people?

Plenty. And most all my grandparents and great aunts & uncles were fairly racist. Not KKK type racist, but subtly racist far more than their kids or grandkids.

This adaptability thing isn't some physical defect that can be cured along with old age. If you have been doing something the same way every day for 50 years and suddenly something new comes along that is radically different, how easy is it to just throw out 50 years of experience and familiarity and do something entirely new?

[chequita guevara]

It doesn't matter if it's 20 trillion years from now either. the moment you are personally dead those 20 trillion years might as well be a millisecond.

Ouch.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Wycoff


I was making the assumption that the "Eternal youth" type is what we were talking about. Many people get set in their ways long before their slide into old age. 40 and 50 year olds are often as resistant to change as older people. That's a gross generalization, as not all people (even the very old) are set in their ways, but its been my experience that many are. Widespread changes in attitude tend to occur with generational cycles . I'm not that sympathetic to most of Ozzy's Youth agenda, but I think that his stagnation concerns are valid.

Young minds are more adaptable, but older minds are wiser. The goal is to have the best of both worlds.

Change for change's sake is no better than stagnation. If a system works, don't fix it. So what if generational change revolves more slowly in some respects? Things have changed more over the last 200 years than the previous 2000, so we could probably afford to slow things down a bit.

It actually seems conservative and reactionary to me to say "this is the way it's always been (die age xx), so must it remain".

[Arrian]

do you think if you really stared it in the face with contemplation it still wouldn't depress you?

Why do you assume I haven't done that?

I've thought this through. I will likely think it through again in the future.

-Arrian

[chequita guevara]

"Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man." - Leon Trotsky

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Plenty. And most all my grandparents and great aunts & uncles were fairly racist. Not KKK type racist, but subtly racist far more than their kids or grandkids.

Don't you think this might have something to do with prevailing social attitudes of the past rather than their age? Segregation was considered the norm in some parts of the world until recently, and slavery was the norm some generations before that.

[chequita guevara]

I think some pathways in the brain are likely so set that they might not be overcome. Given time, who knows if that could change.