Is immortality really so bad? Most every story focused on such presents it as an atrocity fueled by sacrifice or arcane magics, as perpetual suffering and meaninglessness, or as boredom and eternal vice. However, perhaps the reason it’s presented as such lies more in its unobtainability rather than its actual cost. We fear and lampoon immortality as almost sinful while the holy man passes unto the great beyond.
Assume we don’t place those sorts of constraints on immortality: you maintain a reasonable age and health with no associated cost. Perhaps everyone has equal opportunity to it. Is it still such a bad thing?
Immortality is not evil or necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that humanity, life in general, is designed with the expectation that there is an end. Our sense of morality and ethics overwhelmingly hinges on finality and the average person would fall into a void of meaninglessness. In his work concerning the techno-feudalist state of the modern world, Bullshit Jobs, Graeber expresses that people require two things to feel their jobs, or what we spend an majority of life doing, are worth it: money and a positive social impact. Both of these revolve around our mortality: money is needed to trade and a positive social impact is an impression they leave for later generations.
If there were no fear of death, money wouldn’t be an absolute requirement like it is now. Likewise, if nobody dies, the best of the best will stay that position unless they lose interest which is more than possible, but it just means other greats will rise up, too. What then is left for the every man? While Sisyphus can learn to be happy given his eternity, can everyone else? While it is just assumption, I say no.
The sheep tread their merry way following life’s natural programmings. To Nietzsche, the Übermensch was one who created meaning in a meaningless world. In a world without death, only those with this strength of spirit would thrive. Those who do could live with immortality, appreciating life as not a means to fulfill a function; instead, as a way of appreciating life in and of itself and the machinations of reality. Only he who could value time not as a limit but as a process would be the one who could appreciate the divine taste of the fruit of knowledge.
Immortality isn’t the problem—it’s our reliance on mortality to feel meaningful. Until we can create value without a deadline, eternity will remain terrifying.
