LONG FOR THIS WORLD

The author tells us of Luz — in Jewish tradition, one last fragment of Paradise, walled off from the world. Nothing was ever lost in Luz; its histories were complete, and so were the lives of those who dwelt there. All the great men and women of the past were there, ageless and free of infirmity. But not all were content; at intervals one or another would forsake immortality and leave the city by its secret gate. None ever returned, for the Angel of DeathA was waiting for them outside the gate.

Thus is one of the potential troubles with immortality expressed in poetic fashion. When you truly have all the time in the world, will you eventually run out of things to do and be consumed by boredom? Some will suffer this fate, surely — but some already do get bored with life and either end it or dissolve into hedonism. I do not imagine it becoming a common problem. The Cosmos is large enough to provide hundreds of millennia of physical exploration, even if somehow the Lightspeed Barrier is broken — even if, like the Mother Thing in Heinlein's Have Space Suit, Will Travel, we can flit between galaxies hundreds of millions of light-years apart in the blink of an eye. And intellectual investigation, whether scientific or artistic, has no limits.

But there are other potential drawbacks to immortalityB. One is that it might well not be available to everyone. What if political leaders reserved it for themselves? Imagine Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot lasting for a millennium or longer. What if it becomes another perquisite of great wealth? Either outcome could lead to a dystopian society of entrenched elites lording it over the mayfly masses, who are kept impoverished and quite possibly enslaved.

And even if the boon of life extension is universally available to anyone who wants it, the ways in which it will change society may not be entirely beneficial. For one thing, long-lived people might become extremely risk-averse, a condition with unpleasant implications for progressive politics and for progress in general. Bearing and raising a child will always be risky. Will people still choose to have children? If most do not, much more than the joys of parenthood could be lost. Stagnation may well set in at some point, as no or very few young minds enter the picture. Even society's long-term survival may be in jeopardy. A risk-averse society is a fragile society, less able to cope with the unexpected crisis (or even with crises which have been foreseen.)

A question with a more visceral impact arises from the consideration of what stage of life the immortality treatment preserves. Would it be youth?C Young adulthood? Early middle age? The choice has implications for society's general level of maturity. If, hypothetically, the treatment left everybody stuck in their teenage body, would they have learned good judgement? If they had, would they continue to display it, or would raging hormones overrule it? I suppose those who fell short would remove themselves from society, probably earning a Darwin Award in the process. But the cost of the Awards to society might be considerable. If the hypothetical immaturity extends to most of society, its cost might well be insupportable.

Another possibility, more frequently posited in science fiction, is that immortal individuals become extremely averse to risk and the societies they control turn rigidly authoritarian, attempting to reduce personal and general risk to a minimum. Such a society would ban many activities we take for granted, including most competitive sports, many kinds of outdoor recreation, and much scientific research. While space travel within the solar system would probably be allowed, in order to deal with the hazard of asteroids or comets hitting Earth, interstellar expeditions would be ruled out. The ban might even extend to robotic probes, lest some alien civilization — which might be hostile — trace them back to their origin.

Finally, there is a potential biological pitfall to immortality.D The brain's capacity for memory storage is finite. Some have speculated that when that capacity is used up, cognitive function will decline. This sounds plausible, but no one today understands the mechanisms of memory well enough to make a scientific judgement about it. Also, once those mechanisms are fully understood, it should become possible to alter them so as to safely erase unwanted memories — or to offload them onto external storage, from which they could be replaced if desired.

I tend to think either extreme — the adolescent, hot rods & wild-party planet or the senescent, shuffleboard & pinochle planet — is unlikely to result from life extension. One reason is that other developments will continue. Perhaps marvelously safe snowmobiles and jet-skis will be developed. Perhaps physicians will learn to repair almost any injury, even brain damage. Perhaps it will become possible, through drug treatments or advanced electronics, to implant good judgement into the brain.E This is why predictions about a single aspect of a future society seldom hit the mark: that single thing is never the only thing that changes.

So my personal wish is for more life-extension research. And, given the way the demographic trends are going, I am probably going to get my wish. It is unlikely, however, that this will make a difference to me personally. But it could make a big difference for humanity. I expect that, rather than eroding humanity's judgement and maturity in one way or the other, longer lifespans will lead to more maturity in society. Another potential benefit is that the prospect of interstellar travel at sublight speeds becomes much less daunting when you live thousands of years.F

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Contents of this page were last modified on 21 July 2024.