My basic proposition is that it would be hard for us has we would lose our loved ones over time. I then followed by saying that it would be an additional layer of hardship living on the predicate that we would never lose anyone.
I’m having a dialogue here, not trying to write a thesis. Errors are a given.
Going back to the premise of this thought experiment, on which we both are speculating, the magic fairy dust pill would concede biological immortality by stopping the aging process. But it would not remove actual death by other means, often much more traumatic than natural causes, like acts of violence, fortuit events, acts of god, etc.
What I am trying to convey is that such artificial sense of permanence would be much more violently disturbed each and every time that, inevitably, someone or something very dear was to be lost.
And lets not be disingenuous to the point of stating that losing a pet or have a hearbreak equates to losing someone that shared an existence for decades or even entire lives.
Using your own logical inference, for those there would be a notion of finitude; the coping mechanism would be instilled from the start while for other humans there wouldn’t be such a notion or, at best, a very fleeting one: death wouldn’t be a given but a very slight probability/possibility.
–#–
It’s good for people to engage in this kind of thought experiments and I truly enjoyed this exchange, regardless if I passed a sense of pontification from my side. These are occasions where we only have our own experiences and thoughts to build upon.
Fair enough, and no harm done, at least from my perspective. I agree that it is interesting topic worthy of consideration and I think your view absolutely has merit, it just felt more to me that you thought your view was more “valid” because it was backed up by works of speculative fiction, but now I understand that I have misinterpreted your comment, so I apologise for my part in that :)
I’m much happier to discuss the ideas on a level playing field.
I agree that the loss of a pet isn’t generally as devastating as, say, losing a parent while young, or losing a partner. I was thinking about kids - usually their first experience of loss is for a pet, and it’s often really difficult for them, because the experience is so new and kids already have such sensitivity to emotions.
I agree that in a world where people live forever, each loss would be more impactful. I’m sure the first loss would be as difficult (or more so) than a child dealing with the loss of a beloved grandparent - very hard and painful, but there’s little reason to think that it would uniquely break our brains, and I think there’s also little reason to think that something being rarer makes it harder to deal with.
I spent all of my life being able to walk and taking that for granted, with no reason to think I would ever have to deal with the loss of that ability - until something happened and I ended up with a disability that left me unable to walk. It was hard to come to terms with but I managed absolutely fine. And that’s a relatively minor thing compared to what some humans have had to deal with. We are an extremely resilient and adaptable species!
For all those reasons I really don’t think immortality would be particularly difficult for our brains to deal with. I think the significantly bigger problem would be more social and geographic - how would we avoid overpopulation, and would our society/culture continue to progress as it used to? We know very well about how elderly people are “set in their ways”, for example, would that trend mean that if we had immortality in the 17th century that we would still be having arguments about whether or not slavery was ethical today?
Now we are getting into the finer details. I was only focusing on the individual level while taking into consideration what is already known regarding handling accrued trauma.
You mention a valid point when stating we are remarkably resilient. We are. Yet the truly resilient ones, like yourself, are comparatively few when considered how many break under duress.
It is obviously very outdated but when I first read it allowed me expand on the notion that our mind and body are more intimately connected and, by extension, infer that every single experience makes up a part of what we are, thus I defend that such a long life span would pose such a burden to handle.
I’m no more resilient than average, heck I’m definitely less resilient than average, I think you’re just underestimating just how strong humans are and how capable we are to just get on with our lives.
I haven’t read that book, sorry!
I did a quick bit of searching online and found out some interesting stuff about how people tend to report positive outcomes from trauma more often than negative outcomes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8827649/
My basic proposition is that it would be hard for us has we would lose our loved ones over time. I then followed by saying that it would be an additional layer of hardship living on the predicate that we would never lose anyone.
I’m having a dialogue here, not trying to write a thesis. Errors are a given.
Going back to the premise of this thought experiment, on which we both are speculating, the magic fairy dust pill would concede biological immortality by stopping the aging process. But it would not remove actual death by other means, often much more traumatic than natural causes, like acts of violence, fortuit events, acts of god, etc.
What I am trying to convey is that such artificial sense of permanence would be much more violently disturbed each and every time that, inevitably, someone or something very dear was to be lost.
And lets not be disingenuous to the point of stating that losing a pet or have a hearbreak equates to losing someone that shared an existence for decades or even entire lives. Using your own logical inference, for those there would be a notion of finitude; the coping mechanism would be instilled from the start while for other humans there wouldn’t be such a notion or, at best, a very fleeting one: death wouldn’t be a given but a very slight probability/possibility.
–#–
It’s good for people to engage in this kind of thought experiments and I truly enjoyed this exchange, regardless if I passed a sense of pontification from my side. These are occasions where we only have our own experiences and thoughts to build upon.
Fair enough, and no harm done, at least from my perspective. I agree that it is interesting topic worthy of consideration and I think your view absolutely has merit, it just felt more to me that you thought your view was more “valid” because it was backed up by works of speculative fiction, but now I understand that I have misinterpreted your comment, so I apologise for my part in that :)
I’m much happier to discuss the ideas on a level playing field.
I agree that the loss of a pet isn’t generally as devastating as, say, losing a parent while young, or losing a partner. I was thinking about kids - usually their first experience of loss is for a pet, and it’s often really difficult for them, because the experience is so new and kids already have such sensitivity to emotions.
I agree that in a world where people live forever, each loss would be more impactful. I’m sure the first loss would be as difficult (or more so) than a child dealing with the loss of a beloved grandparent - very hard and painful, but there’s little reason to think that it would uniquely break our brains, and I think there’s also little reason to think that something being rarer makes it harder to deal with.
I spent all of my life being able to walk and taking that for granted, with no reason to think I would ever have to deal with the loss of that ability - until something happened and I ended up with a disability that left me unable to walk. It was hard to come to terms with but I managed absolutely fine. And that’s a relatively minor thing compared to what some humans have had to deal with. We are an extremely resilient and adaptable species!
For all those reasons I really don’t think immortality would be particularly difficult for our brains to deal with. I think the significantly bigger problem would be more social and geographic - how would we avoid overpopulation, and would our society/culture continue to progress as it used to? We know very well about how elderly people are “set in their ways”, for example, would that trend mean that if we had immortality in the 17th century that we would still be having arguments about whether or not slavery was ethical today?
Now we are getting into the finer details. I was only focusing on the individual level while taking into consideration what is already known regarding handling accrued trauma.
You mention a valid point when stating we are remarkably resilient. We are. Yet the truly resilient ones, like yourself, are comparatively few when considered how many break under duress.
Have you ever read this book?
It is obviously very outdated but when I first read it allowed me expand on the notion that our mind and body are more intimately connected and, by extension, infer that every single experience makes up a part of what we are, thus I defend that such a long life span would pose such a burden to handle.
I’m no more resilient than average, heck I’m definitely less resilient than average, I think you’re just underestimating just how strong humans are and how capable we are to just get on with our lives.
I haven’t read that book, sorry!
I did a quick bit of searching online and found out some interesting stuff about how people tend to report positive outcomes from trauma more often than negative outcomes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8827649/