Struldbrugs
Sep. 23rd, 2006 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewx[Poll #828123]
[1] I'm not sure if this means all food and drinks (presumably being replaced by food pills or some other SFnal means) or just nice examples of such, though I'm not sure it makes much difference - the question is basically about what higher needs you'd be willing to surrender in order to extend lifespan.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 11:50 am (UTC)sex = sex involving someone else
travel = travel abroad for pleasure, not being housebound or unable to travel within the UK to see friends/family.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 11:55 am (UTC)Things I wouldn't give up are things like books or playing games or programming: if I started giving up things like that then living to 100 would be deathly boring.
"There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward"
Date: 2006-09-23 12:04 pm (UTC)Re: "There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward"
Date: 2006-09-23 01:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 07:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 06:59 pm (UTC)13-26 Youth
26-39 Adult
39-52 Middle Aged
52-65 Mature
65-78 Senior
78-91 Old Age; Elderly
91-104 Survivor
104+ Some error in the documentation, at a guess
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 12:30 pm (UTC)Mind you, it depends on how healthy you will still be at 100. I'd rather lively healthily to 80 than spend the extra 20 years not enjoying life or being able to do much. Although ask me again when I am 80 and see what my answer is then :).
As for when old ages starts, I've put 80 cos I think old age is so much later these days. But it's a very individual thing. Many people at 60 appear much older than others - it has a lot to do with mental attitude, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 02:26 pm (UTC)If you didn't become ill, age physically, yet could continue to learn and enjoy life it would be incredible. Of course there would be lots of new challenges (some 'baggage' we collect in life and it doesn't matter as we will die, but if we're immortal of course that won't be the case!!) but I think it would be amazing.
As an atheist I believe when I die I'm gone, so there is a lot at stake here.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 02:49 pm (UTC)ISWYM. I think maybe the point with Highlander (this is a minimal spoiler, promise!) is that if you're immortal and noone else is, you just keep losing people and it sucks. I think that's a big problem, and my other problem with it is that I think I might get bored ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 02:54 pm (UTC)How would you be bored? You could spend 1,000 years becoming far far more knowledgeable than the entire academic community is now about the Romans (or whatever else tickles your fancy)... you could become expert in many many different fields... our technology and so on would sky rocket accordingly.
It seems like utopia to me.
* factor in of course that one failed relationship has made me decide not to get into any others it affected me that much **
** although maybe that is a good protection policy if I were to live forever?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 03:14 pm (UTC)Scenario: I have an hour of totally free time. What do I do with it? First I spend ten minutes thinking about what to do. Then I, say, settle down to write some fiction. OK, this rocks.
Scenario 2: I have unlimited time to write said fiction. What do I do? Change my mind about what to write.
Maybe I'm too fickle to be immortal. I just know that I'd spend my time trying to do too many things, and I don't really think limitlessness would result in me finishing any of them.
Um, OK, I suppose there's a question of whether there are limitless things to do. I reckon there are, because I could e.g. daydream for ever...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 03:23 pm (UTC)You're right we don't use our time efficiently and if we were given infinite time would we just procrastinate?
If you consider that in terms of efficiency per unit time (i.e. how productively we are using a unit of time*) then there are probably three bands:
1) Entirely unproductive - we dont do anything fun or achieve anything
2) Doing fun stuff that amuses us but doesnt achieve anything for the future
3) Achieving things for the future (learning / building / etc)
1 is clearly bad, we would need to avoid doing that - although I think its a question of training ourselves which would come with age.
3 is clearly good, we are happy when we do stuff. 2 is good but sometimes we look back and think "I spent the whole day playing games when I should have been doing . 2 will become much more ok though because there won't be a need to rush things in as we have (kind of) infinite time to achieve anything.
* based on our own reckoning which is all I think matters
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 04:10 pm (UTC)No, there's a positive side: ever wished you had the time to paint the doorframes properly instead of bodging on a coat of gloss in the one weekend you've got free 'til November?
Take a look at the set in LOTR, the city of Rivendell: everything carved, or decorated, or designed in the simplicity of form that marks a masterpiece - everything the work of a lifetime if you think in human lifetimes.
In time - and the immortals have definitely got time - you will live in a world surrounded by sculpture, painting and architecture at the very peak of artistic perfection; you will have found time to read the greater and lesser works of every literary language and, because there is time to be an author, others will be adding masterworks to the canon, century by fleeting century.
We've been able to feed, clothe and house the population of England with less than a quarter of every man's waking hours since the introduction of factories and four-crop rotation. In a better world, we'd already have Rivendell in every street, unique and beautiful, every life a living work of art.
I am well aware that we haven't, and I know the reasons why: I am certain that effective life-prolonging therapies in this society - Western consumerism - would create a bored overclass of wealthy investors pursuing happiness through consumption until death through boredom or murder by their (mortal) domestics called a welcome end to it all. But I'd want immortality for my own ends and I would achieve them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 05:43 am (UTC)I found this impossible to answer because it depends on what my life expectancy is with food+drink, travel, and sex.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 01:59 pm (UTC)You also have unlimited time in which to spend getting out of fickle habits, though l-)
Or, well, I think there are physical reasons to expect we don't get to survive forever but if you eliminate aging and disease and somehow avoid accidents, suicide, murder, etc you should at least be able to manage billions of years before the nearby part of the universe becomes uninhabitable.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 02:56 pm (UTC)PS. Spoiler? Only slightly. It happens very early on in the film, doesn't it? But not in the first 30 sec.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 03:18 pm (UTC)Hmm, I think the term 'spoiler' needs defining. There should be some standard by which to judge these things. The TV Times has so too many soap spoilers, you would think there would be a body to regulate this. Hmm, spoiler police. Good idea. *goes off to take over world in order to implement said idea*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:22 pm (UTC)Well, like in Highlander, for instance. Wait, isn't this where we came in? :)
Hmm, I think the term 'spoiler' needs defining.
Probably :( Revealing information about a work of fiction that you're intended to only know later, which is likely to have a detremental effect on your enjoyment?
*goes off to take over world in order to implement said idea*
I entertained the idea of a literal grammar police/nazis for some humerous fiction, but it turned out entirely too grim.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 07:23 pm (UTC)In some mythologies, eg Norse, the immortals do age and become gradually less robust. Or was that just the Marvel comics version?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 12:33 pm (UTC)Oh yes, indeed it did - I hadn't thought of that, thanks. It was quite sad really, wasn't it? Moreso with Eccles, I thought , than with Tennant.
Not sure about Norse immortals. I mean, I *think* you're right, but I'm not sure if my impression comes from reliable bits that I've read, or Xena, or something else ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 09:30 pm (UTC)You teach Sindarin? Does it pay well?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 03:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 01:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 05:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 08:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 11:01 am (UTC)What do you want to do with your life? What would count as "useful"? Why couldn't you do any of those things in the future? You do have a say in "what's next" in your life, you know. Scary responsibility though that may be.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:35 pm (UTC)What would count as useful? Increasing the sum total of world happiness; converting people to Christianity and thereby securing them a good afterlife.
Why couldn't I do any of these things in the future? I already do basically everything I have the energy for on the first count. It's hard to know where to start on the second, especially as I have basically been told to sit back and wait for a while.
As far as I can see, unless and until some dramatic change occurs, 'what's next' in my life involves a lot of boring domestic stuff, occasional interesting but ultimately pointless bits where I do what I want to do with my life, and a vaguely nebulous hope that something obvious might come up which would be useful.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:56 pm (UTC)That's something you can do every day, just by doing things for the people you know: not just the obvious Brownie-style "good deeds" but simply doing your best to be a good friend, a good relative, a good employee, etc.
You can only change the world as far as you can reach, but you might be surprised how far that is.
converting people to Christianity
I'm assuming you're thinking of going out and Converting The Heathens, but there's a lot you can do in the realm of personal witness, if that's what you believe and what you want to do. (FWIW, I didn't realise you were a Christian...)
It's hard to know where to start on the second, especially as I have basically been told to sit back and wait for a while.
I don't know what your individual circumstances are here, but I'm sure you're still interacting with other people while you're waiting (I mean, even if you're actually an anchoress locked in a tiny cell, you still seem to have access to LiveJournal). You want to change the world: the people you know are the world, or at least as important a bit of it as any other. "The World" isn't just poor people in foreign countries, or inner-city slum children: it's LiveJournal, and the pub, and your work/studies, and the people you roleplay with, and the people you speak to in shops and services and on buses, and EVERYTHING.
a vaguely nebulous hope that something obvious might come up which would be useful
It's right in front of you. It's the life you're living. I can certainly sympathise with wanting to do more, but you can definitely do something right now. Good luck getting out there and changing the world!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-24 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 10:59 am (UTC)I suspect I stand a chance of living to 100 anyway if I don't do anything stupid, so I would regard it as a bit of a rubbish gamble to give things up now which aren't damaging to my health (so long as I do them in moderation) just for the sake of at most an extra few years.
And to be honest I'd rather live as well as I can while I'm alive than worry about exactly how long I've got.
IMHO old age starts whenever you think it does. Though I am rather tired of people telling me that they feel "so ancient!" when what they mean is "approaching 25". 8-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:13 pm (UTC)