Jump to content

Should Immortals Have to Live on another Planet?


Weeping Sore

Recommended Posts

Assuming technological/medical remedies to aging are eventually developed, should those who manage to avail themselves of immortality (barring accident or violence) go to a separate planet so as not to exacerbate tensions with the Samsarans*?

*those still trapped in the cycle of birth and death

Also, should the immortals have to learn Elvish and get pointy ear surgery?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's the obvious impact on population growth when you eliminate death from natural causes. The couple with two kids is no longer a replacement model because the parents don't die. Even having one child puts you on an exponential population growth curve.

So you either ban immortals from having kids, or the kids have to fight the parents to the death upon reaching a certain age, preferably dressed in loincloths and using some kind of pole-arm.

Having them/ (us?) on another planet is a way to avoid having to deal with that set of population/resource issues. But maybe we could still get the death matches on Terran pay-per-view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I have something to say! It's better to burn out than to fade away!

My my, hey hey. 

As much as I love Neil Young, I think Queen would have been more adequate for this.

Afterall there can be only one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Weeping Sore said:

Assuming technological/medical remedies to aging are eventually developed, should those who manage to avail themselves of immortality (barring accident or violence) go to a separate planet so as not to exacerbate tensions with the Samsarans*?

*those still trapped in the cycle of birth and death

Also, should the immortals have to learn Elvish and get pointy ear surgery?

 

Tolkien already had all this figured out, didn't he?  I mean, just make the price of immortality be that reproduction becomes much, much more difficult and the over-population issue is addressed.  Then just find some other planet to call Valinor and go from there.  And, yes, pointy ears and speaking Elvish are absolute musts!;) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you said it, the rich don't mix with the poor, they will have their planet and make a galactic size defences around it to prevent anyone to steal their secret to immortality and they will say that they are the gods of the unvierse and then start shooting arrows like elves

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Weeping Sore said:

Assuming technological/medical remedies to aging are eventually developed, should those who manage to avail themselves of immortality (barring accident or violence) go to a separate planet so as not to exacerbate tensions with the Samsarans*?

*those still trapped in the cycle of birth and death

Also, should the immortals have to learn Elvish and get pointy ear surgery?

 

No, immortals should not be sent to another planet. 

First of all, you mention nothing of space travelling technologies that would allow the immortals to safely travel and then colonize another planet. If such technologies have not evolved in parallel with the medical wonders of this future, then space travel alone can be a death sentence even to these immortals.

Second, I believe immortals should become the caretakers of this planet. Call them overlords, gods, or whatever else, but while their primary thrive as living beings to procreate may become a low priority, it could be replaced by the thrive to live in a paradise. If idiots today don't care about ensuring their descendants' future of living in a healthy environment, maybe immortals would care that at least they should live in a good environment. Of course, this could lead to the immortals securing a little piece of the world just for them, and using all of the planet's resources to maintain and protect this little piece, while the rest of the world withers away. But we gotta be optimistic about these things. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, matt b said:

According to Joseph Smith, all immortals DO get their own planet. No alcohol or caffeine allowed, though.

That's the shitty kind of immortality where you have to die first. I'll pass.

31 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Second, I believe immortals should become the caretakers of this planet. Call them overlords, gods, or whatever else, but while their primary thrive as living beings to procreate may become a low priority, it could be replaced by the thrive to live in a paradise. If idiots today don't care about ensuring their descendants' future of living in a healthy environment, maybe immortals would care that at least they should live in a good environment. Of course, this could lead to the immortals securing a little piece of the world just for them, and using all of the planet's resources to maintain and protect this little piece, while the rest of the world withers away. But we gotta be optimistic about these things. 

We're assuming life-extending therapies would only be available to the elites at first, but it could trickle down and become available to the masses over time. In which case you have a real demographic singularity if people keep having babies. So drastic population control would be needed.

A saving grace is this transformation wouldn't happen overnight, where some guy in his garage cooks up an immortality pill. Life extension is likely to happen with piecemeal breakthroughs that keep pushing the "finish line" further away. And then each time people live longer there will likely be heretofore unknown ailments that show up on a formerly irrelevant timeline, like a disorder whose onset comes at age 180 or 300. I think the first time you have a documented case of a person reaching say 140 or 150, more people will discard their psychological attachment to the inevitability of death.

I agree with you that people are more likely to preserve things that they expect to use/enjoy themselves rather than save for their descendants. That is, sustainability becomes a necessary part of enlightened selfishness if you're going to still be around in 1000 years.

At the same time I think we're still going to eventually explore and colonize other planets unless this outward-looking expansionist instinct is decisively quashed somehow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...