Should you?

The idea of immortality is transcendental, ingrained in some way into every human. It is evidently vital to our survival that our ego craves permanence. This drive is why we cautiously guard our lives, but also why we sacrifice for others; while personal immortality is impossible, there is an understanding of the immortality of the species that is critical.

In the current era of scientific advancement, aided by the creation of mechanical cognition, we are closer than ever to learning the secrets of biological aging. As it turns out, slowing or reversing biological aging is a scientific possibility. There is incredible demand, worth trillions of dollars, to make such a thing a reality, not only to satisfy the vanity of the individual but also to reduce the societal cost of senility. These factors should make a discovery inevitable.

Let’s imagine that such a breakthrough happens in the next 30 years, and that you are recruited for the late-stage trials of a drug that’s early trials showed tremendous success in halting the signs of biological aging.

Do you take the pill?

Your instinct is to perhaps say yes. Reasonable. This is a desire, a craving, fundamental to your being. Perhaps you envision how many books you can read, or how you could travel the world for the next thousand years. The power is immense.

You pause for a moment, the pill resting in your palm. You stare into it, beyond it, and see something.

You see the grief of saying goodbye to your friends and family, some of whom cannot afford the luxury pill, as they age past you and fade away.

Time doesn’t feel the same anymore, and decades blink past like hours of the day. You make new friends, you laugh and have fun, but when you disclose your immortality you sometimes see a flash of discomfort on their face. Mortal people hesitate–perhaps subconsciously– to form deep connections with you. It is difficult to engage romantically with a person who can’t come with you.

You feel as if you are in a glass cage in Time Square; occasionally you make eye contact amid the bustle only to lose them to the current. You are alone.

You suffer from unbearable ennui. In your mortal life you had occasional blue days, but now the purpose of life has become almost entirely extinguished. You once heard a ticking timer spurring you to seize the day. Now the sun rises, and it rises, and it rises.

And yet you hang on.

And you hang on for a thousand years, meeting new best friends every 20 years. Some are amazed by you; for the past five centuries you have been an international consultant, negotiating peace between countries. You have become wise over time; you have learned and actually lived much of history, you are polite and charismatic to strangers, and have gained excellent perspective in how to navigate everyday problems.

Nevertheless, when you meet a person your biological senior, you get a sense that they know something you can’t grasp—that their perspective is beyond what you can understand. There is a level of humility, a trait you have come to revere, that has become unachievable to you.

And another thousand years passes, and the species has moved on from where it once was. It is a common misconception that humans are beyond evolutionary pressure. Instead, the sheer number and diversity of potential mates available to modern people may be accelerating natural selection. You notice that within a dozen generations you are viewed as physically, mentally, and most importantly, aesthetically inferior. Despite your incredible level of maturity, there are biases in the hardwiring of your ancient brain that make you more prone to brutish and uncivil behavior compared to your contemporaries. Future humans have no purpose for you, a relic of a bygone era, except as an object of curious fascination.

Soon after, technology develops to allow a human consciousness to be uploaded to a mechanical system. You are permitted to be included in the project because of your historical experience, yet you see more tangibly now the danger of the choice.

The human mind is not meant to live in a computer, you protest. The desire to extend your lifespan is a trap. You live exactly as long as you are supposed to, any more would be an aberration that comes at a cost, and this cost is inconceivable to us now.

This vision of yours doesn’t even take into account the amount of social chaos (the resentment, frustration, and envy) that would arise if there were a class of society that exclusivly had access to this pill.

The hunger for immortality is like that for fat, salt, and sugar. A thousand years ago a person would wish for a mountain of these substances, and yet they would surely destroy themselves with it in short order. People today live with such mountains and do the same.

There may be some who, after hearing all of this, may think that they could handle this burden. Such an individual, if possible at all, would have to be more intrepid, noble, and sacrificial than any hero in our history. In every sense this person would have to be inhuman, and that would be their fate either way.

Despite the temptation, being finite is fundamental to our existence– and thats okay. In fact, it’s not only okay; it’s beautiful. To rebuke this would be cancerous to society and degrading to the individual. Nothing in nature is designed to be infinite, and instead resilience arises from adaptability. Nature favors the dynamic over the static.

Humans sometimes have an arrogant idea of the limitlessness of our consciousness. There is a false conception that, given enough time, a human brain can learn enough to ascend to godliness. While the capacity of our brains is magnitudes beyond what we understand currently, it is still bounded by the environment that has created it. We are limited by a hardware that filters our perception of the universe into familiar frameworks, one of which is a finite life. Changing this would create catastrophic psychic trauma in our software. A human mind is only equipped for a human life (a problem that will bias our understanding of artificial intelligence). If, or when, our species is meant to have individual immortality, it will arise out of the fabric of our being not spring from our ambition.

Consider The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known stories, dating back perhaps 5,000 years. Gilgamesh, who is two-thirds god, rules the city-state of Uruk with incredible strength but also cruelty. In one story he is shaken by the death of a close friend, becomes consumed with his own mortality, and grows terrified of dying .

He journeys to find a mythical sage who had been granted immortality by the gods for surviving a great flood. The sage explains that immortality is reserved for the gods, but challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for seven days to prove that he is worthy of such a privilege. Gilgamesh fails this trial. The sage’s wife then offers Gilgamesh a herb to restore his youth, but a serpent steals it away symbolizing the inevitability of aging and death.

Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, realizing that immortality lies not in an endless life, but in the enduring legacy of one’s deeds. The wisdom of ancient texts continues to astonish.

I aspire to be healthy, functional, and to live a very long, happy life. I look forward to each phase of life, eager for the different joys and perspectives they may bring. Every day, I do what I can to live as long as possible. But in the end, after a lifetime of playing with my beloved friends and family, I also want to die. I would not have it any other way.

It is the finitude that makes it all precious. Embrace it.