WHO ON EARTH WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?
(Comments: tony.papard@btinternet.com)
Some scientists and medical experts say it should be possible to slow down or halt the aging process to enable people to live, if not forever, to greatly increased ages. I read recently we could all eventually be living for several thousand years. Even if this were medically possible, is it practical or even desirable? I think not.
Just think of the implications. First of all, of course, what quality of life would we have? We wouldn't want to be sitting in an old people's home drawing our pension for hundreds or even thousands of years, and it wouldn't be economically possible to do so. Presumably, if the aging process has been halted or slowed down, we will be expected to work for most of our lives, as now. Work for 5,000 years (perhaps in the same job), and get a gold watch at retirement? The prospect would fill most people with dread. Assuming we kept most of our faculties, and our looks, and were able to be active and have children, if we wished, for most of our lives, how could the world cope with the enormous growth in population? Of course it couldn't. How many children would a 5,000 year old heterosexual man or woman have in their lifetime? Multiply that by the world population of 5,000 year olds and you see what utter nonsense these so-called 'scientists' talk. But to be fair, they are only referring to theoretical possibilities, not the practical considerations, such as where do we house and how do we feed a population which continues to raise families for thousands of years. Even extending life for a few years, brings enough problems. I would say once life expectancy is increased worldwide to about 100, that is quite long enough and we should stop there.
On the personal level, what are the implications of living to a great age? Assuming one keeps active and one's faculties, is it any fun living much more than 100 years? Surely we would all become bored? Even approaching 61 I find the modern world is nothing like the one I grew up in. Nearly all the ideals and values my generation held dear have gone, and the pace of new technology means it is impossible for us older people to keep up with it all. I lost my partner over 14 years ago, and although I was only 46 when he died, I have been on my own ever since. The thought of continuing on my own with just his memory for another 50 years, let alone hundreds or thousands of years, appals me, and no, I don't want to shack up with another 61, 100 or, for that matter, 5,000 year old thank you very much. I loved my partner very much, and nobody could ever replace him. We shared a lifetime (21 years ) and grew older together, that was the secret. I have no desire whatsoever to form a partnership with someone of my advanced age, because we haven't grown old together. So if we all live longer, and our partner dies of an illness or due to an accident or some other misfortune, we are doomed to either a long life of loneliness with just our memories, or finding another partner to share the years stretching endlessly ahead of us. No prospect of a happy reunion with our deceased partners in a better place; when we finally got there we'd have forgotten them! There'd be a lot more suicides, that's for sure!
But of course the longer we live, the more likely we ourselves are to suffer a violent death. It is a virtual certainty, if we all were able to live for hundreds of years, that very few of us would die peacefully in our beds during our sleep. The chances are, sooner or later, we'd be in the wrong place at the wrong time and be shot, stabbed, blown up by a bomb or run over by a bus. Even the best scientists and doctors couldn't put together and revive a person who's been blown into a thousand little pieces by an explosion.
'Oh, but you can be cloned' say some silly people, who talk of cloning loved ones and pets so if something nasty happens to them, they have another one they can take out of cold storage. A 'clone' is just a person or animal which bears similar physical characteristics to the original, it is not the same person or the same animal. Just as identical twins are two separate individuals, so each clone of a living person would be a separate individual with separate life histories, memories and personalities.
This brings us on to the subject of 'life after death' because it is very relevant here. Today it is not only religious people who believe in this concept; more and more doctors and scientists are coming round to the belief, based on evidence of near-death experiences, etc., that there is an eternal 'conscious self', which religious people call a soul or spirit, which survives death of the physical body. (Check my article on this Website: Life after Death).
Even today, if we keep people alive artificially in comas or a vegetative state for years (or if we use cryogenics to freeze their dying bodies in cold storage for years hoping to revive them later), this traps this eternal self or spirit in a kind of limbo and prevents it moving on to the alternative dimension, parallel universe or 'higher spiritual plane' where it is meant to go after death. There comes a time when we must all 'let go', when our time on Earth is thru.
I believe, and so do increasing numbers of others who have examined the evidence, that we DO all live forever. Our conscious self is eternal, and after we die we move on to another universe or spiritual plane. But most of us also eventually reincarnate into other lives on Earth or similar planets, because we have to work thru our karma and learn lessons before we can move on permanently to another universe/higher spiritual plane. The advantages of being reincarnated many times in 5,000 years, rather than living one life for 5,000, are enormous. We are re-born anew, with all the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, in different circumstances, different environments, surrounded by different people, we look different, and we experience all sorts of different things. You will probably live as a man, a woman, a black person, a white person, in poverty, extremely rich, as heterosexual, as homosexual, as an atheist, a Jew, a Moslem, a Hindu - all sorts of life experiences by the time you have ended your long cycle of lives on this planet. By increasing our life-span much beyond 100 years we are interfering with this natural karmic process. Dismiss this as nonsense if you like, but this is what increasing numbers of people in the world believe, and much of it is based on evidence of survival and reincarnation.
Even if you don't believe there is life after death, however, do you want to live for hundreds of years, knowing it is almost certain that sooner or later you will meet a very sticky and nasty end? Nobody would die a peaceful death - we would all eventually die violently if the age process were halted or slowed down, and all illnesses cured, so we could live hundreds of years. We'd also have to stop procreating and increasing the world population if we were going to live this long, so most of us would have to live very long lives without raising families. Laws would have to be introduced to compel people to be sterilized at a very early age to stop them increasing the world population, and only a few privileged individuals would be allowed to have children to replace those of us who die violent deaths due to accidents, crime, war or terrorism every year.
The whole idea is nonsense, and scientists and the medical profession should divert their energies to more useful fields of research, such as making our current life-spans more healthy for everyone.