Have you considered getting rid of death?
No person who wishes to continue living should have to die, ever.
Why do we humans tolerate living under the threat of death?
Our species ought to eliminate the myriad causes of death and bring about societal changes such that immortality becomes available to any who desire it!
Difficulty
Immortality, or, that which is achieved after elimination of all possible causes of death, is difficult to achieve: there are so many causes of death…
Given that some causes of death are easier to eliminate than others or have already been eliminated (thank you vaccines, modern medicine, improvements in hygiene & sanitation, and so much more), I think that increasing the healthspan of a human being is possible and could eventually approach the limit of immortality (heat death of the universe is a challenge, that’s what I mean by ‘limit’).
Time
I believe that if enough people & money are directed towards eliminating causes of death (figuring out cause prioritization is important, but not germane to this post), we as a species can achieve concrete meaningful increases to our possible healthspan within a few decades or less. The longer we (collectively, us humans) wait to do this, the more people die and the more you & I age, so let’s not wait. Let’s go!
What’s next?
I am excited to discuss the benefits of being immortal and/or having a very long healthspan; I intend to seriously and charitably debate the objections to such. I’ve listed a few of the topics I would like to cover in future posts below. I welcome suggestions about other possible topics, comment away!
A by no means exhaustive list of how one would benefit from immortality:
Exist ~forever, ~never cease existing. [~ implies that forever might just mean until heat death of the universe, not infinity, necessarily]
Continue to experience the world and deepen relationships with others for however long you want.
Become a world-class expert in multiple disciplines and enable greater interdisciplinary, innovative work to be done.
You don't have to worry about yourself or others dying and being lost forever.
You get to live and watch humanity grow & develop over much longer timespans, experience greater change than ever before.
You have time to travel to every part of the world, other planets, other solar systems, etc.
You could visit another galaxy and come back to Earth and the people you know and love would still be alive.
We could make other animals immortal too, you wouldn't have to experience the trauma of losing a pet every X years [depending on species] like you have to now.
[Your description of immortality's benefits here]
Objections to the idea of immortal humans that people have brought up when I discussed the topic with them (n=50 or so discussions):
Overpopulation
Very difficult or novel political, communications, organizational, and other problems to solve.
"...but I don't want to be immortal and watch all my friends and family die."
Resource scarcity
"...but longer life means continuing to suffer like we do now, just longer."
"...but what about immortal dictators or bad leaders?"
"...but what about power structures and politics where the oldest rule everything, absolutely or otherwise (high influence)?"
"Bad people living forever seems bad."
Immortality goes against x faith / religion ("it's against my beliefs" kind of statements).
"You can't get around the heat death of the universe so what's the point?"
"Living forever seems way too long, maybe a few hundred years is okay..."
"Are you ill / a person who has lost their mind?" [Interestingly, this was by far the rarest reaction despite discussing this topic with strangers in addition to people who know me.]
"meh that's too big a problem to try to tackle"
"There's no way our species could get its act together to do something like that."
"You're not a scientist, who are you to talk about this? What are your credentials?"
"...but like...how would that even work? If I'm 150 years old and 'feel all those years', that's not a good quality of life, eww."
Rich & powerful people get immortality first and/or never let others get immortality.
"lol there's no way I'll ever be able to afford that, jeez."
"...but someone might be forced to live forever even if they don't want to."
Be well!
Willa