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How will you meet your own end? Are you ready to go?
One thing is to peruse the concept on the menu and feel somewhat okay with it in theory, but when it's actually served to you, how will you really feel then? The permanent end of your body, mind, memories, and whatever help you give others? Perhaps your soul too, however you define it. Are you ready to give it all up?
As the great Schopenhauer wrote, from a purely empirical standpoint our existence after death appears to be identical to our existence before being born. Billions of years have passed during which none of us existed. Yet we never question or bemoan the fact that we did not exist in the past, only that we will no longer exist in the future. The only difference between these two periods is this current short intermezzo, and again from an empirical standpoint that barely amounts to a difference at all. I think this strongly suggests that we're overly fearful of death due to some quirk of biological psychology rather than rational reasons; and this suggests that we should temper our fear.
The fact that death causes an entire treasury of memory and a whole Weltanschauung, a whole individuality, to perish in an instant is indeed painful to ponder. But if you've left parts of that individuality behind in writing and deeds then it's not wholly gone; the best parts of us can live on for quite a while. And beyond this loss of individuality, I don't think death stings nearly as bad as one might think.
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I'll die when I die. What's there in it ?
Maybe it's because I was raised in India. When everyone around you believes in rebirth, there is a certain societal comfort with death. I'd rather not die of a prolonged sickness. The suffering in the lead up to death sounds horrible, but the dying itself seems like someone else's problem. I am gone, its those who remain who will have to deal with it.
I'll extend an olive branch. As long as voting rights are limited to those aged 20-70, I'm fine with increasing lifespans.
What's your answer to this question? If you deeply imagine your own end. Do you personally believe in rebirth? What part in/of you gets passed on after death?
I don't need an olve branch. I don't have a dog in the longevity science debate. I'm just hijacking the thread with questions I think are very important to ponder, personally.
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Will people outside that age range also not have to pay taxes, and not get punished if they commit crimes?
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Ready or not, there's no way around it. No matter how horrible death may be; immortality remains fiction, longevity is possible only in the most modest terms, and the people saying otherwise are running on massive amounts of wishful thinking. We're all going to die, and chances are that nobody likes it, just like it's always been.
So, just taking on a stoic persona? That's your solution to dealing with life's biggest problem?
There is no solution for that particular problem.
You can't attain immortality of the body, but how you meet the end and how it's subjectively experienced can definitely be worked on.
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