by Centurii-chan
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Every time something uses the ‘life only has meaning because it ends’ trope I want to scream
It's a philosophical point of view and like anything, it's debatable.
Death create an urgency, and we cannot substract ourselves from that.
When we imagine immortality, it is framed within this urgency. You might think : well there is so much I haven't seen. But by being immortal in the litteral sense of the word, at one point, you will have seen everything to not care about it anymore. Then what? You go interstellar in the hope of finding something new in a few millions years?
If I could live a thousand years, I would definitely be interested. But living billions of years with no end in sight? Absolutely not.
Nah, no way. Even for an immortal being, time is limited. You can never watch every movie, listen to every song, or play every game. They're made at a faster rate than you can consume them.
If your dream is to meet Oprah and you're immortal, that doesn't mean you get to meet Oprah. Oprah is busy. You're still going to have to bust ass to become important enough to merit an appointment before she dies of old age. There are still obstacles and limits and timers.
You might not meet Oprah, but you'll probably meet a thousand like her and you will get bored.
I stand by my point that the urgency is created by death and it is extremely hard to separate ourselves from that when we imagine immortality.
The death of your close friends and family will hurt. But after the 1 000 000 death of a close friend, you'll either be crazy by that point from all the grief, or it will be another Tuesday.
The point of grieving is to overcome the feeling of loss. Drag thinks an immortal would get really good at grieving. Really efficient. They'd have moved past their loss, and be ready to love again.
Besides, you don't need friends to be happy. Look at aplatonic people. They say they still enjoy life. That's empirical evidence, we don't need to speculate. If you didn't want friends, you'd get by without them.
I am not sure I get drag's point?
My point is that the loss we suffer and grieve is still framed by our limited existence. In our life, if we are lucky, we have what? 15-20 people we really care about generally that will hit hard the day they die?
Imagine drag had a million of them. At one point, it becomes either extremely heavy to the point of insanity or it becomes the new normal. Even in our limited life, a lot of people come to term with the grievances of death.
Drag is right in the sense that we would become good at grieving. And that is exactly my point.
It would be the same when trying to meet Oprah 1000.0.
When time is virtually infinite, boredom for absolutely everything is bound to happen. And then what? Drag lives a boring life indefinitely. And even with a million happy years, it is still a tiny tiny tiny tiny percentage of billions upon billions of years.
I am still afraid of death biologically (we are animals after all), but I've come to term with death and I wouldn't wish to be immortal.
I appreciate talking with drag, so please continue to do so if you want to continue this conversation.
An immortal doesn't tend to love a million people at the same time.
Drag can imagine loving someone who becomes drag's entire world for 60 years, and then they die. So drag spends the next 200 years wearing black and listening to sad music like Linkin Park. And then drag heals and becomes ready to love again.
Mortals don't get 200 years to grieve. So if they need that much time, you don't get to see the other end of that. But drag believes there is another end. This too shall pass.
Drag is right that we don't love a million individuals at the same.time, but over the course of immortality, it is not that much people.
Does Drag thinks that after 10-12 60 worlds dying, Drag would probably change how relationships are perceived? And this is what I am trying to clumsily convey. All of our thoughts are framed with urgency. But if the urgency isn't there, is it far fetched to think that the frame is bound to change?
I want to say that I understand what Drag is saying, but I am offering a differing point of view. And to be honest, 10 years ago I would have chosen immortality in a heartbeat. Not so much now that I've (mostly) came to term with my mortality and I am much more afraid of immortality than of mortality.
The relationship is still framed with urgency, because you know that one day your partner is going to die. Drag thinks that would make an immortal being love hard and fast.
I get what Drag is saying and I agree with that, but my nuance is that over time, that urgency would disappear. After a thousand heart break, eventually it becomes normality.
Drag thinks that's like saying after eating a thousand meals, food would stop tasting good. Drag has had many thousands of meals throughout drag's life. They're far apart enough that drag is usually hungry by the time the next one comes along. Drag's sense of hunger keeps on returning, day after day, because hunger is a biological function that's designed to work that way. Drag thinks love would keep coming back, again and again, for the same reason.
I go back and rewatch movies or replay games I've forgotten about all the time and that's just like within the last few years. The universe will have plenty of repeatability.
I wanna jump into a black hole and then ride it out when it turns into a white hole. But I'd need to be both immortal and invulnerable for that.
I would probably do that eventually when the heat death of the universe is abound, at least it would be different and a chance at something new.
Or this is how Lovecraftian creatures are born, and I welcome it.
Worse case scenario you get Isekai which for an immortal would probably be kinda nice.