Video of the Week: Are Humans Becoming Immortal? (by Alltime Conspiracies)

The video above raises an interesting question. Exploring many ways technology and medical research has developed and may develop into in the coming years, and the process is apparently speeding up so we might be seeing some significant changes in the near future.

As well as developing technology, we’re also focusing on making medicine undefeatable. The day we announce that we’ve found the cure for all major diseases plus more would be a day to celebrate forever. If we were able to successfully eliminate all diseases, us humans would live longer by a considerable amount. We’re already aware that we’ve pushed the age limit further away with modern medicine that takes the forms of pills and injections. How long will a single human being be able to live if they can take certain medicines to keep their body working?

Jeanne Calment holds the Guinness World Record for holding the longest confirmed lifespan at 122 years, 164 days. She was born on 21 Februrary 1875 and passed away of natural causes on 4^th August 1997. During her extraordinary life, she met Vincent Van Gough at the age of thirteen and saw the Eiffel Tower being built. The world has changed so much around her during her long life. She must have seen so much. Her incredible longevity is currently being studied for scientific research.

Now imagine increasing that age by 50+ years. What if, sometime in the future, due to modern medicine and further studies, people were living to 172 on average, or longer. Imagine if someone’s lifespan had been the same time as it took America to form and onto present day. It does make me wonder just how many changes would that person would have seen during their long lifetime. Maybe they will see the very first humans leaving the solar system, leaving the galaxy, maybe the release of Half-Life 3.

We are pouring so much time and effort into creating and developing an extraordinary array of modern medicines that maybe we will figure out how to expand our lives in a shorter amount of time than expected. We might just accidentally stumble upon the answer in a couple of years and after making it commercially acceptable, allow everyone to live for an astonishing amount of time.

And of course, what would happen if we were able to live forever? What if we were able to develop technology that kept our bodies working indefinitely, and healed us quickly if we were damaged in some way?

If we woke up one day and the news announced that there was a pile that you could take that stops the aging process altogether and allows you to live forever, would you take that pill? How would it feel knowing that you will see the end of this millennium, and the next, and the next? Excited? Nervous? Scared? All of the above? And why? How much information would you learn over our extraordinary long lifespan?

I pose all the questions because there is one aspect about immortality that has been heavily suggested via various sources and that it’s a curse. Living forever, being immortal is a curse. Seeing so many people being born and dying all around you and you keep moving forwards, feeling disconnected from the world as it turns and turns normally. Except it doesn’t have to escalate so quickly and into a dark corner, because this pill is mainstream and so anyone who can will go after it and take it. Hundreds of people, thousands of people, possibly millions of people becoming immortal over a short period of time. The human race has finally defeated that one certain fact: Death.

With everyone living forever, what would happen? Will we have also developed technology to increase the size of our memories, because we can only store so much. We can document everything we do: Write it down, store it on hard drives, keep every bit of information alive as possible. So we can forget things with our normal sized memories without worry because we can just go back and relearn it all over again. With technology increasingly and rapidly growing more and more advanced, the amount of information any one individual will be able to store in later years will be incredible compared to today’s capabilities. But, technology will eventually ware out, so all we would have to do is transfer it when necessary, therefore never letting anything become lost. Sounds simple – right?

Various depictions of immortality in fiction has shown us that it is a curse in some, but highly sort after in others. Those that depict it as a curse states that there are multiple versions of immortality, whereas those that show characters searching for it either shows them not succeeding, or ending up alone in some deserted place faraway from any civilisation – hammering down the cursed nature of immortality even further. The best depiction of immortality is Torchwood series 4. Everyone suddenly cannot die, but that doesn’t stop them from being injured, and if they are mortally injured to the point where they would die, they don’t and they just have to suffer being unable to move, or otherwise. If we are truly going to be immortal, we will have to consider every possible option so that it doesn’t become a curse.

Will humans in the future seek for a cure for immortality to make the human race mortal? That almost sounds like an apocalyptic future, which we may see because we would have lived beyond our normal life expectancy.

I’ve searched for some answers, but all I’ve found so far is what we already know. I seem that the impression I’ve been given is that we are searching for these answers, but yet haven’t taken into consideration the consequences that may or will stem from our actions. For all I know the human race may be bettered, and I’m worrying about nothing, however it would be nice to not worry now rather than later. The future is unpredictable, we can prepare for it as much as we possibly can, but we still have no clue what will actually happen, so I’m probably worrying about something that won’t happen at all. Whatever happens, I hope it’s something good.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)