Poll: Would you choose to be immortal?

this is a funny question since i just watched pirates of the carribean.

yes.

i immediately think of the old fable, the one i'm remembering is greek (i think), about the man who chose to be immortal. he didn't specify that he wanted to remain young so he became old, and withered, but wouldn't die. eventually he becomes a grasshopper. anyways

it's a hard question, or should be, because there are a number of unresolved questions. do you become old or do you keep the same age? can you become sick with a debilitating illness like AIDS? can you choose to die at some point, or are you immortal forever? are you indestructible? what would people do when they realized you were immortal? i'm sure there are people in the religious right who would worship you, some who would have a lifetime vendetta on you. can someone encase your legs in concrete and leave you imprisoned forever?

and all of this dodges the real question: what happens when you find the love of your life and she's not immortal?

i think the only reasonable answer (for me, given the unqualified question as posed) is vehemently no.

I watched Highlander (the series) today so I want to know if I get to cut off heads if I'm immortal.

Oooh, will there also be quickenings?�� Mmmm quickenings....

I love Forever Knight and Angel. Vampires that feel guilty about their sins and want to repay society. Can't wait for seasons 2 and 3 of FK to come out on DVD.

I thought I was the only one that watched Forever Knight. I loved that show. It is such a forerunner of Angel. The star was also in the short lived series Dracula playing a somewhat comic vampire and he played an immortal with multiple personalities on Highlander. I want him to be on Angel next.

FK is my favorite show ever. I cried so bad with the final two episodes. Just the idea of how Nick would have LaCroix kill him because of how he was so devistated about accidently killing Natalie and refusing to bring her across was so sad. And touching. And sad. The same with Vachon wanting Tracy to kill him. That also chokes me up.

what fool answered yes to that? ever heard of over-population?

*head explodes*

realistically speaking, and i know i'm stretching it here, but it would take all of the fun out of being immortal if everyone else was. (not to mention that you wouldn't have room to breathe.) and i'm sure a lot of people would wish they could die.

personally, i would only want to be immortal if few people were, my body couldn't be damaged (or at least healed very quickly and and damage wasn't permanent) and if i could stop aging at 25. it seems a good age to stop getting old. =)

Actually, it was me. I looked at this question�from a sort of "in an ideal world" point of view. In said world, overpopulation is not a problem. The human population is sustainable and don't breed very often. Maybe it stems from my geeky desire to be an elf.

this is, of course, if you're in a fantasy realm where elves are immortal. lots of the dnd realms, forgotten realms and dragonlance come immediately to mind, don't have immortal elves. the krondor series by feist, the elves in anthony's xanth series... actually, the only series that immediately comes to mind *with* immortal elves is tolkien's LoTR.

this of course probably says far more about my reading habits than it does about the realm of elf immortality in fantasy.

i've always personally envisioned elves in the forgotten realms sense. living longest of the mortal characters, but still in the order of <1000 years. having a 80 year old elf being a "young" character, stuff like that. and the whole different sub-races of elves, sun and moon elves, and the lovely lovely dark elves (a.k.a. the drow)... such a wonderful concept. anyways, i digress ;)

Now I'm going to show my Tolkien Nerd side. Elves did not consider themselves immortal. Yes they are reborn in their children and don't die in that sense but they only live as long as Arda. When the world ends they die. They actually worried about this. You only get this reading History of Middle Earth series. Not anything published in Tolkien's life.

But if the world ends and you DON'T die, where would you go?

Why on earth would I want to be stuck on a planet we are doing our best to destroy? Besides, I have somewhere better in mind to go when I die, but I have to die to get there.

Good luck to you!

... I am immortal, you insensitive clod!

I wouldn't mind a few extra years, an extended life, so long as it was all stretched out, not that I'd become old and incapacitated but keep living on in pain. that would suck.

same goes for immortal. it'd be cool to get to do all the stuff I want to do, but once I'd done everything? OR would I be a young-ish immortal?

I'd hate to watch all the people I know and love age and die, age and die, over and over, I'd probably retreat from relationships.

Plus, I work better under some pressure ;D

here are the things I want to do. here is the approximate time frame I have to do them all in.... GO!

I actually chose the wishy-washy answer for once. I would gladly choose to be immortal, but only as long as it only applied to natural causes and as long as it didn't mean getting "old".

I have a fear of eternity for some reason. I can't tell you why, I guess that besically I think there ought to be an end to all things one way or another and would rather not face a form of existence when time just goes on and on and on and nothing ends.

And every now and then, something makes me at once think of a quote I have no reason for knowing:
�I cannot help it; in spite of myself, infinity torments me.� � Alfred de Musset

Oddly, I said yes. The reason I think this is odd, is that I'm absolutely certain that if I'd been asked this a year or two ago, i would have said "no" with absolutely no hesitation at all. Must be my age catching up with me. I feel panicked... like I don't have enough time for everything before my body breaks down.

so many things i want to do will not be possible in my lifetime.

i want to go to mars.� as a civilian.� as a tourist.�
i want to enter space in a ship that will allow me to move around weightless and not cost me an entire life's worth of savings.
i want to see the human race discover and attempt to deal with another intelligent life form that is not from this planet.
i want to hear a band that rocks my socks more than dream theater does.� if that's possible.
i want to sing in acappella groups forever.
i want to experience events that happen, and then remember them to share with future generations so that they retain the human experience element rather than being merely something that exists in a textbook.
i want to watch sadly as our planet is slowly destroyed by our own actions.
i want to celebrate when the human race figures out how to save the planet we nearly destroyed.
i want to live on another planet for a period of time.
i want to be able to say that i can always call bellevue - on earth - my home, no matter where i happen to travel to.
i want to be able to start sentences with "back in my day" and not have the voice of an ancient man.
i want to be able to continue to learn, see new technologies get developed, learn to use them, and not fall behind just because kids keep getting smarter and smarter.

hmm.� that answer was longer than i wanted it to be.� but ... yeah.� (:� i really do want to live forever without the human body shut-down associated with old age...

i think i read too much sci-fi/fantasy. d:

�-= george =-

So has anyone else thought about living forever being pretty much part of the conventional view of heaven?

i thought about that, actually.� i'm rather a fan of the conventional view of heaven for all practical purposes, but i have a hard time letting go of my mortal coil, as it is.� i would imagine that cares of the earthly world would disappear in the event of a heavently existance and that those things that i now wish i could see or do would become irrelevent.� that, naturally, would be then.� this, however, is now. (:� for as long as�i breathe in air and walk with my two feet on the earth, i am reluctant to give up reality as i see it now...

�-= george =-

Yes. Isn't that the #1 marketing point of most religions? All the various christian varieties, for instance, promise the proverbial "pie in the sky when you die," at least if you conform to the rules before you shuffle off the mortal coil.
I'd like to know what you are driving at.

I think he was wondering if anyone has thought of that response in response to this quiz.

Yes, but it looks so obvious, at least to me, that i was wondering what else Gordon might be alluding to, you know, something, erm, less obvious, yet enlightening.

*shrug*

it's not something that occured to me, and it doesn't appear that anyone else had posted about it.

Promoting discussion isn't a worthwhile post?

Promoting discussion is very much a worthwhile post, especially here. I was just puzzled as to what he was alluding to beyond what seemed so obvious to me. *shrug*