 "Photo: Matt Andrew/ The Quad News")
Chances are you are not going to live until the year 3000 (unless of course, you’re the Jonas Brothers, because they’ve been there and have a song about it).
But, what if you could?
Never mind the year 3000. What if you could live forever? What if you could be immortal?
Think Edward Cullen, minus the vampire part. Hypothetically, you wouldn’t need to sleep or eat. Heck, you could even convince all your friends and family to do it with you. You would have an unlimited supply of a college student’s most limited amenity (besides money): time.
You would have plenty of time for traveling, partying, relaxing, exploring and learning. If you can name it you can experience it. You could literally accomplish everything you ever wanted to do in this world; all the things you normally push aside, since time is normally so limited in this short, but beautiful life. Sounds good, right?
The words “human” and “immortality” don’t have to be held in opposition. At first glance, the idea of human immortality may not be all that farfetched. We are already taking steps toward lengthening the human life span and slowing the aging process. Although that doesn’t necessarily imply immortality, I am fascinated with the possibility that it could.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a British biomedical gerontologist, as well as the Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of a nonprofit organization called the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Foundation. According to its Web site, SENS “works to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to regenerative medicine solutions to the disabilities and diseases of aging.” As a relatively new organization founded in March 2009, SENS signifies the “potential to extend healthy lifespan without limit,” and also stands for de Grey’s comprehensive plan to “repair” aging. Grey’s plan breaks down the problem of aging into seven classes of damage, including meticulous approaches to addressing each one.
In an article called “Bootstrapping Our Way to an Ageless Future,” Dr. de Grey indicates that based on his plan, he expects many people alive today to be able to live to 1,000 years of age. That’s right, he said today.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the expectation of life at birth in 2006 for all males and females combined was 77.7 years. The Census Bureau projects a life expectancy of 78.3 years this year, 78.9 years in 2015 and 79.5 years in 2020.
Dr. de Grey’s approach is scientific and perhaps more probable than most approaches out there, but I think a jump from a current human lifespan of 78.3 years to 1,000 is quite a large leap within our own lifetime.
I’m not looking to dismiss anyone’s research. I merely want to present that there are theories which project the elongation of our lives as a real prospect. Regardless of the possibility or probability of a longer human lifetime, I think the more important question is not whether this is even possible, but rather is this something we would want.
I was introduced to the immortality question in my philosophy class this semester. In fact, my classmates and I were put on the spot and asked to answer it. It’s a discussion-based class and we sit in a circle every week. Each class begins with a thought-provoking question such as this one.
I’m the kind of person who needs to think before I open my mouth. I need time to collect my thoughts. Depending on which side of the room my professor starts, my placement usually gives me plenty of time to be pensive, but on this day, I sat in a different spot, only a couple of people away from where my professor chose to begin. We go around the room answering the question each week as if we’re passing a hot potato. In my defense, I didn’t have much time to formulate a genius response.
I said that I would love the opportunity to be immortal as long as my loved ones could do it with me. I didn’t want to be immortal and alone in this hypothetical world my professor was offering us. As a senior faced with graduation and the “real” world in a matter of months, it seemed ideal, almost like freezing time – and I naively accepted it in all its hypothetical glory.
For that split-second, I felt like I would have to be crazy to not want the opportunity to live infinitely. As we continued around the room, some of my classmates who had more time to think started to make me realize I was too hasty.
This is not to say I was the only one who accepted my professor’s hypothetical offering. The class was fairly split, but the time I’ve had to think about this question since that day has only made me more certain that I would not want to live forever. I wish I could have retracted my statement.
I suppose what attracted me to the idea of immortality was more than the chance to spend infinite time doing things I know I would have never gotten the chance to do in a single lifetime. I wanted the opportunity to see technology’s advances. I wanted to know what the world would be like in 10,000 years.
On the other hand, I couldn’t understand why my other classmates were taking the question so seriously. They were presenting logical predictions in the event that immortality or a longer life span could actually occur, such as overpopulation or limited resources to sustain life. Even the more simplistic answers, like those who said they would get bored, seemed more profound than my silly response.
But what really upset me was the same thing that attracted me to the whole idea in the first place. Immortality means never-ending and I did not consider what comes along with that.
Immortality would mean that unless human intelligence advances far enough to prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife, to which I suppose my immortal self would eventually be privy, I would never be able to know what happens after death. Furthermore, even if there was some way my immortal self could learn about the afterlife while still living, I would never be able to experience it. That particularly disturbed me.
Regardless of what you believe about what happens to us after we die, I think we can all agree that we are curious to know. Quite frankly, even if I could live forever, I would not be willing to forfeit the possibility of heaven or some form of afterlife. Through such a lens, immortality seems cruel.
I have to believe there is something beyond this world and this is the kind of eternal life I believe in. It is not physical and I won’t know what it entails, but it is the world’s best-kept secret and I want to be let in on it.
So as appealing as it may be, Edward Cullen won’t be biting me anytime soon.
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