Immortality

      Y'know what bugs me about this question? The underlying assumption that somebody would consider immortality *desirable*. I mean, suppose you said, "Imagine the devil offered you a handful of moldy cheesecake and the price was your beloved." Huh?

      Immortality (in the form of eternal youth, sexiness, etc) is the current obsession of Western society. Nobody wants to come to terms personally with death, disease, aging, poverty, impotence, helplessness, insignificance, etc. None of these qualities are considered acceptable, never mind that they are natural states, some of them inescapable for everybody. We're all going to age sooner or later; we're all going to die. But heaven forbid we should accept that! Oh, no, can't have that. Live young, never grow old, never die, and if you must die, die young and leave a good-looking corpse (I guess that means drug overdose, because violence is pretty disfiguring, now isn't it?)

      There's a delightful Greek myth about a woman who asked for eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth; so she wasted away until she was but a withered, decrepit old husk, begging for a death which never came. I like that myth. It's realistic, and has a sort of "served you right" mentality about it.

      I'm not going to go into the cliched line about watching one's loved ones dying left and right while you go smoothly, immortally on, which I think is the most common argument against immortality. Although I'm as afraid of dying as the next person, I honestly do not *want* to live forever. And if you asked why, the best answer I could give is that it ain't natcheral.

      One might argue that if we were immortal, we'd never procreate (which might mean "no romantic love," because we wouldn't NEED birth control to keep our hormones from getting us into a natural reproductive state) and we'd never create great works of art (who was that author who wrote a trilogy about a colony of artists and geniuses? Earth had advanced to the point where you could elect to take a drug that would make you immortal, but forever mediocre; the gifted people of society were nurtured throughout childhood and young adulthood and allowed to make a choice between immortality and art. The ones who chose death were revered. It was a spectacular series but I forgot who wrote it...)

      Guess my answer is no. Even if I could figure out what the devil the devil (that's not a typo ;) ) meant by "my beloved" at the moment. I don't care what context "beloved meant." I don't care if the price were Scott, my donor of the moment (possibly one and the same depending on the timing of the question), my cats, my writing, or the town I want to found. Especially the latter. The answer is definitely "no."

       

      © 1999 by Sarah Dorrance (click here to send e-mail)