Background
The quest for immortality is timeless. To escape death has always been a goal for human society, but nobody has yet achieved it. From gods and goddesses to elixir making, humans are tied to immortality. In fact, it is still believed in today. In most modern religions, the idea of heaven, or life after death, is common. Perhaps immortality is hardly a reality, but a balm to soothe a dying soul. Or maybe, immortality is what will let us carry on in the future, what will keep our human spirit alive. Maybe we could even reunite with our loved ones. The possibilities are endless. But before we discuss those possibilities, we must first define immortality. Immortality can be interpreted in many different ways, so we will explore a few different scenarios. Regardless, immortality has no doubt played a huge role in the shaping of humanity.
From the Greeks to the Egyptians, they all believed in some form of immortality. The Ancient Egyptians famously believed in the Underworld. In the Underworld, deceased human beings supposedly have to pass through many different challenges to determine whether or not they are worthy enough to continue on in the afterlife. One of the most well-known challenges was to weigh your heart and weigh a feather. If your heart was lighter than the feather, you were allowed to press on. If not, a monster is said to come to devour you.
The Greeks were a little bit different, and a little bit darker. They believed that in death, your soul carries on, but without memories. The soul is said to separate from its tomb, (the body) and return to its home where it was made. This is a more unusual belief; as many religions view life after death as a heaven full of joy. The Greeks were the exact opposite.
The Romans believed less in certain immortality, and more in legacies. They were supposed to make a lasting legacy so as not to be forgotten for generations to come. Another belief of theirs was that if you died a noble and humble life, you could come back as a spirit or deity to protect and guide your living family. More important figures were thought to ascend to heaven after death and essentially live among the gods. One of the most rare beliefs of them all was called Epicureanism, which is the belief that all death is final, and there is no pain, no fear, and no consequences.
Each civilization has had a slightly different view on immortality, but in the end, it is the same idea in different words. Immortality is what has calmed those near the end, the hope of a future is reassuring. But, what if we actually were immortal, and we didn’t have to die to live forever?
Societal Effect
Immorality: the concept of unending existence. A power every man has desired, but never truly wanted. An ability to watch everyone grow old, while you watch yourself stay the exact same. You get to beat the one thing every human fears. How is that not wanted? Thankfully, humanity realized that this power would be too much to handle. Yes, you would defeat death, but you would live through everything you feared, too. The concept itself is too much for humanity to truly grasp and weigh out the benefits from consequences. But what if we were to break every single moral code and scientific law to obtain this power? What would happen?
Scenario 1: We have been immortal from the start
The type of immortality that is seen in most stories and fantasies is a never ending age. It is described in many different ways depending on who you ask. In the scenarios below, however, we are defining immortality as a person who ages significantly less than a mortal. Almost like how a vampire ages. For example, if you are 2,000 years old you would only look about 10. Although this seems nice, we would face many problems in the face of this “gift”.
The most obvious problem would be over population. As our population grows, and never lessens, we would quickly run out of space for humans to live on Earth. To combat this problem, we could start building down, building up, or split our population and have some live on another planet. However, all these solutions are only able to be carried out if we have more advanced technology. Yes, we are immortal, so we won’t die from the heat as you dig very far underground, or die in a spaceship as it is going light years to another planet, but being immortal doesn’t mean we don’t feel pain. Every living space still needs to be comfortable and care for our needs.
(Italy for me)
Fortunately, due to humanity’s immortality, many famous scientists would still be alive. With all the best scientists combined, technological advancements would be much easier. Scientists like Albert Einstein, Sir Issac Newton, and Galileo Galilei would still be alive to change our perception of how the world works. Each scientist’s ideas would build on each other and we could truly understand their thought process and use it more today. By 2026, the advancements that would’ve taken place would be more than we could even imagine.
Though our technology would advance, we wouldn’t be as lucky with the way our society would turn out. Our society relies on the system. As one generation dies out, the next comes in and thus passes the torch of ideas, power, and most importantly change. However, in this world the older generation doesn’t die out. Older generations are known to be stuck in the past. In this new world, since they would be around forever, they would continue to persist against the change younger generations are enacting. They would want things to be done like they always have been. It’s similar to today, except the older generations will never die out and go back to the start of humanity.
To enact change activists would have much harder jobs. They would need to convince every human to ever exist to believe their idea. Considering it is hard for anyone to convince a single person of something, an entire species that dates back 300,000 years would be impossible. If we hardly changed because of this, maybe we would still be speaking Ye Olde English. Equality to certain genders or races might not be as common. Change could still happen, it would just be harder. But some changes are necessary. Imagine how unjust the world would be if we were advancing in equality at half the speed we are now.
Governments are a huge part of society, and surprisingly immortality could affect that. In our new world dictatorships would be much more common across the globe. The leader doesn’t die, the leader doesn’t leave power. Contradictally, rebellions against this would be more common. Why would anyone be afraid to stand up to the government, you can’t die.
Another problem we would have is prison. Every criminal would still be alive. If you live forever you are almost bound to make a mistake that could cost you prison time. Humanity would most likely banish the worst people to another planet, or in an underground space as stated above, but eventually we would run out of room as our population increases. Which leads us to our final effect.
Our population would forever increase as we know. What is also constantly increasing in size? The universe. Our only solution to our immortality would be to spread our species throughout the universe. We would live on different planets spread all over the universe. Our bodies would adapt to the different planets we live on. We wouldn’t just be the dominant species of our world, but the universe too.
Scenario 2: We obtain immortality in the future
Since humanity hasn’t quite cracked the code to immortality, being immortal from the start isn’t possible. If we were to ever be immortal, it would probably be from a big advancement in technology. The question is, what would happen if we suddenly gained this ability?
If we found a cure to our mortality in the future, many of the effects would be similar to the ones listed in the last scenario. Though, some things would be different. For example, our population would be a lot smaller because everyone human to ever exist wouldn’t be on Earth. Technology, although already great because we figured out how to become immortal, wouldn’t advance quite as fast. We would still only have the scientists of today, and not the great scientists of the past that could teach us of their theories. Though, with time things will become a lot different.
Chances are if we figured out how to be immortal scientists, those in power, and the rich wouldn’t share it with people. Most likely people who fit in those categories will decide to buy it out or keep it for themselves. They could try to make more money by selling it for crazy prices. But why wouldn’t you buy something that will save your life? Social status would become a huge problem. Those with money would keep their life, those without money would be cursed with mortality.
Unfortunately, it would be a situation where the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Although, at least since not everyone would be immortal our populations would stay in control at least for a while. Later on we might come across the same issues where we would need to find more places for humans to live. But depending on how you view immortality, maybe the rich are the ones who are really cursed.
Environmental Effect
Every year humans produce more waste, further using up our planet’s resources. Some people recycle or compost, however only 36% of the population in the U.S. partakes in these tasks. The average person in the United States has a 16 ton carbon footprint. Below are a couple of materials used in everyday lives. (Please note that these statistics are only based on people in the U.S.)
- A person uses about 700 pounds of paper per year. Around 3 to 9 trees are needed to make this much paper. With the average of 348 million people in the U.S., this will average to about 1 billion trees getting destroyed every year! Destroying trees increases the input of CO2 into the atmosphere and also plays part in the increase of floods and landslides.
- Around 287 to 300 pounds of plastic are thrown away each year. So, yearly roughly 92 billion pounds of plastic are thrown away each year in the U.S., with only 5% of the plastic being recycled. The United States is one of the largest creators of plastic waste in the world. Plastic can contaminate water and soil, harming the animals that drink the water and killing plants in the toxic soil.
- Annually, the average person wastes anywhere from 250 to 400 pounds of food. Every year 30-40% of America’s food supply is wasted. Food waste creates 8% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The land cleared for agriculture that is never used, causes unnecessary deforestation.
Every year more and more resources are used up worldwide. We see it today, natural resources like coal and oil are rapidly depleting, with the rate of consumption for these materials much quicker than the rate that these materials are made. If humans did not die, then the population would drastically increase. The need for resources would increase along with the waste of excess materials. Every day more and more of the environment is transformed to fit human life; if human life doesn’t stop, neither will the change.
Now that you’ve read about all of the different scenarios in which humans would be immortal, would you like to be immortal? Would you like to live in a collapsing world so long as you wouldn’t lose those you love? Or would you embrace death when your time comes? Would you sacrifice everything you love just to save it?
