Since my thoughts don’t tend to stay in one field or endeavor, I don’t really expect my blog to. For technologists this will seem off topic. That’s fine, skip it.
Have you considered how having children has become a choice? Prior generations (not immediately prior, but beyond that) did not “decide” when to have children, instead much of it was beyond their control. Today, we live busy lives, and instead of being surprised by a child, we have to stop and think – I need to take action if I want to have a child. This changes the equation and changes what I would consider the ‘default action’. Having a child surprise you, puts you in a situation where you have to deal with it – and people survive (and enjoy it). But give people the choice, give them the chance to consider the responsibility that it carries and make them commit to having a child, and you’ve just placed a barrier in their way. The perspective is quite different, and I think the expectations are different as a result.
So now you’re wondering what the heck my title has to do with any of this. Well, I’ll go there now. The idea of having children is me looking into the past to find a model of comparison for what I look at in the future. And what I see in the future is this – there is the possibility (the *possibility*) that humans will develop the combination of technology and drugs, etc that make our flesh & blood existence, for all practical purposes, capable of immortality. Whoohoo, right? Hmm. Something to think about.
The suggestion here is that at some point, we may be capable of living lives of open duration. That we could look forward into time and actually believe that our lives would be unconstrained. Would that change our mode of thinking? Would it change our respect for life? Would we value our lives more, less, or really not change?
When I was thinking about this, it was in consideration of how you could explore the idea in a novel. As a book idea. How you could create this futuristic world where people now live forever, and that the only way out is, in effect, suicide. Instead of having your decision made for you, you have to take action, come out of your busy life and consciously choose to take on the responsibility of ending your life.
And thats really what this exploration is about. What matters is the quality of our lives, not it’s quantity. Though it looks to me like we often mistake one for the other. Do we really want to live forever?
