“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying." - Woody Allen
We have been raised with the viewpoint that death is inescapable, so we must believe the legacy of what we will leave behind us. But what if we had unlimited time to accomplish our life's work. What if we didn't have to die?
The concept of living forever may appear like one that's restricted to fairy tales, especially if you were born in eighteenth century, when the mean life expectancy was thirty five years. Now, although, male in the United States have a life expectancy of 75 years and female have 80. If life expectancy could reached more than double in two hundred years, then might it do the same again? Would it do so infinitely?
Some researchers think that there's some restriction on how many years a human being can live, the maximum in their prospective would be 125. While others see a world in which we have people more than 100 walking around with people who have lived for 500 or 1,000 years. Diseases related to growing older, like heart disease, currently restricting us from reaching that point. Our body parts become useless from use. In the arduous search for eternal life, then, researchers are focused on how to block aging from happening within the body.
One technique that clearly accelerated the lifespan of living beings such as mice is a calorie-restricted diet. To adapt this diet, you have to cut your caloric consumption by 30% while still taking all necessary nutrients. This diet plan has proven very difficult for humans to follow, so scientists are trying to find out how, exactly, lesser number of calories could lengthen a life. If they could solve that puzzle, they would be able to reproduce the mechanism in pill form.
Anti-aging pills can also be used to stop the production of free radicals, which are molecules that is responsible for accelerating damage within the body as we grow up. Scientists are also keeping in mind whether compounds like resveratrol, which is in red wine, could be functional in pill form, as resveratrol might have the capability to obstruct with the aging process at the genetic range. Some researchers believe that aging enzyme telomerase, that repairs protective sheathing on cells is the answer, while others would be centenarians have started injections of human growth hormone, believing they will cease the body from aging.
As you may tell, there are numerous theories on why we age and how can we stop it, and an anti-aging pill may not be a current solution. One challenge to the tracking of an anti-aging pill could be how long humans already live; while current researches with mice or yeast cells are possible and practical, a research on a human could take, well, 75 or 80 years.
Some people really want a solution in near future. Take Ray Kurzweil: He declares that by 2045, an event called "the singularity" will happen, and humans will eventually become one with machines . Flesh and blood are not absolute materials for eternal life, so we will turn to materials that are a bit more long lasting.
As researchers find out whether we will be part machine or stimulated with on resveratrol, it's perhaps best not to leave your life's legacy just yet.
If it's available for everyone in the world, there will have to be a vetoing of reproduction to avoid excess population and the demolition of the planet. If that happens, just think the consequences of restricting ourselves the probability of having new people on Earth. The concept of not having another Einstein is a petrified one even if the intelligent people already alive would be able to improve their smartness and build on their knowledge for ages instead of just a few years.
For now, nevertheless, this is all speculation. We can only wait and see for the future development that has been done so far & dream.
Anything that takes birth that must die. Only our soul not takes birth so our soul remains. Our Soul changes one body to another body like we changed our clothes.
Our body dies but our works remembered after death. All great man works still we remember.
The concept of living forever may appear like one that's restricted to fairy tales, especially if you were born in eighteenth century, when the mean life expectancy was thirty five years. Now, although, male in the United States have a life expectancy of 75 years and female have 80. If life expectancy could reached more than double in two hundred years, then might it do the same again? Would it do so infinitely?
Wow good sharee
Thanks @furqanadillah There is much medical advancement in recent years ... Life expectancy has increased tremendously ....
Well when you live in a 3rd world country or a country ravaged by war then you might even think that why can't we die quickly, if your life is like happily ever after then it make sense to live forever but if your life is a bag of shit then good luck living all the eternity @dommaraju
there is nothing impossible these days
Probably the most underrated ways to keep your body healthy, is staying hydrated. Drink a big glass of water first thing in the morning. Stay away from caffeine, and drink water every 2-3 hours throughout the day. Everything that every organ system in your body does, requires using water. Being dehydrated is like not having oil in your car engine.
I don't want to die, and I accept that I won't live forever in this universe. I don't subscribe to any religions, and I have no reason to believe anything happens after we die. I know that I can't explain how/why I got here. The fact that I'm here is completely inexplicable. It seems like there's a one in infinity chance that I would have ever opened my eyes and be alive. But, if it can happen once, that sets a precedent it could happen again. If it was good for me to be alive once, why wouldn't it be good for me to live again?
Longevity and immortality is a hot topic among many experts.
We are seeing a growing acceptance of the notion that death is indeed a disease. It is still not widely accepted but it is gaining pace. If we see it in a historic perspective one might see a more clear pattern forming.
In the old days society would regard death as something divine - Gods will. And there was nothing to do about it (except praying).
Today no doctor would tell you "I am sorry, you have death". He would rather inform you about your condition and that we currently have no cure for it. This implies that humans regard life-threatening conditions as something science just haven't figured out yet!
As time goes on we will be able to cure more and more diseases and eventually death itself will be regarded as something unwanted and curable.
AI and a digital world might be of our assistance here. If we figure out how to upload our minds into the cloud and back them up on more than one planet we might be close to immortality!
ronni
Our likely hood of immortality increases when we are able to separate ourselves from the limitations of our biology.
I'm not saying we can't become biologically immortal of course, it just seems to present a far more difficult challenge then to say augmenting ourselves with our technology or uploading our conciousness into some form of computer network.
The fact that we live in a time where I can say that at all is incredible.
Will we see the advent and execution of this in our lifetime? Possibly. Will we see the beginnings of it? Almost certainly.
We already have, in a way. Medical technology and computational technology are the two quickest advancing forms of enterprise that exist today.
We now have computers that can beat the Worlds best Go players, we now have machines that can print from cells fully functioning human organs. We are coming into an age where age, and by an extension, death, may stop being considered a part of life and start being considered as a condition or disease - one we can treat.
But what happens when nobody dies, especially if it's in a physical sense and not a purely etheric sense as it would be if we were to upload our consciousness? What do we do about the continuous increase in the population? How do we deal with individuals who maybe want to die? Does it become a matter of social class, where the wealthy live forever and the poor continue to die?
It's an interesting horizon we're sailing towards, thats for sure. Nothing like our time, as far as we know, has ever been seen or experienced by any other human before us. So not only do we become the first to see its benefit, we become the first to see its potential danger, too.
Nice write up, looking forward to more!
I'd say no, but close to - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVLZmDKeT-mV4H3ToYXIFYg
Immortality? Science has advanced but not enough yet to understand the whole body. Even basic Newton laws can be defied easily beyond our imagination. An object can only move if an external force acts upon it. That itself can be wrong because even a rock which is made of atoms which is silicon in nature within which thousands of electrons are moving and that too in a particular path. So who is moving this?
My point is we are way far from all these hypes like immortality. Science is only what has been proven but there are many thing which science has failed to prove. Everything that take birth has to die is the law. Humans can't break it in future too as it's a cycle created already. Opinions differ but science has not yet proven what it claims too, so we should live a happy life than dreaming about immortality which could in one way impact the whole natural life cycle.
reincarnation would be more interesting
If you really think about it,would you like to live forever on this planet?
My answer is no.Longer,yes,but forever,no.
No more than 100 years off from this, once weve figured out how to upload our conciousness online all we have to do is constantly upload ourselves into the latest android, very excited for the future
I surely hope not.
Death is the greatest motivator of all.
Save immortality for the AI.
Interesting Post! You hit the area of my concern- population control. I think that many of today's issues revolve around the increased life span of humans. This is a blessing and a curse. As a result of advances in technology and medicine, people are living longer today. They are now able to live through health events that would have killed them in years past. However, while they are surviving these health changing events, many are now becoming more of a burden to society. I know this is not a popular opinion, and I will be chastised for saying this, but I do believe at some point life should end. And we need to be careful how we influence the balance of nature when it comes to artificially extending life span. There will be many more unintended consequences.
Ask Vandal Savage
Ironically, when I was at university I was working on a research that work on 3D printing organs of a person by taking a newborn child's tissues of each organs and preserving them via cryogenic method for cultivating them in the future for organ replacement. plus many disease will become curable in the near future thanks to nanotechnology. But there is one disease that is going to be quite troublesome to take care off and it isn't cancer or AIDS or anything rather Arthritis because of its effect on bones but I would be surprised if we found a cure to that as well. But one with the machine is a bit too far don't you think.
Great Post
Thank you for sharing
If immortality exists it won't be given to common ppl , only rich people will be immortal : imagine now the world population is 7.5 billion people and they are immortal after 20 years it will be 50 billion people in this planet and the number will increase every year
Well my opinion is completely unbaised on this when. This is not the question of Possibility or Non-possibility. Rather it is the question about Why do we need to be immortal? First of all, we can't be immortal. Because Death is inevitable and it the gift from GOD to humanity. It's unethical to live forever. Just see it from the eyes of science, what would everyone do if each and everyone would become immortal. There are many moral and ethical forces at work here. So, I think immortality should be kept limited to the movies.
Yeah, may be our life span could be increased by cellular generation or stem cell therapies but not immortality.
Even cancer and AIDS have no definite cure at this moment, so talking about immortality is like a fairy tale.
Appreciates your efforts though @dommaraju
Truth be told the real us dont actually die, we move to a high realm, spirits dont die, flesh ofcos wear out
I think it might be possible one day.
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream...
truth is we dont die:) Nice share!
This is a very interesting topic. Yes we have made great strides, regarding Longevity and the quality of life in the older years. The question remains, can our planets resources sustain the increases in population, and longer living inhabitants.
If the earth suffers the damages that can be caused by over population, then what will that mean to the overall quality of life anyway.
I guess we really need to kick this into gear, and get ourselves to the point where we can travel to other planets, to populate.
Hope there's nobody there already, that we need to kick out to do so.
How about if there is Life after Death. That we do exist somewhere after we die. Another Dimension, or another world.
I guess we wouldn't have to worry about all this.
I'm not sure citizens of a planet with finite resources, inhabited by 7.2B people should be giving so much mental energy to the concept of human immortality -- especially considering any associated technologies would be reserved for the 1%.
I just hope not there are illegal human experiments for researching immortality.
Well as I am not one of those humans that wants to live forever, I am one of those people who cant wait for it to end fast enough. I would probably try to end it all sooner, but know I would probably mess up in the process and make things worse than they already are. Come on aids.
I have read before that mortality was a biological design engineered to encourage diversity and increase chances of survival of the species. Nature doesn't really care about an individual life, after all, just the whole . If an immortal "vampire" race existed, they'd become weakened by lack of diversity over time. However, I'm all for figuring out ways to live forever. I think we're somewhat past the point in our species where we can have significant evolutionary change due to our lifestyles, barring a huge global catastrophe or illness.
Or you start today focussing on your body and cells through meditation to slow down the aging and start with a healthy diet instead of waiting for a magic pill.
Am I doing this. Hahaha no. Do i believe it is possible. Definitely. Do I believe if immortality in this body is possible. No I do not. Our body is not designed to last for ever (not a scientist, just what I think). But we got all the means to slow down the process of aging. I am pretty sure of that. I even believe that we are able to cell regeneration. Hope you will google this shit and learn more. :)
I really appreciate thought provoking posts like this and I look forward to seeing more of your content in the future. I think you’d really enjoy a recent post of mine...take a quick read and let me know what you think - https://steemit.com/life/@tayken/this-is-my-life-via-gifs
Oh, and remember, be yourself, because nobody else does it better -- Full #Steem ahead @dommaraju :)
Much ❤
@Tayken
@Tayken Thanks. I have seen your GIF's They are very cool and Awesome. I am following and Upvoted.
I'm following as well and I look forward to staying connected. Let me know if you have ideas about how to improve the content we create. Looking for others who want to learn and grow together.
There is a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis nutricula has been proven to be biologically capable of immortality by repeatedly reverting to its earlier polyp stage, effectively re-starting its life-cycle and so reversing ageing. In theory it can repeat this indefinitely.
If we could find out how to copy this process....
Also, Li Qingyun is on public record as being over 250 years old and he was quite open about his "secrets" of longevity. Also, he stated that he has regularly met monks up in the mountains that were well over 500 years old. So certainly extreme lifespans are possible. But immortality?
All breathing being must die some day. Immortality is spiritual and our physical being can't exist there.
Hop not