Originally posted here on my ancient blog site.
After seeing the technological aspects of immortality whether or not one wants it, I feel it is surely is coming. Luckily or otherwise we may be the last generation to die!!! But now lets take a look at the catastrophic repercussions of the same.(Most problems dealt here do not hold true to all kinds of technologies listed in the previous article, reader’s discretion necessary)
Social Factors Just a few days before one of the greatest events that repeats every four years.. FIFA World Cup came to an end and with it came the end of greats like Zidane, Carlos, Ronaldo, Totti, Kahn and the list goes on.. If we had immortality at hand,that would never be the case. Football would soon be a boring stuff that the same Ronaldinhos and Messis keep juggling with for centuries. You would never see a new face. Ofcourse so many years of experience would make the players far more perfect, but one needs change of faces too.
One would have to definitely choose between immortality or having children. Otherwise population explosion would literally be explosion. So, what would one do? Initially one may choose immortality, but as years pass by and there are no children left, it will be one big hell deprived of innocent beautiful faces. A time will come when atleast a fraction of people when people will begin to choose death.
Death will be death like never before. People will start to be extremely cautious about accidents, wars, diseases etc. Imagine what a crime homicide would be. Lots of philosophies of different religions will take a beating too. Almost all religions glorify deaths in battlefield or some great sacrifice and talk of heaven or some promise of wonderful afterlife. Will people risk it then? People in India have the habit of blessing with a Sou saal jiyo(may u live for hundred years) after somebody sneezes, would it be a curse then?
What about life partners? Would the bonds stay that long? Would multiple partners become acceptable? What about capital punishment?The list doesn’t seem to end.Would there be new laws for all these matters?
Economic factors The first thing that comes to mind is insurance. Would anyone give a life insurance? What about lifetime warranty?Economy in general will have a huge revolution the moment immortality becomes available. Lets say the technology is too costly to begin with.Rich people start living forever while the poor working class will keep shifting. And because the rich get immortal,they will continue to get richer and the poor will remain poor. Disparity will increase and then some day poor people may start to revolt. What will happen then? Right to immortality bill will be introduced?This is one way to look at things.In the other case,Immortals may after all loose interest in wealth because they have had too much of it for too long a time and they will become philanthropists??!!
At this point i took a long break and decided that I should quit thinking about the Socio-Economic factors. I think it is something that needs a research for years to completely understand the consequences. So I will try to cover the whole topic in another post. I seriously wonder why this topic hasn’t been brought to thought seriously till now.The technology is not far. But are we ready for it?