WHO ELSE DOESN'T WANT TO LIVE FOREVER…

"Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse!? -- John Derek

THE QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

This living forever thing is way over-hyped… Everyday new longevity and ant-aging products flood the billion dollar marketplace, that is promising -- The Fountain Of Youth, in some form or another… The amount of research being done to add a few years to your life.., or the technology being developed to aid us in our quest for immortality, is staggering. By hacking the body we can replace what no longer works with a a shiny new one, or upload your brain to the cloud -- making death nothing more than a technical issue (I hope they have good customer support).

While it's fun to toy around with the idea of living forever.., or checking into things like caloric restriction (eating very little) and the slew of other things that possibly add a few years to your life… What you need to be thinking about is -- quality of life.There are more people than not, that would pick up a gun and blow their freakin' head off, if all of a sudden they could live forever.., their quality of life sucks so bad -- why the hell would they want to live forever.

But what does living forever actually mean -- what does it look like… First off, if living forever meant keeping our human physical bodies.., we would need to end all sickness and disease, repair any damage that acted as a threat to our never ending longevity -- say goodbye to the healthcare industry (that's 1/6th of the economy) and while your at it, the pharmaceutical industry (YAY).., and any other business that has to do with health and dying -- they would all be obsolete if we lived forever.

Now, picture the longest day you ever had.., and times it by FOREVER!

Now, the first few hundred years might be freakin' blast.., but the rest of eternity might get kinda old after that -- forever is a long, long time… If we normally live 75-95 years, what does 1000 years feel like or 100,000 and so on.., would we need to sleep or dream anymore -- we can't even really imagine what it would be like, to be immortal. Im not much for organized religion.., but think about the religious implications to living forever -- HOLY CRAP (pun intended)… With nobody dying anymore, I guess we wouldn't need Heaven.., or Hell -- and reincarnation is off the table.., and what would the Buddhist's do… How would believers, people that have dedicated their whole lives to a religion deal with -- living forever…

CRACKING THE CODE

The billionaires in Silicon Valley must have it pretty good.., that they are shelling out billions of dollars.., trying to beat death -- the Sergey Brin's and Peter Thiel's hoping to live long enough to collect on their massive investment… And while the scientists work on the physics of it all, the techies try and hack it's code -- an algorithm for immortality..,one can't help think of the possibilities… But living forever is a massive statement.., I get the initial attraction -- YAY.., LETS ALL LIVE FOREVER… Sounds like a great idea -- but are any of these billionaire guys thinking about the moral and ethical aspects to this equation…

Without death.., would we truly live -- be really alive… What would be the incentive to live each day to the fullest -- "be in the moment, because it could be your last." Could removing that threat, threaten our lust for our very own life… We can't feed the current population, how the heck would we feed the inevitable over population problem we would be dealt -- we would burn through most if not all our natural resources, with an ever increasing demand… And what about The Meaning Of Life -- yeah, what about that!

What is interesting to this fantastical quest for immortality, besides the whole living forever thing is -- scientist's and the like are beginning to take a whole different approach to the way the look at health and sickness… Instead of the current "whack-a-mole" system of waiting until someone is sick and then treating the symptoms… With the onslaught of money being poured into anti-aging and longevity research, some people are starting to think that.., curing the aging process itself, is a much better approach to our over all well being and longevity, than trying to cure each and every disease individually…

Another thing about living forever that sucks -- it won't be for everybody… You know, damn straight it will only be an option for the wealthiest among us -- I mean, the kind of money you would need.., you would have to invent Google or Paypal (wink, wink). I wonder if these rich guys searching for the fountain of youth realize, if this were the 1800's they'd probably be dead already… I can't help but think.., so much fueling this need to solve death -- is the fear of it!

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." -- James Dean

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