On The Pain of Eternity · 6:54pm May 17th, 2015
Wow, still there.
I'll be honest with all of you, I really didn't expect that little short/vignette to actually make it that far. I mean, it was posted a few days ago and as of this morning...
It was still there. And as of this posting, it still is. Apparently, immortality discussions are more of a thing than I anticipated, since I wrote it more as a personal reaction to all the "immortality = sucks/angst" I was hearing, rather than any other reason.
On that subject, I don't think there's a real answer as to whether it would be bearable or not. You see, I don't think you can say Immortality is a bad thing. But you can't say it's a good thing either. It depends, doesn't it? In my opinion it boils down to the core strength of the character, and understanding that life and death are a part of life, regardless of whether you are immortal or not.
Why is it, that some people expect the characterization of Twilight as immortal to be full of angst for centuries? I mean, in the moment, it would be natural for her to feel very sad about the loss of her friends as they pass on (assuming they're not immortal too, who knows), but that happens in a normal lifespan too. Why should she be okay recuperating from, say her parents eventually dying if she were mortal, but not her friends and family if she's not mortal?
We usually write mortal characters encouraging their friends to chin up and continue on because their friends/family wouldn't want them to be stagnated in missery, and yet, when it's an immortal character, it's the opposite. People want Twilight, Celestia, Luna, etc. to hang on to the very first lives that touched them and not let go of the pain. Which I'm sorry to say is unnatural.
That's the difference that Older!Twilight pointed out in the story: It's not that you forget the people that touched your heart, it's that you remember the good things that they taught you and brought to the world.
That's mostly why I created the character of Apple Parfait... she's, in the story, the living proof that Twilight never really abandoned her friends. She kept track of them, eventually even having a kid with one of the Apple family members, which would be related to Applejack down the line. The implication is that their mark as her friends still continues centuries later.
I also don't believe that immortals don't change. They have to. Physically they might be the same, but why would their minds be stuck as well? They need to adapt to learn to deal with loss. True, it might seem a bit more callous to us mere mortals that we wouldn't affect an immortal being as much as we would affect each other, but that's understandable: an immortal has to separate themselves from the idea that things will maybe outlast them, be it friends, children, culture, etc. But after so much time seeing how ephemeral things are in comparison to them, how could they not?
Older!Twilight's lesson is that as ephemeral as things are, as much as pain will come when we lose each of our loved ones, it's not a reason to live a miserable eternity, which is the idea that the author of the book "The Pain of Eternity" cannot comprehend: Celestia is not miserable, even having lived thousands of years. She doesn't torture herself for those long gone, and lives in the moment. And yet, she is not callous, and she is not unfeeling as that book would make Twilight think.
Will it be scary for Twilight, despite her future self telling her about the good things? Definitely. She loves her friends after all, but, the purpose of that scene where Twilight decides to go check on Fluttershy is to emphasize that she wants to spend time with them and enjoy the good things that come with them.
Anyway, that's all for this blog and that story. I hope it gets down from there on the FB overall sometime soon.
Later!
Thank you and amen! Preach on, brotha!
Hmm, what about memories? The brain is finite in size. Hence, it can only store a finite amount of information. An immortal being would have to keep forgetting in order to be able to learn.
And that's just from an information-theoretical point of view. A biological brain would probably perform even worse.
Oh gods, it's horrifying. It's like a disease - where immortality is this terrible, awful curse for some reason that's never adequately reasoned out.
Exactly - it makes it sound like dying young before everyone else is some sort of virtue. Doesn't your own death represent sadness?
Not to mention, people get over mourning. We move on, it's a thing.
Pardon, this debate is just incredibly frustrating.
3076365 That's why we have diaries
Speaking as an immortal, this is a very accurate representation of losing mortal friends and family. Then again, I've never really had a deep, solid love of friends, and I've forgotten some fairly quickly even while they were alive.
It's the enemies that stick with you. You can lose a hundred friends and never bat an eye but once you lose a great enemy, where will you be? I've spent a lot more energy on enemies than on friends, though a few centuries ago there was a lot more you could do to your enemies and a lot more at stake when you had enemies. Nowadays there's no real opportunity for a rivalry that can grip you and never let you go. I miss the feudal ages.
3076374 I personally like talking about immortality because I think that Luna went evil not only because she didn't receive attention from her sister, but more so because she slowly became numb to emotions and feelings. I don't know, maybe it is because there's a difference between Twilight and Celestia in terms of immortality.
As mortals and with short lives at that we are used to thinking about the now, and that means we focus too much on the moment. This essentially means that if we, that were raised thinking about the now, are called to think about the eternity... There will be a lot of shock coming to us, just like you wrote Twilight.
However Celestia and Luna likely were born and raised to this immortal lifestyle, and have learned from their youth how to cope with this.
So it's not about being angsty or not. A god will get angsty if he/she becomes mortal ((maybe yes maybe no)) and likewise a mortal will start panicking if he has to think about losing his friends. Isn't that logical? I mean... certainly Twilight will be a little nervous in the prospect of immortality, but when one is called to change so quickly so much... isn't it a bit logical to say that there's an unstable adjustment period that can go wrong?
Angsty immortality gets such play because relatively speaking a lot of the fandom is fairly young, and haven't gone through enough loss to understand how anyone deals with it. The perspective is that an infinite amount of life leads to an infinite amount of loss, and that just seems like it would be soul-crushing.
Unless you lead a blessed life, as you get older you lose people and then you personally find out first hand how you adapt or don't.
I've never quite understood the immortality angst either. It's just... life. Longer life, but life. I've lost friends and loved ones - I've seen them die even, in some cases. Should I be some sort of blubbering emotional wreck just because of that?
People die. It'd be nice if they didn't. It'd be even better if I didn't. I quite like living and I plan to do it for as long as possible.
3076381
harkavagrant.com/nonsense/Nemesissm.png
(Hark a Vagrant)
Seemed apropos.
3076365
Yes, the brain does have a theoretical limit on information, as it is a physical substrate. How much is unknown.
I believe the fear and pain of being immortal, rather comes from the collective loss.
As morbid as it is, as much as everybody fears it, we all share a comfort in us being guaranteed that there is an end. No matter who we lose, we too will join them one day in eternal rest.
Immortals have no respite. They must live the rest of their lives knowing that one day their friends and family will die and they will have to spend the rest of eternity remembering them. There is also the fact that one day, all life will disappear and they will be left alone, well and truly alone.
Not to mention the creeping onset madness born from spending so much time alive. Yes, that's actually a thing. Psychological trauma never leaves us, imagine spending an eternity, living your life, collecting those mental scars, getting close to someone only to blink and see them on their death bed, truly realizing how fleeting life is in the grand, ever moving gears of the universe that count the death and births of stars and galaxies as nothing more than grains of sand in the sand dial.
And you, the immortal, will forever be a relic of ages past. People will change, the perception of time will evolve, languages rot and insects lose interest, the selfish forget whats sacred and the humble forget themselves.
I mean, there is so much shit that goes with immortality. No, seriously, I've tried writing a thesis on everything that goes with it and ended up realizing I could have written a book and still have more to write and explore.
I think my main problem with immortality stories is that it gets used as a cheap way to dismiss Twilight's friends and give her angst. The rest of the mane 6 were chose by Harmony too dammit, I don't think fate plans to just cast them aside.
3076462
Uh, speak for yourself?
This could not be more vividly against my feelings on the matter, and I know quite a few people like that.
I deeply question your comments about psychological trauma and would love to know which actual scientific study you pulled that out of.
As if this were a bad thing~
It would be terribly fascinating to watch that process. Not to mention, as an immortal, you would accrue enormous personal respect. Look at how everyone looks up to Celestia - who, I might add, is having a ball of a time.
Really, Celestia marks the single greatest argument here - she's over a thousand at least, and doing fine.
3076497 And Twilight would have a lot of immortal friends Celestia, Luna, Cadence and discord. Celestia on the other hand was alone for 1000 years!
3076566
Yeah, no kidding.
I often like to reflect back on one of my childhood favorite series, the Belgariad, which prominently featured a series of immortals.
Only very briefly do they express any sort of regret at the people they've lost along the way, and the deep heartaches are there, but ultimately they get along fine, because they can put that sort of thing behind them most of the time.
3076566
i.imgur.com/qXFIiyd.png
One of the most frustrating aspects of the immortality debates I've seen here is the people who go on and on about how alone you would be, generally in the context of why Twilight shouldn't be immortal. Sure, maybe immortality might suck, eventually, if you were the only immortal. But we're talking about ponyland here, where there are several immortals. And Twilight is friends with most of them. She wouldn't be alone at all.
3076365 ...What do you mean biological? It is made of flesh and blood, presumably similar to regular pony brains by virtue of her being able to communicate, thinking similar, etc. That is pretty much biological. Information-theoretical would be something like a type of artificial data storage, etc. mind-in-a-jar.
3076990
Short version, you're making unproven assumptions and generalizations.
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Coughcoughbullshitcough
I don't need my life to end to value it. Quite the opposite, really.
Treatments for PTSD are coming, and some people do overcome them.
How would I go obsolete? What, am I living under a rock?
One loses friends all the time. I get new ones.
I suppose that explains why I'm haunted by the memories of everyone I've lost contact with or known who died - oh wait. That isn't happening.
Why? That's bullshit. Even assuming they knew, why does it need to be impersonal? You're making some rather ridiculous assumptions based on nothing. Oldest people on earth are perfectly capable of forming friendships even in the face of the death of everyone they've known.
There's always going to be jealous people, but that's why you build up respect and power - oh, and give very few shits about people like that.
You know what that is? It's attitude.
An elderly person who keeps up is going to keep up. This has been perfectly well demonstrated.
You know a funny thing? Studies show that today's kids know less about technology than kids from my generation.
3077193
There's a reason high school level psychology isn't very highly regarded.
I value my life as a medium in which to interact with other things, ergo its value is equivalent to the quality and quantity of things I perform through that life. I do not value my death; all signs indicate that death will be a medium without value and without experience to begin with.
You are being ridiculous.
People have overcome PTSD. Some people never even experience it in the first place if they're lucky. Your anecdotes not-withstanding.
Further, that is only a condition of present technology - in a few decades, a century, it may well be treatable. You're stuck thinking in a technologically dead context.
Sure, if you make no effort to keep up with changing times. Again, a gross misunderstanding - old people are only as much a relic as they make themselves. The tendency to be more of a relic is there, as our mental pathways become more "solid" over time (by the way, if we're proposing clinical immortality, why should that be the case for an immortal?)
And now you're being racist, because 1) the people of the Middle East know quite well what goes on here in the west and 2) I can quite well understand what's going through their heads, because there's extensive work done on analyzing them.
They aren't simple desert primitives who get spooked at a flashlight.
Just about everything you said here is meaningless blather. It's bordering on gibberish. You clearly don't understand the nature of respect or power.
So? I don't need to meet every single person to understand a given culture. Immersion and a willingness to be open to experiences takes care of a lot of that.
Ants have no capacity to experience or understand beyond an exceedingly limited world of direct sensory input. They are tiny little drones - hell, that's where we got the word from.
Your comparison is false because you are comparing things of different qualities, not different quantities of intelligence. An ant cannot approximate a human in this equation because a human's intelligence is qualitatively different.
Furthermore, an immortal barring any other improvements would have no greater or lesser intellectual capacity than any other being of their species, so now you're just being preposterous on top of everything else.
That you put these two sentences together is really just about the icing on the cake, and it definitely demonstrates that you don't even know the definition of the word "fact."
You're bloviating, in short.
I think some people think that Twilight can't handle being immortal because she use to be mortal. I would disagree, as I reference another show that tackled the same topic from time to time: Highlander.
Good movie, and came out with a good t.v. series.
The one thing I kept on looking at when seeing this wasnt that Pain of Eternity was still up there, but that you only have 8 chapters to read in your collection of fics. I have 359.
3076990
Do you have a source for this statement, or am I just supposed to take your word for it? Sure, people find they want to die when they suffer the infirmities of old age, but that has 'nothing' to do with immortal people with immortal bodies.
I think if you never knew what death was, you'd place value in it for reasons beyond scarcity and its fragility. I think there's plenty good to death, but it's the romanticized fantasy version I have of it in my mind, that I'd write about in stories. Death here is gross, messy, unpleasant, it's as imperfect as the creatures we evolved into. More over, it robs people of agency, and that's something I've no intention of explaining away.
What do you mean by this? You mean it's broken in that we have the conscious ability to resist our impulses and make decisions based on long term consequences? That's not broken, that's how we evolved, because that ability benefits us.
As someone who has almost died three times (once from drowning, once from falling down a mountain, and another time from getting stuck out in the desert with my dad) I can certainly say that if this is the case - I'm the exception, 'cause when I reached that point my emotional cool dissolved immediately, and I started to freak the fuck out.
So they don't accept death, then, they rationalize death's non-existence by predicting the continuation of life. Because the brain isn't wired to accept death, it's wired to reduce stress and to rationalize things for the continued safety of the body.
No, it doesn't, no it's not. DMT is something the body metabolizes almost immediately and you can't get any kind of lasting or meaningful experience from it - in most cases - without specially combining it with other chemicals, and whether or not it's even naturally in the body is a matter of debate, so I'm not sure where the fuck you've acquired this certainty.
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Even if any of this shit were true, and like 90% of it is absolute nonsense I'd expect when watching Spirit Science and learning about Space Jews, it doesn't do anything to support your argument, except that the brain isn't wired to accept death, it is wired to lie to itself when it's time to go.
Not according to all of what you said, we don't.
I know about both of those things, you should probably read some accredited material yourself, because you're misunderstanding both of those concepts.
Alright, and you never recover from a wound either, a scar will break down and the wound will open back up if you suffer scurvy for long enough. That's not ideal either, not many people are going to argue that scars, mental or otherwise, are not ideal. Killing someone off isn't ideal either. This isn't an issue of a faulty fucking television set, these are people, and the ideal solution is to fucking fix them so they can continue their lives and experience meaningful stimuli and contribute to the productivity of a society.
Actually, experiences with death are bad experiences, you're continuing to not help your fucking case here. That's why you can find all sorts of people in terrible parts of the world who already look dead.
I don't know, how do you know I'm not a funeral director? Or an emergency rescue operative? Or someone who's survived a major natural disaster?
So where the fuck does the bit about us being wired for it come in, you self-contradicting fuck ass?
I can't very well come close to people over the next 1,000 years if I embrace death as it exists as a natural and positive part of my ultimate fate, now can I?
Yes? Assuming I can't find a way to make them not die also? Yes, Death kind of sucks and I'd like to spare anyone I love from this version of it, but I'd also like it if everyone didn't suffer poverty and starvation, or really and situation that robs them of agency and stifles their creativity and personal growth.
My stars you're articulate, I'm feeling flushed already. Of course it's really interesting that you seem to think everyone is interested in like - this cripplingly intense one on one relationship that belongs in a Hollywood movie. I have a very hard time seeing myself as not polygamous, and interested in multiple people for different things.
It's also equating love with you know, someone you want to fuck, which I understand is kind of a primary directive for you, but you're kind of projecting here. I don't need to 'fall in love' that is, desire a physical relationship with someone, in order to lament their absence.
Why the fuck are you so intense about one aspect of romance? There's other ways to love people, seriously. If you're only this focused on a one and only, then I seriously doubt you have one.
http://goodmorningcelestia.tumblr.com/post/88214804584/if-she-was-immortal-i-suspect-timing-would-be#notes
(It bugs me, too.)
That doesn't have anything to do with anything? I suffered some incredibly traumatizing experiences as a child, and the older I get, the less they affect my mood and actions. I'll always remember what happened, I'll always regret what happened, and in light of those things I will shape my behavior accordingly so as to better avoid it again.
It's like you're suggesting 'everyone around you will eventually get cancer, but not you, you get to watch everyone else get cancer, so you may as well get cancer too!'
That makes no fucking sense at all.
Then said immortal isn't trying hard enough, 'cause we'll be able to do something about it within the next 30-50 years, if not sooner. So uh... There?
Healing a wound doesn't result in a scar, patching it up does. If you legitimately healed someone good as new, there would be no scar. You're getting all flowery which doesn't support your argument in any meaningful way, and you also suck at writing, so rather than being swayed by your emotional statement, I'm vaguely insulted by the way you tried to fondle some intimate part of me to make me agree with you.
You keep using literally incorrectly and it's actually starting to piss me off.
If you're a human being to that extent, then I suppose you don't need to worry about mental scars, because eventually you'll forget shit when you remap parts of your brain for new information, and have nowhere else to put it.
Are you even arguing about the same fucking thing anymore?
Yes, because the brain 'ages'. Which presumably it wouldn't do if you were immortal. Otherwise you wouldn't be immortal.
3077335
While I'm at this, I can't believe I glossed over this in your previous one - this is pretty breathtakingly wrong and I'd love to know where you pulled it from.
I think I made it abundantly clear - I value things that exist within the universe that I can interact with and experience, be they stories or vistas or new concepts. The universe is capable of generating more of those than exist years in its own remaining lifespan. I don't know about you, but my only thrill does not derive from knowing that I might die - you might want to get that checked.
You might say I don't value life, per se. I value what there is to experience within life. As it cannot be ably demonstrated that there exists qualia beyond life, I must conclude that the only value exists within life, ergo my personal death is undesirable and valueless.
Please demonstrate for me how my thrill regarding reading fantasy stories is predicated on my dying. I'd love to find that out.
You're trying to say that eventually the suffering in life will outweigh any potential value in remaining alive, but you must demonstrate that it is A) impossible to recover from traumatic experiences and B) that you will be unable to derive value in life after a certain marked number of years.
A is categorically false and B is preposterous and without merit.
No, actually, you have violently missed the point.
Trauma is a form of psychological damage. People can have these experiences without significant psychological damage. In the future it may be possible to directly heal the psychological damage on the brain. You are assuming that will never be the case, and that is stupid.
There, spelled it out. Should be pretty easy to follow.
Poetic, but stupid. I do not accept your premise, and I think you are dead wrong - we can come to that level of understanding.
Also, contradictory - I thought you said an immortal would fall beneath the sting of time's whip? Indeed, that seemed to be your entire point.
And immortals don't?
Are you saying that you do not acknowledge the qualitative difference between sapient and nonsapient thought? If so, I suggest you acquaint yourself with it and get back to me.
Thus demonstrating a profound lack of understanding how the brain develops over time.
Permit me to educate you:
During early life, mental plasticity is very strong, allowing someone to acquire and play around with many different skillsets.
At around age 25 the brain's executive function settles and strengthens pathways that you practice routinely, allowing you to better improve the ones that you have. It becomes increasingly difficult to learn new things, but it never stops allowing you to form new pathways.
If we're proposing an immortal whose age stops around 25 or so, ie peak growth, then they will have maximum mental capacity with mental plasticity superior to a middle aged person and inferior to a child. That's a pretty good place to be at.
I have to come back to this one because it is monumentally stupid.
You are saying that it is a fact that an immortal will forget the value of a mortal.
"A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience."
I would love, love to see where you found the case study on immortals demonstrating this fact of which you are so proud. This is 100% opinion, and fairly garbage opinion at that.
Is that a "fact", too? Goodness. I guess that being contra-indicated by me and who knows how many other people has no bearing on your ability to discern what is your overblown opinion from a verifiable, objective fact.
3077193
You're aware that I can't actually die in a video game in any meaningful way unless I'm playing Hardcore mode in some Diablo clone, right?
The goal of anything is arbitrarily assigned by you when we play games we adopt the narrative of an outside party. The goal becomes defeat the dragon, or endlessly grind in some MMO until you have better gear, etc. I mean jesus christ your fucking example is a medium where, in an MMORPG, you don't die, you basically get knocked out and carried off. You in fact, cannot die. People continue to pour hours and hours into these games, often neglecting their lives here, because death doesn't factor into how valuable an experience is to you.
Most high schools don't teach psychology, I can see that yours didn't.
What does this have to do with your argument?
... So your argument is that death doesn't have value unless it's permanent? I really don't think that's the case, since early conceptions of Death were more a force of change rather than an actual permanent thing. Like Death the tarot card, you're probably one of those people who take it literally, aren't you?
Oh yeah, 'cause the treatment we give our soldiers is celebrated as a the pinnacle of modern achievement.
Oh wait, no it's not, it's backwards as fuck and dependent on a culture that refuses to accept modern psychologies manual for psychological diagnoses.
I nearly drowned in the ocean when I was four, and frequently have nightmares about it. I also continue to swim in the ocean when I visit the beach. Thus I've overcome it.
Not those things, if we use the mortal version of the brain in an immortal body, as you're proposing.
And plenty of them will, if you stop basing your conclusions on anecdotal evidence drummed up by a segment of society that is consistently shafted by the healthcare system, especially when mental illness is concerned.
If they are, it's only because you're failing to make a coherent one.
I'm fucking immortal, that doesn't sound very obsolete to me. I've got the wisdom of ages, hand picked from each decade, and presumably a brain youthful and healthy enough to keep trucking just like when I was 20, flexible and responsive to new ideas and capable of bucking tradition.
So either way, not obsolete.
I'd understand them, and stars willing, I'd find a way to elevate them to my condition. It's the least I could do in service to the ones I love.
I'm not though, unless I've a brain that decides to keep aging and aging while the rest of my body stays young. For someone so fucking interested in psychology, you sure do treat the brain and the mind as separate from the body. They're not, you're being fucking ridiculous.
Uh... yes? I did it all the time, it's how family units interact and form tight bonds. That's exactly what connecting fucking is.
Maybe you lack imagination then, I've never had a problem with it.
Just pretend I keep repeating shit about brains not aging and remaining as flexible as the current generation.
Oh Brother.
Your absolute lack of understanding for Politics, Psychology, and more, are just staggering.
How about this, since you're expressing jack shit with any coherency, maybe you should write your posts out in a google document, go away, and come back to read it in two weeks. Then you can see what you're saying from a place of separation, and see just how fucking nonsensical your statements are.
Actually women's rights are significantly better in parts of the middle east than they've been in thousands of years, and in places where it's not, we're having the conversation, that's a tremendous big step. Globalization means more and more people are interacting, socializing, and connecting with one another.
Feminism isn't dead in the water, your argument is.
It's not all that extreme, though. I've had entire communities move from the middle east right into my neighborhood, we became friends, hung out together, and even celebrated each other's company. Your theory that we're oil and water is just moot.
It's actually leveling off.
Anyway, Brain, Body, thing. Fuck.
[Citation Needed]
And yet, people are doing it, they're becoming part of the global community.
Wait a minute, Rebirth?
Fuck, you're religious as it gets, aren't you? You're not talking about death as in, the cessation of existence, you mean something quite a bit fucking different, then? We should probably agree on our definition of Death before we debate its value, you think?
Why would they be unable to understand death when it keeps robbing them of those they love? They'd know death far better than any mortal being would, because they'd have experienced it vicariously.
Also, again, mind, body, same fucking thing.
Nope, the thrill comes from adrenaline, which your body produces in extreme situations. If you skydive enough you'll experience no thrill, as you'll develop a resistance to the phenomena. Just cool it for a few hundred years, it'll be fine.
What happened to the tearful immortal who keeps falling in love with mortals? I've never personally fallen in love with an ant, because there is nothing in there for me to connect with. You misunderstand things so completely that it's frustrating repeating myself.
Also I don't stomp on anthills, it makes me feel like shit, and I feel wretched whenever I see a drowned cat in a ditch somewhere after it rains.
Fuck - I feel sad when I see inanimate objects forsaken and discarded. When I pick something at the grocery store, I cannot put it back for something else because that would mean I cared so little for it that I abandoned it.
So I'm sorry that I'm more empathetic than you, but your case still doesn't hold.
Actually you're talking bullshit conjecture picked up from a Summer Blockbuster, we're talking documented observations.
And if I'm not a Christian, how can I possibly have a moral compass? It's just impossible!
The actual quote is that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And yes, I do disagree with that, scarcity corrupts because it denies something of value to people. Death creates a scarcity on life, therefor death corrupts.
3077335
Solana already covered this, but you're mistaking "love" for "lust" there. They are very different things.
3077445
tl;dr, you're stringing together fairy dust with fancy words and trying to sell me a bridge.
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I am aware of the population bottleneck. The problem is you making unwarranted assumptions regarding DMT and humans breeding. Point in fact, we have not significantly evolved in that period of time - 70,000 years is less than a blink of an eye in human evolution.
I am also aware of DMT. The problem is you are wrong about its effects - it is only hypothesized to exist within humans and cause dreams, neither of these have been adequately proven.
And if it ever comes to pass that the planet is exterminated and I have no hope of reprieve, well! In the extremely unlikely event that I survive the initial catastrophe, it's unlikely that I'll have the ability to survive on my own thereafter so I won't actually have a choice about immortality.
Yeah, did you miss where I was talking about technology?
I also pointed out that people can survive and recover from traumatic experiences, which implies that technology to affect the brain can fix it.
Cannot heal the damage, indeed. I might as well be talking to a 19th century floozy about vaccines.
Solana also made excellent points about healing trauma that you completely ignored, by the way, which also definitively prove you wrong, no less.
You're not entirely cognizant of how human brains structure reward, are you? I highly suggest you read Solana's posts in greater detail.
Humans are quite good at tricking themselves into finding thrills and values without the need for high-falutin' nonsense.
Let me lay this out for you:
A: Being immortal will lead to a God Complex
B: Having a God complex will make you value people less
ergo people who are Immortal will value people less.
There's a little problem with your logic there - namely that you have an unproven assumption!
With equal logical power I state this:
A: An immortal will always develop great compassion
B: Those with great compassion have deep and abiding sympathy for those less fortunate
C: Therefore an immortal will have a deep and abiding sympathy for those less fortunate.
This is absolutely correct - if I can prove the initial assumption. I cannot, and it is stupid, therefore the conclusion is stupid, rather like yours.
I said neither of those things, apparently a failure to read is endemic in this conversation.
I said they will have the capacity to learn of a human of whatever effective age they settle at. What about that was unclear to you?
Uh.
I think this speaks more to your personal issues than it does anything else. You have not convincingly made the case that an immortal would regard mortals as ants, you have not answered my earlier point about the difference between sapience and nonsapience, and you seem to think that loudly insisting that immortals will regard human beings as ants makes it true.
Find me an ant that can hold a conversation with me and I will show you an ant that I value. The reason we don't value ants like we do humans is because they do not possess the same qualities as humans which allow us to empathize with them.
And even then, you get adorable people like Solana who get really broken up about stomping anthills, because it is personally abhorrent.
I think the person deficient in empathy here is you, compadre.
Again, I have not conceded that the inherent value of life is lost by becoming immortal. You have not proven that and you apparently haven't the slightest idea how.
You point to "well something that's infinite obviously has no value" which is only true in the sense of the purest economic sense. We are human beings with human foibles and human preoccupations - things that allow us to derive value from something other than apparent scarcity.
Again, I highly suggest you read Solana's comments, she has a far better grasp on this crap than you do.
While I'm at it, your bit about politicians is cute and all, but you do realize that's not universal and that politicians are themselves complex human beings with a great deal of personal variation, right?
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I'll keep this short and simple.
I'm going to step away from this discussion.
I just sort realized how much I was letting myself get way into invested in what is beyond impossible. Yes, impossible because everything will die once the universe does. To settle the argument from escalating from there, yes, if an immortal were to remove itself from this universe before the universe collapses on itself, it can continue living but then it is no longer an immortal of this universe and thus has ceased to exist.
I'm not conceding on my points, not saying that we should agree to disagree or even try finding a median between.
To answer the question of religion because I offhandedly mention "rebirth," no, I'm not religious. I really did take AP Psychology and AP Philosophy in high school, among every other AP course I could take especially physics. Leave it at that in regards to my religious stance.
I'm also getting way too invested in a matter that ties into the show which was confirmed to be wrong, AKA Twilight is effectively not immortal, especially considering she was never meant to be an Alicorn in the first place, hell, only Celestia and Luna are the only two who are officially listed as "Immortal Alicorns" and that may only be in regards to the life span of their Star and Moon respectively.
I'm not trying to take the moral high ground or pull the pants on head retarded argument of "being the better man" but this is just getting way out of hand. The time I spent writing this dribble of mine could have been spent actually doing something I enjoy far more, writing shit that people actually enjoy. And while I can't exactly speak for either of you, I doubt either of you have much desire to do the same.
No, this was not an act of trolling or any other asinine childish act, it just hit me light a fucking freight train that a massive internet debate or immortality, something so beyond theoretical that any points brought up about it may or may not hold as much water as a bucket with a hole in it, was all started by, well, this. Hell, well all may be wrong or right considering that now I've removed myself, I've sort of realized we're all looking at this from a perspective of how we all deal with death and life on our own.
So, honestly, I'm sorry. Lets leave it at this.
You're saying that Life is the only thing with value, and it's not. We've surpassed the point where all we care about is living. People who have jobs, like me, who have just enough to survive are not happy, because there is more that we value than simply existing. Art, social interacts, etc. You keep pointing them out with your following point -
You're still making a non-sensical argument, we're not playing video games because one day it will be impossible. We play them because they are challenging and engaging. A mortal existence doesn't make your life more challenging, it puts an expiration date on it. If a game has a monthly fee it's not more enjoyable by virtue of the fact I have something to lose. The market is illustrating that.
Thrill is born from impulses and chemical reactions in the brain, which are triggered by patterns of repetition and engagement, essentially we get a kick out of learning and planning, because it was evolutionary beneficial to get passionate about innovations and honing our skills. Video games trick us into satisfying these urges.
Death isn't a setback here, they're completely different things. You keep pointing out how they're not the same, but remain oblivious to it. By your own arguments death has no value in video games because you didn't lose anything, except maybe some progress? But even then that's quickly becoming not a thing. Even your precious Dark Souls has save points constantly.
Unless the gameplay was a redeeming factor, and thus you had fun. If the gameplay was awful and the story was afwful, you're a masochist for getting to the end. Typically speaking I don't play games I'm not enjoying.
And when I play games where permanent death is an option, I don't select that, because I don't enjoy it. The only value I can find in that is bragging rights, and that just doesn't interest me. It doesn't interest a lot of people.
Your argument is that death lends value to life therefor death has value, but you're not countering our argument, which is that in the absence of death there are plenty of other things that lend value to life. That's pretty self-evident, people, human beings, do it all the time. It's part of adapting and surviving. That's what we're built to do, survive, and value our survival. We don't need death to do that, it's part of our psychology.
In the absence of scarcity you will still find other ways to find value in it. An example would be people who have no shortage of food. They don't stop caring about food, they spend more on food than ANYONE ELSE. Value becomes a matter of quality, not quantity. In the absence of death, life would also become a matter of quality over quantity.
We're not missing the point, we're arguing that your point doesn't exist. Pain isn't cumulative until you break down completely, because your brain is built to mitigate the issue. Before long you will be miserable that those people died, but it will become an associative feeling. It doesn't stack, your wall is set in magnitude, you'd just adding names to the list.
And don't lapse into your bullshit about how the names don't matter if they're all part of the same feeling, rather than their own individual misery, because that's also not how that works.
Suicide is not a mental disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder is not a condition that exists. PTSD is a condition that exists because of 'sudden' trauma that occurs before the brain has time to properly mitigate it, and can be treated, regardless of what your anecdotal evidence has to say on the subject.
You're insinuating that Anthropology, and to a lesser degree Psychology, have no ability to understand the behaviors and feelings of other peoples, which is demonstrably wrong.
Also morals aren't purely taught, or there would never be someone who was taught in the first place to pass it on. Unless you're going to tell me the Bible gave mankind morality, and that's the only way someone can have a proper set. Also, if morals beliefs, etc, were only taught, they wouldn't evolve over time, We'd all have the same culture we started with and we'd all keeping slaves and treating women as property still.
Yes, I can, because I'm a human being and they're a human being, and our principles and behaviors come from the same place, the same source, the same mutual stomping ground that can lead to disparate very different peoples telling the same stories across thousands of years.
Uh... No, that's ridiculous, we know exactly why it was burned, and that kind of fervent belief doesn't require much effort to find. It exists in our own culture as well, but we've got more preventive measures because that kind of impulsive behavior shouldn't be tolerated.
Make a TV series ala Breaking Bad about it, and people will understand it. It's human nature to empathize it's part of our pattern recognition instincts.
Hey! Guess who grew up with born again christians who wouldn't let her own Harry Potter books, made her go to church three times a week, took her out of public school and put her into a religious charter school, and told her gays are fags? Guess who absolutely doesn't believe in Jesus, doesn't attend church, finds nothing of value in the bible, happens to be transgender, and is fascinated by science, math and physics (redundant much?)
You are a huge fucking idiot. :D
Nothing you just said follows, you're spewing actual bullshit right now. You spend TWO FUCKING ENORMOUS POSTS talking about how the immortal will do NOTHING but suffer until they die. Now you're saying they can't understand anyone because they cannot suffer.
You need to check your fucking beliefs, because you don't even agree with yourself.
Essentially, but not really, because ants and humans don't get the same sensory input. A person who is mortal and a person who is immortal are absolutely not even the same issue.
If I eat one bowl of meatballs from a restaurant, and you eat three bowls of meatballs from the same restaurant, we can engage in meaningful discussion about the meatballs, fuck, you could even do that with another human being who has never eaten meatballs from there before, because they have sensory input to compare your experience to, and a language to express the experience.
Ants do not have any language that human beings can meaningfully engage with. They do not know what a meatball tastes like, they do not know what anything tastes like in a way that people can empathize with.
So you'll have difficult keeping old friends because you'll find they grow rigid in their thinking, depending on what age you're frozen at? Even that's not entirely true, because even at the age of 8, some of my best friends were in their 50s. And I do consider them friends far more than I considered them authorities, or elders.
You're doing some serious projecting here, sport.
Have fun with your deleted posts~ They're kind of here forever now!
3077580 Eh, as a roguelike player (DCSS, Brogue), (non-optional) permadeath *does* give your actions heightened meaning. In a good game, that is. There are a lot of bad games out there where whether you died is too dependent on luck over skill, or where each playthrough retreads the exact same content, or where progress is primarily dependent on grinding.
Anyway, it doesn't detract from your metaphor because of course, dying in a hilarious and incredibly preventable way is only a striking experience from the outside. Obviously IRL, when you die you don't get to restart the game, you're just dead. That sure takes the fun out of it.
A moving and meaningful post, definitely. Immortality does not have to automatically equal angst and misery; this is true.
I suppose that just makes it more strange to me, seeing as my personal approach to life runs almost opposite to the sentiments of this blog post:
Pain is perpetual to me, but it reminds me that I still live. Fear of what might not come after death keeps despair and depression thoroughly at bay. Of course, perpetual pain and embracing my fear didn't do much good for my sense of "happiness", but eh.
It could be worse; not being able to properly laugh anymore, for instance. A life of pain and fear isn't so bad if I can still rofl at a good joke, pun, or GMod video, right?? In the words of the TF2 Spy:
(while laughing) "Laughter really IS the best medicine!!!" (laughs harder)
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I kind of feel that a lot of the immortality angst comes from younger fans and authors, who quite simply lack the perspective that living, and losing, and discovering new things and people gives.
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That's a good point, I absolutely forgot things like Our Darker Purpose. That can be a bit of a pain in the rear, and you're right it's really more an example of how frustration and obstacles can encourage you to try again.
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http://goodmorningcelestia.tumblr.com/post/88214804584/if-she-was-immortal-i-suspect-timing-would-be#notes
Which is why I am very fond of this thing I linked earlier, 'cause it's almost painfully true.
3078378 It's so true! I would know.