What's more scary? The thought of death or existing forever?

Putting all religious and philosophical beliefs aside - which scenario seems of the more frightening of the two to you?

Death? Or existing in this reality forever? At first, the existing forever part didn't seem to bad... until I began of think of some insane number, like billions of years. That... scares the hell out of me, more then thinking about an existence that is like a deep sleep - completely neutral.

The optimal existence in my opinion would be similar to our sleep cycles. Everyday we go to sleep and take a break from reality. If we didn't sleep, guarantee we'd all go insane. The best existence would be one where after every life, you'd take a very long break (death), and come back without your previous identity. I mean, the way I see it, even paradise forever would get boring.

I would love to live forever, as long as it would be as good as the life I've had so far or better. The idea of eternal nonexistence seems really depressing to me, but I know that when I cease to exist I won't care one way or the other because I won't exist. But in being alive and being genetically programmed to want to continue to be alive, I would love to figure out a way to be immortal. I could never get tired of this.

Yea as long as your not like stuck there, forever staring at a ceiling because you can't move. That would be horrible. A million years staring at the same thing. Now if it like now where your in good shape and you can run around and play, then heck I would take living forever. I can guarantee I can find something fun to do, no matter how long I live for.

There's no way I'd want to live forever. I'd rather be non-existant.

personally, I find both to be exciting, and not scary at all.

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Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I could never get tired of this.

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Don't understimate the length of eternity.

After enough trillions of trillions years, you will have played all games of chess (10^40 possible positions), and Go (10^170 possible positions), read all the possible books (Lets round it to 30^1500000 for 500-pages "books" with all possible letters arrangement, even if they don't make sense), seen all movies, heard all music. Have engaged in all possible discussions and arguments. Climbed all shapes of mountains, done all possible dance moves, visited all possible alien planets.

You could still dive a bit more deeper in a Mandelbrot set or compute the next digit of Pi, but... that's not very exciting. (And all the Mandelbrot images discernable by your eyes were already in the "possible movies" that you already saw. Twice.).
The only possible way to stay sane would be to lose enough of your memory every millions years. Which would be cheating.


The only "good" way I see to live in eternity is if time itself disappears: "eternity" or "one instant" becoming the same thing.

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Don't understimate the length of eternity.

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Exactly. I wouldn't mind a few life-times of what I have right now.. but I don't know if I could do it forever. I mean like yeah I find myself entertained pretty easily these days, but I've been only been alive for what? 20 years? And my brain has only been "adult developed" for... 1-2 years? 20 years is nothing compared an enternity. 20 years is like a pico-second (10^-12) compared to a millenium. I could see myself being entertained for the next 10,000 years due to human advancement. But once we have visited every corner of the universe, seen everything there is to see, done everything there is to do... and let's not forget - it wouldn't be a great life all the way through. There would be periods of great stress. Periods where a person doesn't just experience one mid-life crisis, but many.

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The only "good" way I see to live in eternity is if time itself disappears: "eternity" or "one instant" becoming the same thing.

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This is one possibly scientific ending of the universe :) Weather we end in the Big Crunch, of Big Rip, time will end, and singularity will be reached. What exactly goes on then, I could not even begin to think about.

if you can think of a way to remember all those years, I will be impressed. I can quite happily read the same book many times provided I wait a few years before starting again, so as to forget several points of the story.

If the Twilight Zone has taught us nothing else, it's that living forever can be a horrible prospect! :)

I posted this in another thread, but it applies even moreso to here. This great quote from the movie Troy that really inspires me:

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Death is what makes life so valuable.

Exactly keeper. So you read every book there ever was, does that mean you stop reading? No because the great ones are worth reading again. And after not having read a story for a 1000 years its almost new all over again. Besides you can always start writing you own books, making up your own music, your own dance. After you done everything, you can always create more, and as long as there are more people in the world they will also be creating new things.

Besides its not like your in a rush or anything. You can casually take your time. Lets take your example, if your read only one book a year you will have new books for 30^1500000 years. And at that pace its not to horrible to go back and read the good ones again. Then you can always go off an explore space, you have time to figure out space travel if no one else can. Go and try to figure out which is more infinite space or time?

And if your the lazy person who always put things off untill later? Forget about it, you will waste millions of years just putting things off. "Ohh I got all the time in the world, I will do that in the next century."

In a place where you can live an infinite amount of time, there is an infinite amount of stuff to do. You just need to figure out what you want to do in that time, but since your has all the time in the world to figure it out, its not a problem.

I think death is alot scarier than existing forever. If we do exist forever then it will be at higher levels than we exist in now so we can't even comprehend the kind of stuff there is to do. There's always the possibility of reincarnation or being a guardian angel or watcher. Even if it is terrible it would still be better than disappearing and never making an impact again. But just in case there is no afterlife, I'm gonna start reading Harry Potter right now so I can finish it (it may take eternity, its huge:o)

I would love to exist forever I'd turn down almost any amount of money to live forever cause I'm the type of person who notices every secound ticking away my whole life I've hated wasting time, and I always feel in a hurry.

although in the small possiblity that I would get somehow mentaly ill from being here too long and go crazy it'd be kind of nice to beable to just shut myself off, ofcourse I think we all would go with existing forever if we could choose when to go, though serously I need all the life I can get I think I would take jake la lannes life style if he could live to 200

Live forver, eventually I could figure out a way/build a machine to erase my memories and then could re learn and experiance things over and over again.

If you have the power to forget things, enjoy a movie every year. Then there would be nothing scary about immortality. If you can't forget, that would get boring in like, 100.000 years.

I'd want to live forever.

As long as this forum continued! I'd always have something great to do :)

You people and your memory erasers bending the option :p

Don't forget, given infinite time you will hit great highs in your life, but you will also hit many points where you will have suicidal thoughts! Maybe not in 100 years, or 1000 years, but getting through those times would be tough - that would be my main concern of living forever.

I would definitely NOT want to live forever. Death (and the idea of finite timespans) is an integral aspect of our human experience. If you truly had infinite time at your disposal, I don't know what "time" would even mean, and I think our experience would be radically changed. Have you ever tried to relive a great memory and it just wasn't as good the second time? I feel like immortality would inevitably lead to trying to relive things that were only so wonderful because they were one-time events. Life is improvisation, facing the unexpected, reveling in a moment because you know it's one of a limited number of moments you have. I think these quotes relate:

"There's no story. It's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told." (Waking Life)

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." (W.M. Lewis)

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

And here's an excerpt from a conversation I had once: Is value derived from terms of time? If you knew you had all the time in the world, if you were immortal, would it change the order in which you did things? Would there still be such thing as "priorities" (like when you say, "I can't wait for X"). Do we let some things take precedence because of the threat of death? Would you still make time to be with someone right now if you knew you would live forever and could theoretically see them infinite times in the future? I think it's critical that, limited by time, we do have to sacrifice some things to make time for others.

Finally, I think we only fear death out of a fear of the unknown. We fear the unknown more than the scariest products of our imagination. And life is all we seem to consciously know.

The thought of dying and becoming non-existant scares the shite out of me. I really hope that when I get older I lose this fear.

i think existing forever. sometimes i think if there is everlasting life after death, then what the fuck would i do forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

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Originally Posted by pokilty

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

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That's a very good point.

Its not death that scares me, it's how I might get to that point. That's the bit that scares me. Occasionally I get the creeps thinking about it as I've got a bit closer than I wanted to, to actually finding out.

Everlasting life might be great but when everything else stops living or blinks out at the end of existence you are left with a big problem.

A long, good, fulfilled life is possibly the best we could wish for.

Regards

Ric

I'd choose death. This reality sucks man! I believe what comes next, our human brains can't even comprehend at this point. I personally don't believe we just stop existing. So, yeah, i'd choose death..gotta continue the journey man.

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Putting all religious and philosophical beliefs aside - which scenario seems of the more frightening of the two to you?

Death? Or existing in this reality forever? At first, the existing forever part didn't seem to bad... until I began of think of some insane number, like billions of years. That... scares the hell out of me, more then thinking about an existence that is like a deep sleep - completely neutral.

The optimal existence in my opinion would be similar to our sleep cycles. Everyday we go to sleep and take a break from reality. If we didn't sleep, guarantee we'd all go insane. The best existence would be one where after every life, you'd take a very long break (death), and come back without your previous identity. I mean, the way I see it, even paradise forever would get boring.

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Your post got me thinking of this show i saw where this guy kept on trying to commit suicide but he would just NEVER die.

I forget how it ended though.

anyway I find your idea of reincarnation very attractive and that's the only way i would like to live forever.

I would probably go mad if i was just "me" forever.

Living forever is really scary to me, while death doesnt scare me one bit. I really couldnt imagine living forever, It would be way too much, Every day i'd go crazier and crazier, knowing the days will never end.

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Originally Posted by Sleepy_Brown

I'd choose death. This reality sucks man! I believe what comes next, our human brains can't even comprehend at this point. I personally don't believe we just stop existing. So, yeah, i'd choose death..gotta continue the journey man.

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And if you're wrong?

Okay, you can't feel sorry (you're gone then).

Still, I don't see any down side in eternal life. As long as you can still enjoy a movie you already seen greatly, after it has been a while. There are so many different things you could do, I don't think it would be very boring ever.

Yay 4 eternal life.

I'd pick death.

I don't care that I'm going to die, even if it means that I never exist in any form in any place again. It's an inevitability, some people never think about it, some people turn to religion and others deal with it.

Living forever would be cool though. I mean, I do really like myself. Let's say supposedly there's reincarnation, I almost think I would opt to just be this me forever, you know?

However, we're just a pale blue dot, you know? Out struggles are infinitely tiny an insignificant when looking at the size of the universe. Time is the same way, we are just a pin-prick. I think one has to get used to being unbelievably tiny and short lived and just live in the present tense all the time.

Two things from me on this -
First, and most light-heartedly, I remember having a dream that when I died, I reincarnated as a new baby, only I retained all the knowledge from my previous life. This way I could live a whole new life, experience new things, and make new friends, without having to forget my previous self and all the things I've learned from it.
But most importantly, i've thought about death a LOT, especially in my younger years - and no, not in the emo way, the religious one. (Sorry I know you said not to bring in religious stuff, but it's sorta not fair since I don't believe that death is just a "deep sleep")
In my belief, when I die I'll go to heaven and be with the grace of God and live forever there.
But then I thought:
"Wait, eternal paradise? ...do I really want that? I mean, it's nice and all, but just IMAGINE having everything perfect and the same FOR...EV...ERR.....no end, in millions of millions of millions of years, there will still be no end.
TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS of yearsx100000000000000000000000^99999999999999999 will occur. And I'll be alive in heaven, sipping tea with Lincoln. And time will just be the same as it was when I arrived.
Non-existent.
There'd be no challenge, there'd be no pain to go through, I won't have to overcome any obstacles and become a better person out of it.
At least, that's my view of heaven. I'm hoping to GOD it'll be different. Bliss is great for a while. But I need to bleed.

If i got to choose which plane of existence to live forever on, I'd choose Earth rather than Heaven.

I can't even stand the thought of living another year...eternity would be hell.

Existing forever is for me infinitely more scary than dying one day. Allthough as I currently see it our fates are both. Well there's no possible way to know for sure, but I'll figure that one out in time. ;)

Living forever seemed to me to be the most frightening of the two because, If I think back to when I didn't exist, that doesn't seem that bad. However, then I remembered that I could forget things, and my feelings changed for a moment. I was dreading the stagnancy that would inevitably come from having infinite life in a finite universe. However, perpetual memory loss seems like a loop hole to this hell. But then again, this world surely isn't going to last forever. Something is bound to happen eventually. People will die off, hell life itself may die off...but you wouldn't. The world may freeze over, and you be stuck in those conditions forever...fun. Or maybe the world will turn molten, and there you are burning forever in endless oceans of lava. Or maybe the earth just gets destroyed somehow, hurling you into the infinite depths of space for all of eternity. Check out this website for a collection of doomsday scenarios. Could you imagine existing forever if/when some of that shit happens? Living forever seems like a surefire recipe for hell, eventually. Infinite boredom is the least of your problems, in fact, you’d be lucky if all that happened to you was boredom. Shit.

After a while the conditions wouldn't seem so bad though, you get used to them like back pain, or other things that i'm to lazy to come of with simliar situations for.

Are we talking immortality-style living forever? Like, in 10,000,000 years, I'm still the same age I am now? Because that leads me to believe that I don't have to worry about dying, which means I don't need to work at surviving, which means things like breathing and eating are now optional. I could deal with that.

Still, death doesn't scare me, nor does eternity, but they both did back when I was an agnostic.

Well living forever as a middle class teenager would be easy... I could do that for a LONG time... but we don't stay middle class teenagers. I'm already passed that, since I turned 20, and I sure wouldn't mind getting another decade of being 18. But the forever part, I don't know...

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Living forever would be cool though. I mean, I do really like myself. Let's say supposedly there's reincarnation, I almost think I would opt to just be this me forever, you know?

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Sure - as long as I have no recollection of my previous life ;) Could you just imagine sitting here right now knowing what you are doing you've "been there done that" millions and millions of times!? It's like... have you ever listened to music before so much, that you just get so sick of the song and actually can't stand listening to it? Well, after a year you might be able to listen to it one or two times, but it gets old again, FAST. Like the Linkin Park Hybrid Theory album - I can't to some of those songs for more then 20 seconds (not counting the ones for nostalgia, and I still get bored of them quickly) and I haven't listened to them in years. If that applied to everything...

I guess not dwelling on something for to long would be KEY for a happy immortality. Move on to the next thing before you lose interest.

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Originally Posted by Neruo

And if you're wrong?

Okay, you can't feel sorry (you're gone then).

Still, I don't see any down side in eternal life. As long as you can still enjoy a movie you already seen greatly, after it has been a while. There are so many different things you could do, I don't think it would be very boring ever.

Yay 4 eternal life.

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Haha don't you think that eventually, after some 150 years of living, you've seen it all? What can ever really be new to you in this life? We've all seen how history repeats itself over and over again, no matter how much we would like to think we progress as a human race.

I know alot of old people that are content with their lives and the idea of dying soon. I think it would be logical that, at their age, I would feel the same way.

Somehow I feel as though, wether I die or live forever, I will be able to deal with it anywayz. I know that joy is something that comes from within. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I'll manage either way. Allthough the thought of living forever, or existing eternally in some afterlife is infinitely more disturbing and confusing than just being gone one day I'm sure I will be able to cope with it and find my peace.

I don’t think it would be likely that you would be bored even if you lived forever. Because the very state of boredom depends very much on yourself. People can find the most simple things fascinating; it’s all quite subjective. I don’t know with what sort of side dishes this immortality would come with and no one actually defined it precisely, but I don’t think the immortality would make you omnipotent. So you would always have something to improve (yourself, skills, surroundings etc.), new knowledge to gather and new approaches to come up with. And like some already said: Not to mention the fact that the world is constantly changing.
But I think a forever would only be tolerable (and perhaps enjoyable) if you had some aids or abilities. E.g. Not getting physically hurt or damaged by anything. Imagine being in an accident or being diagnosed with a chronic debilitating disease without dying. Living forever with pain or severe limitations would not be worth it. Whatever the limitations would be (physical, mental, dimensional, whatever).

But if it came down to it I would choose death, simply because my beliefs give me hope that there is something so much better than this. Even this as a forever. (i.e. even what this place and the people in it (including me) could be if they were given forever to perfect it and themselves). I have faith in the human race yes, but not that much. :roll:

And also: What would the journey be like and what would its point be if you never reached your destination?

SKA: Even though history and people would repeat themselves, they would still be unique and thus new to you. History would be very boring if people discovered exactly the same things and constructed and destroyed exactly the same things over and over again. In reality no event would ever be an exact repetition of something else.
I think the reincarnation and perpetual memory loss thoughts were very interesting (I can't recall who posted them). It would be like having both forever and death with endless chances to start over …It would also provide the possibility of making your every life unique if you retained your knowledge but reincarnated as something else. It would grant you the gift of seeing the same things from a totally new point of view. However Ethen had some good points about the dying surroundings too. The only way to keep yourself happy then would be to have some ability like flying so you could find new planets or something (too scifi I know), and because you don’t really have those abilities life and eternity wouldn’t be so pleasant. In conclusion I would still choose death. Being immortal and omnipotent is a different debate altogether then.:P

Although I realize people are very passionate about their views and are going to disagree with me: Please be gentle, this is only my third post… :)
Oh, and sorry for the beliefs part. I just don’t think I could’ve answered the question sensibly if I hadn’t included it.:embarrassed:

The only way eternal life wouldn't be hell is if this world we live in now stays this way forever. But it won't. Sooner or later it is going to change, or perhaps even end all together. It may be in 1000 years, or in 1 trillion, but eventually human life is going to die out, or the planet is going to have a dramatic climate shift, or the sun is going to burn out and turn into a black hole, or something. Odds are that you will end up in a situation that isn't good, and you'll be in that situation for a LONG time, perhaps indefinitely.

And remember, just because you can't die doesn't mean you are invulnerable to pain, extreme heat/cold, psychosis, or even aging...

death is scary because I don't know when it will happen to me.

I used to think that existing forever would be horrible if you had to live by yourself...but now I think an eternity with the dimwits on this planet would be even more revulting. I would rather not have to deal with them...unless I could be selective about who I would have to share my world with, I wouldn't want to live forever.

I personaly thing that death will be the most interesting thing you can experience.

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Originally Posted by Bonsay

I personaly thing that death will be the most interesting thing you can experience.

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Go show my enemies something interesting for me will you?

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Originally Posted by Sandform

Go show my enemies something interesting for me will you?

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I totally agree.

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Originally Posted by Sandform

Go show my enemies something interesting for me will you?

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I don't have too. Also I meant it would be interesting to the dieing person, not you.

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Originally Posted by Bonsay

I personaly thing that death will be the most interesting thing you can experience.

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This is what i meant to say i totally agree to!

Losing your memory does keep life pretty interesting. Being thrust into existence out of a vagina covered in placenta with no knowledge of where you are or who you are and only the minimalist of motor skills would make anyone cry. It kind of sucks, and life can be very enjoyable but also pretty awful.

Supposedly depending on you state of mind at death there are tons of different planes one could end up in. You could end up fighting for demon kings or chilling with nymphs or in heaven or in hell or even higher than heaven... supposedly.

If only there was a way we could control our minds like we do our computers-
Deleting worthless things and savoring important "files".

I dunno, that way we could chop out all but the most IMPORTANT things in our lives - that way we can retain our personality and our character without having to sabatoge our minds to an ETERNITY of knowledge.


...I'm just wondering, is it possible..at ALL...for the brain to run out of "memory"? Is it at all possible to learn too much stuff and wind up frying your brain or something??

I think I've said this before but, I would like my brain to be separated from my body one day and put into a cybernetic body. My name gives that away (Cyborg Mech Sniper). I would like to be free of my human desires for sex, food, sleep, etc. Most likely, this would extend my life to a reasonable range of several thousand years. I feel those of you who say living forever would be cool aren't really taking to account how many years you would be living and all that could go terribly, terribly wrong. You'd be living forever. multiply 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 by 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000 and then multiply that thousands upon thousands more times by 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000
Forever is a LONG time and if you are thrown into space one day, you're screwed for a couple billion years. The fact is, none of us will be living forever and all we can do is try to extend our lives to push back the date.

boredom is not something that could possibly occur.

despite the first post,....

this threads reply posts rely heavily on beliefs.

once you die, do you think you are going to retain materialistic beliefs such as fear?

I remember in Interview With a Vampire one vampire told another one he planned to make him spend eternity in a box. If he was talking about a very small box where the vampire would be balled up forever, I would definitely choose death over that. But I would choose immortality if I could always live like I do now.

As a martial artist, I like the idea of constantly being able to improve myself more and more for eternity. I mean, if there is some sort of limit to your body due to genetic codes then dont you think by some time you would figure out how to surpass those limits?

On the negative side, you would constantly lose any people whom you felt attached to, anyone you ever loved. This would lead you to become devoid of emotion in the long run I think. Say after loosing 2 or 300 people you really cared about over the course of generations.

Given that option. I will defiantly pass on when the time comes.