• cfamommy said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I don't now how long I'd want to live, but I know it wouldn't be "forever". I think there would come a time when, as hard as we might try to keep up, we'd find that the world had moved beyond us. It would just change beyond our mental capacity (or desire) to keep up, no matter how young our bodies might be. A lot of who we are is formed by the world we grow up in; what happens when that world has been left behind? That said, it would be nice to grow old without the mental and physical health problems that plague the elderly. To be able to age gracefully, without a body that deteriorates as the spirit matures; without a brain that could betray everything that a person has become and destroy every memory... yeah, that would be nice. I'd take that.

• Expendable said on Aug 06, 2006....

  There's this theory that if you had eternity to do something, you might not do it at all. Plus the only way you could control population is by making sure everyone got birth control pills, probably small doses in the food.

• LadyGamer said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I would accept a longer life if it meant being capable of seeing space travel for the common folk, and thus traveling in space. And sticking around to watch my line succeed in taking over the world would be nice too.

• narbeha1983 said on Aug 06, 2006....

  Ah, but there could be no line. Like Expendable said, the government would make it impossible to have babies, so we don't all starve to death due to overpopulation. So you have to choose between what's considered a normal life now, full of watching family grow and dying, or a life that is much longer and much more things for you to do.

• missb said on Aug 06, 2006....

  Me personally, I don't want to love forever. Sure it's a cool thing to be able to go back to when you're 20. But it's the same S*hit that you're going through. And I believe in sins. So I'd say that the longer you live, the more sins you make :/

• FriendsForever said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I don't want to be very old, just seeing my children finish their studies and knowing that they are prepared to face life by themselves is enough for me. I'm wishing that I will not be a burden to them. I'd rather die without causing anyone hardships.

• LadyGamer said on Aug 06, 2006....

  Ahh but I have already had my children. Should such a thing happen NOW...I WOULD have a line. An Amazonian society in texas. Doesn't THAT just give you chills?

• silverwhisper said on Aug 06, 2006....

  hell no, i wouldn't--not unless i could be assured of an equivalent supply for my wife. life w/out love, now that i have it, isn't living. ed

• LadyGamer said on Aug 06, 2006....

  Now you are just rubbing our noses in it ed.

• silverwhisper said on Aug 06, 2006....

  [shrug] i've decided to stop apologizing for being happy. ed

• LadyGamer said on Aug 06, 2006....

  Who asked you to? I'm just teasing you. You know I would never begrudge the happiness of my friends.

• silverwhisper said on Aug 06, 2006....

  sorry; it's humid and hence i'm a tad cranky. ed

• Zayda said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I wouldn't if it meant outliving the friends I love most.

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I fully intend to live forever. god does not want me in his/her mythological paradise. I am way too scary.

• LayaMaria said on Aug 06, 2006....

  who hasn't thought about it? I'm fascinated with the idea, I confess. Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" and "The Mummy", H. Rider Haggard's "She", Katherine Neville's "The Eight", Robert A. Heinlein's stories about Lazarus Long, even Natalie Babbitt's "Tuck Everlasting", to name a few books I've got on the subject. To have all the time in the world to do everything you want to do, to go everywhere you want to go, "to know that short of being dropped from an airplane nothing can hurt or kill you"... Sure it's good to think about it. ...but the downside is that you would have to control population because death rate would be low or nil, like Expendable says. Death is a way of ensuring the balance of nature, to make sure that the population doesn't get so large that it would not be able to support its own needs anymore. And wasn't it said that death is the next great adventure and that those who fear it are just afraid of moving on to see what's beyond life? "[b][i]You should not fear death, rather the unlived life. You need not live forever. You need only live.[/b][/i]" -[b][i]Father Tuck[/b][/i], to [b][i]Winnie[/b][/i], in the movie "[b][i]Tuck Everlasting[/b][/i]"

• Pinkdiva said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I love life. I would like to live forever so if there's some kind of medicine that I can take to make me live longer then I am up for it.

• JadeLondon said on Aug 06, 2006....

  I like the idea of being around longer, but not as long as age discrimination exists! And what if we don't have a job? Or social security? Sorry--according to some stupid statistics that came out a few years ago--I am among the first group of people who will not have any Social Security. My kids should just do away with me now--at least they would be paid. :)

• bipolarbear said on Aug 06, 2006....

  i love the idea of reversing aging. i want to look and feel 20 years young and have the wisdom of the age i am. what i do not want is to live any longer than is "normal" (maybe being wealthy and carefree would change that) if i had to choose when to die, i would never choose.. who would? that's a scary prospect. it would be suicide. laya, it's nice to think of having all of the time in the world do do all of the things and go all of the places you want to. but what if you can't afford to do so? so do you just live a longer life longing for that which you cannot have? ( im being a bit pessimistic tonight)

• TheNakedProfessor said on Aug 06, 2006....

  If I can live forever but it's in a world where the government can mandate birth control, I'll pass. It isn't how long you're here, it's how good being here is.

• FaithfulDisciple said on Aug 06, 2006....

  What a drab this world would be if everyone could live forever, the same faces with the same personalities wasting away the resources, of the earth? Perhaps death is a course of evolution to give way to new blood, fresh ideas, and to phase away the old and tired. Extended life for about ten years is fine but no more than that.

• LayaMaria said on Aug 07, 2006....

  bipolarbear: if you had all the time in the world, surely you could spend a small part of it amassing the means by which to do what you want in the remaining time you have... which is what we do with our lives anyway.

• metamorphoses said on Aug 07, 2006....

  Why not? What's the difference between here and there, nobody really knows, heaven is just a promise so we would always go to church. Life goes on, there is no death actually but just a change in physical form, the inner self remains the same and we carry our inner self wherever we go. Why not enjoy our life here as long as we can and make earth a heaven. Life here is better because we know what will happen when we wake up tomorrow, but when we die we really don't know what will happen, where we will go what we will be is all open to conjectures.

• JadeLondon said on Aug 07, 2006....

  LayaMaria: This is a total side note, but I saw your references to "The Vampire Chronicles" & "Tuck Everlasting"--all good books. You might like "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. A very good read. She has nice prose, like Rice.

• vini said on Aug 07, 2006....

  i think if given such a wish/choice/option... every average person would prefer to die tomorrow INSTEAD! this thread is reminding me of the movie: "death becomes her" hehe

• mrhowto said on Aug 07, 2006....

  I would love to live forever, but only if I could stay looking young and not get dementia - that obviously wouldn't be much fun. You would eb able to gain infinate knowledge, or as much as the human mind could fit into it and see life evolving right in front of you.

• madstorm said on Aug 07, 2006....

  Personally... I think the average Human Being should have a chance to live before they die. It's a wacky idea I know... the idea that the possession of that stuff called 'food' and that weird thing called 'water' should come BEFORE the possession of a Mercedes in the list of life's important things. Yeah I know... I'm weird. We here on Soulcast are rich beyond the average Human Beings wildest dreams. That's because of the 6+ billion people on this planet, the average one is poor and ill. Death is inevitable. How about the average Human being dying at a ripe old age with a smile on their face? ... instead of dying young at the hands of other people or starving to death. Yeah... I know... I told you it was wacky...

• lidstrom82 said on Aug 07, 2006....

  This is an intriguing discussion and a good question. It isn't a sin to want to live longer. Plus, sins don't add up more depending upon age. Otherwise, an 80 year old would be screwed compared to someone who died at age 40. Biblically, early dudes like Moses and Jacob lived well past 100 years. It's not "religiously wrong" to extend our lives. However, from a Christian perspective, living in this life "forever" isn't too desirable in some ways. Sure, you can keep staying here and serve others. But at some point, going to heaven for eternity, and living without pain, sin, and death, is much more desirable than living for hundreds of years. In the end, extending life can and probably will happen, as it has been doing. But "cheating death" is not only impossible, but is more often than not coming from the wrong motivations.

• LayaMaria said on Aug 07, 2006....

  I'm a Catholic, but was sort of agnostic during my adolescence (and it still shows). I guess deep down inside I still believe that whatever may come after death, we may never know it until we're there... you have to experience it to know it and all that. I'm not gonna say, there's heaven, or there's purgatory, or there's hell, or reincarnation. We never may be completely sure of what there is up until we actually find out what it is. The whole point is that we all want something of ourselves to live on after the physical shell is gone. And some of us may want immortality because we don't want to leave that physical shell. The vampires in the books always say, even immortality makes you jaded after a few thousand years. Guess that like Michael Curry (The Witching Hour, Anne Rice), we just have to believe that there's something good waiting for us beyond, otherwise everything we have believed in from the start would be a lie and all the imps of Hell may as well dance in the parlor. JadeLondon: since age 16 I have been fascinated by the whole immortality thing. I've read all the "Vampire Chronicles"... "Tale of the Body Thief" is a good one, sort of has the same premise as the movie "Constantine". I've also read "Journey of Souls", I forget by whom, but it was supposed to be about research into the theory of reincarnation. Ever read Katherine Neville's "The Eight"? Chess, adventure, history and immortality all together in one book. [i][b]"You just want to stir things up and make them boil over and see if God would come and drag you down by the hair."[/i][/b] -from [b]The Tale of the Body Thief, Anne Rice[/b]

• TheNakedProfessor said on Aug 08, 2006....

  Just a reminder: "nature" invented death. In the beginning, cells merely split and kept on "self-cloning." It wasn't until advanced, multi-cellular creatures evolved that "death" became a necessary way of sustaining larger lifeforms, for whom individual cells were willingly sacrificed. Life started death in the first place. Can't be all THAT bad.

• TheNakedProfessor said on Aug 08, 2006....

  Footnote: since "death" depends on the expendibility of individual cells, biological "immortality" for individuals as whole beings is quite possible, with some tweaking. If technology can allow us to live healthier for however long we live, that's a good thing. I'll grow to be 28 and stay there until a tree falls on me.

• Indiefilm said on Aug 11, 2006....

  I would choose to live longer, but not forever. (at least as far as a physical body is concerned) Knowing that I had a couple hundred years (200-300), as long as I wasn't hit by a bus, would be cool. As for the population control bit... I think that people underestimate how many people could fit on this planet... and how much food could potentially be produced... As well, there is a simple way to solve that... you want to live longer, sign up to colonize another planet / moon / etc... I.E. provide regeneration / prolonging life treatments to those willing to leave the planet.

• yeahbutnobut said on Aug 13, 2006....

  Live forever? WTF for? I'm having a hard enough time dealing with 70-80 years. Live forever, you must be high.

• paidinblood said on Aug 13, 2006....

  I agree, I'm having a hard enough time as it is, and I'm still 18 so I have a long way to go..

• mymave2006 said on Sep 07, 2006....

  there is a real eternity God is offering us .... if we choose to be righteous then you can live with God forever and ever ....try reading the book of Revelation chapter 20-22.
  

• lidstrom82 said on Sep 07, 2006....

  I wouldn't want to live forever on Earth - our bodies aren't made to last hundreds of years of wear and tear. That's why I believe in Heaven, because you get a new body that won't decay like this one, you're healed of the illnesses of this life, and "forever" isn't like a jaded vampire walking this mess of an Earth for a few millennia - it's the ultimate party. I mean, you get Jesus turning water into wine up there (like a holy keg), and there's nothing but joy and happiness. An eternity in bliss is worth living a life for God for 70-90 years, including the suffering. With all that, I wouldn't be too concerned with extending my life here, but would not reject the chance at a natural long life.
  

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