this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
183 points (96.9% liked)

Asklemmy

44279 readers
1208 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.

Edit 1:

  • Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.

Edit 2:

  • Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you'll miss people and lose them.
(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

You'd procrastinate things for 100s of years, until at one point you're simply no longer able to do it. Wanted to domesticate a saber-tooth cat some day? Too bad, they're extinct now. Wanted to visit the baths in ancient Rome? Well, it is not the same Rome anymore, and all the baths' floors are cold.

[–] CuddlyCassowary 8 points 2 months ago

Based on your question, you might dig the book β€œBoat of a Million Years.” The author put quite a bit of thought into just that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_of_a_Million_Years

[–] Crashumbc 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Getting imprisoned for thousands of years unable to get out.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

The disappointment of experience winning lifetime supply of something but that would eventually turn into a lie

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If other people are also immortal, the awkwardness of all of them eventually becoming your exes

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just depression in general. I don't want to live one lifetime, let alone never being able to die.

If you're immortal in a body that isn't broken then that might be a different story, but you'd still grow to love people only to have to lose them and go through that pain over and over.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

People, corporations, and other entities would over time gather more data about you. There's always some kind of information footprint that you leave behind. And you'd stand out from other humans by the way you talk (i.e. using slang from 200 years ago, and speaking about historic stuff with details that the general public is not aware of) and other traits, which makes you traceable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Having potentially thousands of years of embarassing moments of social awkwardness to think about. And, over the aeons, being relieved when the people you know and love die because they won't remember the things you're so ashamed of.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Treczoks 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Either "Boredom: After some time you have seen basically everything." or "Can't keep up: The world changes so fast, and I'm, stuck in a mindset I acquired in 1543".

And: Bureaucratic nightmare. "We have you on file as being born in 1924, but you don't really look like a centennial. Can I see your passport instead of that of your great-grandfather, please?"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

You'll be perpetually behind the times. People tend to get set in their ways even by their 30s. You'll constantly lag behind the trends, language, and tastes of the younger generation...

If you were the first to be immortal, you may not have the best version of immortality and it may render you incompatible with better, future types of immortality. Like magical regeneration that prevents you from getting a personality upload to a cyberbrain that is a million times faster and smarter than the squishy biological brain.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Friends, family, and lovers dying before you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Having to listen to that Queen song, forever.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

On one hand, you have eternity to come to grips with everything you've done. On the other hand, it might take eternity to come to grips with everything you've done.

Seeing all of your friends and family die, knowing you'll never stop missing them.

Having the perspective of centuries. Seeing society make the same mistakes over and over again because they forget, but you never do. It would drive me mad. Already does, considering I have the ability to, and have, read history. I just imagine living it over and over to be tedious.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Family meals that take 3 restaurants No retirement

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] paddirn 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Forgetfulness. Think how forgetful people get after having lived a normal lifespan, now go for a few thousand+ years and you’ve probably forgotten whole centuries of your life. This is actually the premise of a solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire, you have to cross out and forget memories as you progress through the game, just forgetting whole parts of your life.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There's a Doctor Who episode with that idea in it too, the Doctor saves a girl in Viking times but brings her back forever, and when he meets her in mediaeval times she has a whole library of books that are just her memories that she's written down over the years.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don’t think you’d remember a break up from hundreds of years ago, let alone be upset about it.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Being eaten by sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, penguins, and other jellyfish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii#Predation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Btw if you were actually immortal, after a while you would just go into shock and enter a vegetative state from all the psychological stress.

[–] daggermoon 7 points 2 months ago

How can you be sure?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

And after a while you’d come out of that state

[–] TempermentalAnomaly 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I think you're undervaluing loneliness. Loneliness isn't just missing some one. Loneliness means there's no point in connecting with people because they will just die. Loneliness means that no one knows the depth of your condition because it isn't available to them. It means that as they change and face new obstacles, you'll be oblivious to all of that. You'll not only see them die, you'll see the vitality deep out of their pores as they age. All the while you'll never know what that means personally or feel that slow slipping.

Also, super weird that your example is a breakup and people dying is something not worth registering.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan 4 points 2 months ago

I suppose it depends on the rules of this specfic immortality. As someone who lives with chronic pain that literally never feels physically comfortable in any position, immortality sounds like a cruel joke. Not that I'm suicidal or eager to die, but the fact that it would progressively get worse and worse without any sort of end is.... horrorific.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Not being able to kill yourself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

One of my books features an immortal protagonist and I've as such thought about this quite a bit. More than the answers already provided here, what I found interesting as a writer was the balance I needed to find between making an immortal detached from mortal values while still being engaging to mortal readers.

Said as a pithy question, if you can outlive everyone's decisions and mistakes, what would it take to make you do anything at all?

[–] Dorkyd68 4 points 2 months ago

Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is

load more comments
view more: β€Ή prev next β€Ί