Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Would you like to live for 1000 years ?

Ironically I have run out of time to answer that question for myself this evening !!!

However a recent TV programme I saw raised this question and I was initially surprised that the general consenus was not "yes".

I am not referring to any religious promise of eternal life here. That is a separate issue and one worthy of far more than a few lines on a blog.

For blog purposes, I am just posing the question- would you like to stay physically alive for 1,000 years ?

Any answers gratefully received.

Hope to be back with my thoughts in the next day or two........

3 comments:

CHIC-HANDSOME said...

life just good

joanie said...

That would depend entirely on what kind of physical and mental shape I would be in as time progressed.

I think most of us never have enough hours in a day, or enough years in our lifetime (or wellness toward the end of our lives) to do or experience but a minute percentage of we would like to do. Most of us merely scratch the surface in that regard. So the idea of being able to fill 1000 years with all of those people we would like to get to know, things we would like to learn, places we would like to explore, creations of which we would like to be the author, etc., engenders mind-boggling ecstasy. :)

But, having lived around half a century already, and just beginning to experience the very first foretastes of what ‘the ravages of age’ are eventually going to entail … if living a thousand years would entail 900+ years of the full-blown versions of said ravages, I’ll say ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ :)

A related aside … I remember several years ago sitting in a waiting room somewhere (I may have been having my car repaired) where the television was tuned into an inane talk show. The host polled the women in the audience with the question, ‘Would you give up a year of your life if, in exchange, you could have the face and figure that you always dreamed of?’

My immediate response was, ‘Which year?’

(If it were the 99th, I’d take the matter under careful consideration ... :)

~ joanie

Luis said...

Thanks all for your contributions.

Simon- my answer too would be an unreserved "yes" but maybe I haven't thought the consequences all through.

Joanie- I agree about the issue of good health. There would be no joy in spending 900 years being ill. There is obviously a trade off between mere time and quality of life- as your story about trading a year of life for keeping your figure and face demonstrates !

This is really just science fiction at the moment but it is good to dream sometimes.....

You will see my new post on Aubrey de Grey, the rather unusual scientist from Cambridge who is behind this theory.