If humanity had eternal life, would people be able to live in pursuit of their essence, and would humanity be happier?

In this blog post, we’ll explore the question of whether people would be able to live in pursuit of their essence if humanity had eternal life.

 

From ancient times to the present, many people have dreamed of immortality. The Sumerian mythological hero Gilgamesh was a defeatless and fearless man who battled the gods, but was terrorized by the death of his friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh searched for a plant to help him escape death, but eventually had to accept that death was inevitable. Like Gilgamesh, modern scientists are searching for ways to achieve eternal life. If the Gilgamesh Project is completed, the search for a medical technology that conquers all diseases and prevents aging, mankind may fulfill its desire for immortality.
But if Gilgamesh had found the herb of fireweed and humanity had immortality, would humanity have been happier? In the past, when death was inevitable for mankind, this question would have been a vain delusion, but in the modern era, when we are attempting to conquer death through the advancement of science and technology, it becomes an important issue. If the price of immortality is that humanity becomes unhappier, then there is no point in researching for immortality. Is eternal life a means to an end, or a means to happiness? To answer this question, we need to understand when humans feel happy and predict what the world will be like in the future when death is conquered. We will conclude that humanity cannot be happy even if we conquer death.
Because people are so interested in happiness, there is a lot of research on it. Heidegger is an existentialist philosopher known for his philosophy of existence and time. According to him, humans can be happy when they realize that they exist. In this context, realizing existence means knowing one’s existence in a specific time, not an infinite time. According to Heidegger, modern humans are unhappy because they live without realizing that they exist, but if they live in pursuit of the essence that is most important to them, they will be happy.
So, if humanity is given eternal life, will people be able to live in pursuit of their essence? Heidegger suggests that we should experience death in order to live an existential life. Heidegger believed that we should experience death in order to live an existential life. Of course, being aware of death is not the only way to pursue the essence of life, but if you can experience death, you can realize the preciousness of life more quickly, confirm the meaning of existence, and find happiness. However, an immortalized humanity that has avoided death will no longer be able to experience death and will find it difficult to pursue the essence of life. However, it is hard to imagine that the absence of death will have a significant impact on the happiness of immortal humans, as current humans live their daily lives without realizing death. Even so, future humans who live infinitely long lives will be even less aware of the value of time than we are now, and will live without realizing the meaning of existence.
If we don’t understand the essential meaning of life, when will we feel happy? Some people have studied happiness scientifically. First of all, biologists have identified happiness as the same concept as pleasure, and have concluded that happiness is triggered by hormones and nerves, and is most likely influenced by genetics. However, these findings are difficult to accept because they don’t explain why parents who find parenting difficult are happy to have children. Psychologists, on the other hand, have determined that happiness is subjective well-being and use surveys to measure it. The results showed that money and health had a small impact on happiness. On the other hand, social factors such as family and community have a strong impact on happiness. In addition, happiness is not only determined by objective conditions such as these surroundings, but also by the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. If people’s expectations become high, they will not be happy even if their objective conditions improve. It is assumed that the conditions under which human beings are happy today will not be different from the conditions under which immortal human beings will be happy in the future. Therefore, in order to determine whether they will be happy, we estimate whether future humans will be able to live in a society that fulfills their subjective expectations.
Age is very important for the current human race. It tells humans where they stand in their finite lives. Generally speaking, people are students in their teens and 20s, workers in their late 20s, and retire from work in their 60s. Immortal humans, on the other hand, will never grow old and never die. It is often said that a year or two when you are young is a big difference, but a year or two when you are old is not a big difference, so for immortal humans, 600 or 700 years old will not mean much. Therefore, in the future, age will not determine social roles, and I believe that this future society will be the most competitive society in human history. For example, an aspiring soccer star will have to compete with Ronaldo and Messi, who will remain young and healthy forever. An aspiring great scientist would have to compete with Einstein, who had a young and healthy brain. It’s no exaggeration to say that human unhappiness stems from our relationships. We already know that competing and comparing with others makes people unhappy. This is because increased competition makes it more difficult to fulfill subjective expectations. Then, in the future, when competition will be even more intense, immortal humans will find it even harder to achieve what they want, and will be even more unhappy.
It is clear that we will not be happy simply because we will be healthy and not die. However, the question of whether eternal life will make us happy is less clear-cut. To answer this question, we need to predict how we will be in the future. In the future predicted in this article, human society becomes more competitive. This leads us to believe that humans will be unhappier if they achieve eternal life. However, this shouldn’t stop us from researching for eternal life. The argument that eternal life will make us unhappy will not slow down scientists’ research. Therefore, in addition to researching whether eternal life will make humans happy, we should also think about the society in which eternal humans will live and how to create such a society.