LogFAQs > #946393323

26. Immortality (21 points)
Nominated by: Shonen_Bat (2/5 remaining)


Importance: 10
Fear: 6
Snake: 5

Immortality; one of those things everyone wants at least until they hear about the downsides. It's true, everyone you love will pass away leaving you behind, the Earth will crumble & decay eventually, & time speeds up so much you will barely even enjoy your immortality as millenniums passing feeling more like decades. Hell though, I still kind of want it! Yeah the negatives are there, but fuck me if isn't appealing as hell to just think of having all that free time ahead of you. And if you become immortal, who's to say someone else couldn't become immortal along with you? I guess you would run the risk of becoming the ultimate procrastinator though... yeah I'll play that new game within the next epoch, I swear!

It's easy to understand why immortality fascinates us as a species. Death, the ultimate equalizer, but if it wasn't? What if we could dump our greatness weakness and live on truly as we see fit? I think, beyond those existential and immaterial feelings of time literally spilling out of minds or the final destruction of Earth, we as immortals would lose total sight of the little things that bring us so much happiness. A crisp breeze brushing against the skin in autumn, your arm goose-bumping ever so slightly, refreshing walks along with your thoughts & emotions, an awesome home-cooked meal with your loved ones, or just a simple hug & kiss from a significant other. These moments matter to us because our time is so short. It compels us to take stock and offer perspective on our lives. This is the true downside of immortality, and everything we think we would do with infinite time at our disposal would end up becoming mere foot-notes in a constant state of boredom, aimlessness, and total irrelevancy.

Immortality is a pretty popular theme & subject of horror, mainly seen in the vampire genre. Interview with the Vampire grapples with the choice of becoming immortal, and uses the analogy of vampiric feeding and unaging to mine the darksides of immortality to fantastic effect. Rachel Heng's novel, The Suicide Club, makes immortality a government-sanctioned law, as a declining birth-rate prompts the government to genetically separate those who are more "immortally-inclined" from the ones who won't make it past 100. The use of the concept on such a wide scale positions its titular Club as rebels, proudly taking ownership of their deaths as it makes them more human compared to the upper-class lifers. My all time favorite use of the trope is in the 2014 film Spring, by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (the best horror directors of the decade, just sayin'!) In Spring, Louise seems like a normal flirty woman, but is really a 2000 year-old mutant who has to have intercourse every 20 years in order to keep on living, but doing so turns her into a new kind of creature. However, she can give it all up at any time by becoming pregnant, and meeting Evan, the film's protagonist, really makes this a tougher choice than she ever thought it would be. I don't want to spoil too much as it is an incredible film, but it really gets to the heart of why immortality can be both positive and negative at the same time.

So, what about you? Would you choose immortality, or go on living your mortal life? Personally, mortality seems like the better choice, but it sure is tempting. I guess the more pertinent question, will it even be possible in the future? Possibly, but for now, it remains a conflicting theme that I'm sure will continue to be utilized in tons of fiction to come.

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Bare feet on the tile with my head up in the clouds
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