Mortality
May 10, 2022•880 words
I wanna build
Something that's gonna
Outlive me
- Alexander Hamilton (musical)
We're all going to die someday. And that's a good thing. Imagine if we didn't age. Then humanity would be severely crippled under the constant fear of death by accident, something that is fairly easy to prevent. Imagine you're happy: whether it be with family, your wife, kids, siblings, friends, or whatever. Then suddenly one of them dies from a car accident. Just like that those happy days are over, all of it just for something as preventable as an accident. Just think, what would be the incentive to take risky actions like be an astronaut or police officer or firefighter if there is always the possibility of eternal happiness otherwise through living forever? There would be none. If there is some technological advancement like telomere repair that prevents or reverses aging, people won't want to take risks. It would be the ultimate conservative revival. Conservatism's appeal is most influential on those who's present situation is good (hence the desire to conserve it), thus the ability to perpetually preserve the good times will draw many, many people in. Thus humanity will forever be crippled and plagued by those who just seek preservation of the past, just sucking away mankind's resources. And the worst part is that the idea of eternal happiness is just a farce - just an appeal to the lizard parts of our brains that seek to maximize some evolutionary remnant, happiness.
As we live longer and experience higher peaks of joy, ordinary life will start to become less enjoyable in comparison. Thus if we didn't age, as we accumulate higher and higher peaks of joy (we would need higher peaks each time to surpass the last peak), ordinary life would start to become less and less joyous. Thus the idea of eternal happiness is really just an impossible one as there can't be infinite, increasing spikes of joy considering our very finite physical bodies. Thus death provides an escape from this monotonous life that inevitably awaits the extremes of aging.
Living a long life also brings more suffering for those around you. A lot of this argument is contained in [1], but I'd also like to add something. We begin by assuming that humans are imperfect. Then, even if we have some philosophically coherent ideology (which can exist as the non-physical free-will that brings information into the physical universe is able to be perfect), as we make mistakes and realize them, we will begin to adopt them into our ordinary behaviors. This can be seen in the theory of cognitive dissonance and can more generally be seen as habituation. If we make a mistake once, we are more likely to do it again since we reason that if we used the system correctly before on the original (mistaken) action, then it must be valid in our system. Thus we do it again. Or, one can view it through the lens of operant conditioning. We can view moral/ethical disgust at an action as a punishment for behavior, and as we make mistakes in punishing ourselves with the disgust we aid in the extinction of avoiding morally disapproved behavior. Thus even if we have some incredible moral/ethical reasoning system, as we age more mistakes will happen. As this occurs, our ideology/actions adapt to accommodate for these mistakes. Eventually, we will devolve from the hypothetical perfect ideology. Thus as the populace grows in the elderly, the more divergence there will be from good philosophies. And since these elderly can't die, they will simply stick around forever, leading to a stagnation of the "human" species (the "others" around you). This is very reminiscent of Planck's principle that "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it". Thus death can cull away divergence from good philosophies like science and truth.
Seeing as we're all going to die someday, there is no the point of making temporary things like happiness or money your goal in life. Ultimately, after we die it won't matter whether we were happy or sad or beautiful or socially accepted or earned a lot of money (unless you do something with it). Ultimately, the only thing that will matter is our impact on the world. That is really what drives me to do what I do. I want a career in research because that way I can help "humanity" intellectually progress, I am acutely aware and try to make the most of my privilege I was born with because I realize that there are others who can make more progress with the privilege I have, I live to make progress. This is what motivates my desire for transparency and truth. This is what Diogenes and Ramanujan, who both lived destitute lives and yet managed to contribute so much to "humanity"'s progress, have inspired me to think up. This is what drove my past ideal in egalitarianism: the idea that I must and am able to do good with my privilege. Some may say that life's too short to suffer, but consider instead that life's too short to enjoy it.