An Immortal Life? Nah, I'm Alright Thanks.
Living an immortal life would be ultimately meaningless. There, I said it! Let’s talk about why.
I’ll go about defending this claim by first detailing what it is to live a meaningful life, whether happy or otherwise, then go on to extend those thoughts into considerations of immortality. I’ll also propose that an evil life is not necessarily meaningless, before moving on to begin exploring how death is paramount to the meaningfulness of a life. Possible counter responses will then be discussed in favour of a meaningful immortal existence, but be repeatedly quashed throughout, before the meaninglessness of an immortal life is further strengthened by perplexing examples of the boredom problem — and how this ultimately destroys the prospect of a meaningful immortal existence.
A meaningful mortal life can be considered in more ways than one. It is possible to consider a life being meaningful where the bearer is successfully growing with relevant accomplishments on their self-established objective list. Alternatively, but not strictly mutually exclusive to this, a meaningful life can be substantiated by growth in subjective accomplishments. Generally speaking, whatever the value system, a mortal life rich with objective and / or subjective accomplishments can be considered as meaningful. Immortality on the other hand would take meaning away from life, as will be discussed below.
That said, a life can be unhappy yet meaningful. It may be that ‘…being happy might help you find meaning in life…’ (Belshaw, 2014. p. 142), but, a meaningful life and a happy life are not one and the same thing. For instance, a mortal man may find himself on a journey of continual self-progression only to realise that he will inherently be dissatisfied and unhappy until he actually achieves all of his needs. Regardless of his subjective happiness levels, the objective growth and accomplishments along the way may very well have been meaningful.
Conversely, when considering whether a person could be happy but live a meaningless life, it is possible to argue against the statement. The activity of counting grains of sand on a daily basis could make a person intrinsically happy whilst simultaneously holding zero instrumental value for his or her life. Here, regarding a meaningful mortal life, potentiality is negated due to the fact that happiness is a subjective matter. They could have potentially grown in life to accomplish a true ‘self-actualisation’ (Last, 2007), where outside views are likely to suggest they should have at least tried. However, settling for a subjectively happy mortal existence does not automatically make for a meaningless one. With that in mind, living for an eternity and counting grains of sand, for a normal human mind, would become emphatically tedious for said individual. The prospect of a perpetual repetition like this is eventually sure to become anything but intrinsically stimulating. So in this sense, an inevitable boredom problem prevails and the immortal life would become meaningless to a point when, where sheer endlessness is concerned, it would become excruciatingly painful.
Furthermore, the death of a person can form, or add to, the meaning of that person’s life. In a recent case, Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back and killed two days before a planned pro-democracy rally. Figure 1.0 (Ilnitsky, 2015) shows the rally continuing as planned; but a new message was clear: ‘…Thank you for your example of courage and honesty.’ (Pleitgen, 2015). Nemtsov’s life and work openly opposed the widespread corruption and lawlessness in his home country. Global powers exploited the incident and consequently allowed the EU Council ‘…to commit the 28 EU countries to a strong, unified message on human rights and on the need to end the crackdown on freedom of expression…’ (Krivade, 2015). It seems in this case that sometimes life occasionally needs death in order to empower its meaning.
Additionally, what can be deemed by some as an evil life can still be regarded as either objectively or subjectively meaningful. A poll conducted by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains that Stalin ‘…was a cruel, inhuman tyrant, responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.’ (Waal, 2013). Yet, according to the same poll, some 45 percent of Russians still warm to Stalin. Objectively speaking, his life can be considered meaningful. An online article (Wagstaff, 2015) reported public views on Stalin, saying that he was ‘…a wise leader who brought the Soviet Union to might and prosperity’. It goes without saying that on a truly subjective level, with Stalin, one can only attribute speculation. Regarding his cruelty though, if for instance Stalin happened to be living an immortal life, one could then ponder on the motivations for his abhorrent, inhumane behavior. It can be said that one can only experience pleasantries a hundred times, a thousand times, before it becomes monotonous, utterly unpleasant and entirely lacking. It becomes feasible to develop, hypothetically speaking, a scenario where Stalin had previously exhausted all morally positive stimuli and had now turned to seek excitement and stimulation from activities clearly associated with evil. In this thought experiment it is plausible to come to the firm conclusion that once both good and evil pursuits are fully spent- the boredom problem again prevails. Therefore, this scenario gives strength to the meaninglessness of immortality due to continual repetition and the inexorable depletion of interest.
Susan Wolf’s concept of meaning maintains that subjective and objective elements are inextricably linked (Belshaw, 2014. p. 183). A person may fill his or her life with actions or items they deem worthy in an attempt to make their life more meaningful. With that, Wolf offers that it takes more than just ‘…passive recognition and a positive attitude’ (Belshaw, 2014. p.183). These particular temporary longings, otherwise described as contingent desires, have no grounding to shape a person’s life principles. A ‘love’ is required for the systematic objects or actions that a person chooses in order to make for a meaningful life, according to Wolf. Extending this into the context of immortality, if this theory of meaning is held to be true, the concept becomes a double-edged sword in its own right. One must wonder how long it would take before these objects or actions ran dry along with the love, passive recognition and positivity associated with them. Immortality would take meaning away from these objects and actions over time, before it turns on its head and becomes frustrating, boring, even painful. Yes, an immortal person can grow with each and every accomplishment, with every desire they satisfy- but growth is the key factor here for the continued and prolonged meaningfulness of an immortal life. At some point, a peak will be reached. Hence, eventually, the inevitable boredom problem becomes inescapable, ultimately making the immortal life meaningless.
An opponent to the meaninglessness of immortality might argue that there are areas of opportunity which may save it from its own undoing. In Donald Bruckner’s Against the Tedium of Immortality (Bruckner, 2012), he puts forward that memory decay may be the saving grace for an immortal life. In addition to memory decay he suggests the notion of desire rejuvenation to add strength to his response. However, both suggestions are weak and quickly lose credibility. It must be urged at this point that this is a case of the endlessness of a life. Hundreds, thousands, millions of years living- hoping that occurrences will hence be forgotten, in order to repeat it another time with similar interest and stimulation as if it were new. With regards to forgetting, memory data loss is naturally inevitable and considered unavoidable; but the mind ‘…does not seem to have at its disposal anything corresponding to the erase button of a tape recorder or computer.’ (Gregory, 2004). No matter how long it has been since an isolated experience or set of experiences, a deep-rooted feeling of repetition will always be present- however infinitesimal it may be. Since ‘An event leaves a trace in the memory…’ (Wittgenstein, 1980. p. 220), with each reoccurrence, the pleasures would become self-exhausting because this embedded feeling could not be truly ignored and instead; grow. The eventual feeling of repetition in the back of one’s mind would propagate exponentially to a point of being undeniably evident. To that avail, ultimately, an immortal life would become torturous and consequently meaningless. Bruckner does however have a further suggestion in his attempt to combat the boredom problem. Human ingenuity.
Human ingenuity coupled with immortality opens up the forum. The capacity of these two things combined is most likely outright astronomical. The magnitude of invention, aptitude and propensity for greatness regarding an immortal human life is dumbfounding. One could devise projects of epic proportions, pick out highly perplexing questions within the realms of advanced quantum mechanics, or pursue a number of grand dreams. One could embark on a task to encompass happiness from discovering and delivering the cure for cancer unto the world. Bruckner claims that ‘…human ingenuity would continue to invent new pursuits, pastimes, careers, and ways of life…’ (Bruckner, 2012) in his attempt to counter the boredom problem. Unfortunately, the demise of immortality is inseparable from the fact that once that life had reached the unavoidable peak- once there is no more growth to be had; the inevitable boredom problem will triumph and life would become intolerable. An immortal’s objective list may have been overwhelmingly vast, but finite all the same.
For a life to be meaningful, immortal or otherwise, one needs to sustain active categorical desires. These desires differ from contingent desires, since they are reasons to remain alive. In The Makropulos Case, by Bernard Williams (Williams, 1973), he says that ‘…categorical desire does sustain the desire to live. So long as it remains so, I shall want not to die’. He then goes on to suggest that ‘…an endless life would be a meaningless one; and that we could have no reason for living eternally a human life’ because the consequent detachment and monotony would ‘…kill desire and consist in the death of it’. Here, it seems, death would bring grace to the despair of immortality. Furthermore, deterioration and old age can increase reasons for thinking death a good thing, he suggests. As such, Williams conveys that not only could death be the release from a sentence of immortality, but also a life too long.
To that avail, being aware of an eventual death brings meaning to life and heightens our appreciation of it. An immortal life would ultimately, inevitably, regress into stagnation. Consequently, stagnation in life equates to boredom, which would inescapably lead to pain. Hence, when one ceases to grow, having reached a peak, one begins to die. Further to this; as peace cannot be appreciated without war, life cannot be appreciated without death. The anguish of actualised potential in an immortal life would monopolise consciousness and perpetually destroy any objective or subjective satisfactions. Thus, an immortal life would be a meaningless life.
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