In Geddes “Identity” Chapter of the Immortality Institutes book, “The Scientific Conquest of Death” he addresses the idea that we may change into a totally different person, and defends the idea that we don’t have to worry about that. In addition to what he writes there I would say that, people call what we become a “changed” self, but its not a changed self. It’s a deeper self in the same way that adding a new chapter to a book being written doesnt change the book. It makes it deeper. All the other chapters are still there, they are just built upon, and the building that has been done is an extension of a foundation.
In Geddes “Stagnation” chapter he says that life would get boring on a practical or biological level, but not a philosophical one. I agree and would elaborate that it seems to me that only mentally infirm and poor people could see a limit to what they can do in life. I suspect you would be hard pressed to find any rich and/ or mentally competent person who is looking forward to death because they think life is getting or will get boring. Poor people care less about death because they have limits to what they can do.
With an indefinite life span the poor will realize that they have all the time in the world to accumulate wealth, so many would argue that that would solve the problem of people thinking life would get boring. If you hear a person in the pro aging trance talk about boredom, tell them that.
Also, give us indefinite life spans and the rich will be more likely to spread their wealth, they will be less inclined to hoard their money for their own and their families short shots at playing on the big stage of existence here for this brief short while. People want to live well, so they work, hoard, steal, kill and even go to war to get the means to live well. ie, Germany, a major reason for going back to war in world war two was because their economy was in shambles and they were desperate right? There are warring tribes and gangs doing this everywhere every day.
Why would people do those things though if they lived with unlimited time to accumulate their own wealth, and with rich people more willing to share resources?
http://www.imminst.org/SCOD.pdf
I wrote this after Mind prompted me to go through it in this thread: http://www.imminst.o...o...c=23778&hl= there is more discussion on the "Introduction to Immortalist Morality" in there too.
Edited by brokenportal, 01 December 2008 - 01:51 AM.
