Advances in science and medicine may make eternal life possible, but it raises the question of whether it will really bring us greater happiness. We need to think deeply about how eternal life will interact with our current happiness and how it will affect our quality of life.
Life expectancy is increasing due to advances in science and medicine. These changes contribute to an improved quality of human life and open up the possibility of living longer. However, this extension of life is not just an increase in time, but also a challenge to find a new meaning of life. The Gilgamesh Project aims to achieve the extreme goal of this extended life: human immortality. The project continues to attract attention because it is thought that eternal life will lead to better outcomes for people. However, it raises the question: Is living longer necessarily happier? If living a longer life, or eternal life, doesn’t bring happiness to people, then there’s no point in doing it.
There have been people in the past who wanted to live forever. Emperor Qin Shi Huang is a prime example. He believed that the Qin dynasty he founded would last forever, and he wanted to live forever as the first emperor of China. He mobilized countless resources to find the elixir of life and explore ways to avoid death. For someone of Qin Shi Huang’s stature, it would seem that the happiness of eternal life would be immense. However, his attempts were unsuccessful, and in the end, he was unable to escape death. This story makes us reflect on the human obsession with eternal life and its consequences, and it is worth discussing whether eternal life would provide better happiness for most people today.
To discuss whether eternal life would provide people with greater happiness, we must first establish a baseline of happiness. For most of the pre-liberal era, happiness was thought to have an objective standard or measure, and in most religions, including Buddhism, happiness is thought to be independent of subjective feelings or emotions. However, the meaning of happiness has changed a lot in modern times. The dictionary definition of happiness is “the state or condition of being overwhelmed with sufficient satisfaction and joy in life. Most people define happiness through subjective criteria of satisfaction and joy. This is because the influence of liberalism has led us to think of happiness as something that comes from within. In modern times, we are more familiar with the idea that happiness is subjective and comes from within ourselves, so I would define happiness as a feeling of contentment in a given environment or situation.
However, the concept of eternal life can also be interpreted in many different ways, as the standard of happiness varies from era to era and person to person. For example, ancient Greek philosophers viewed happiness as eudaimonia, a state of being in which a person lives in the highest state of virtue. In the modern world, on the other hand, happiness is increasingly characterized by material satisfaction and a sense of mental security. The question remains whether eternal life can be reconciled with this modern concept of happiness.
To answer this question, we need to look at the situations in which most people are happy today and the situations in which they would be happy if they were to have eternal life. This is where things get tricky. There are more than 6 billion people on the planet, and their situations are different, as are their mindsets and the emotions they feel about them. It seems quite dangerous to make sweeping generalizations. That’s why we need to simplify. Let’s look at the conditions in which an individual feels satisfied from the perspective of the individual “I”. There are two types of satisfying states: the first is when I am satisfied by myself, and the second is when I am satisfied through the relationship between me and the people around me.
When I say “me”, I don’t just mean CEOs who are hugely socially and economically successful. It includes having a job and being happy with it, because everyone’s happiness is different. It also includes having a job and being happy with it, because everyone’s happiness is different. According to Heidegger, modern people live in such a way that no one considers death. Because people don’t think about death, they lack critical thinking about their current lives and end up equating their values with the values of the world. This leads people to look for happiness through the world’s values rather than through their own values. This leads people to worry about whether they look satisfactory in the eyes of the world rather than their own subjective satisfaction, and they end up feeling happy through relative evaluation. The individual standard of being good at one’s job is ignored, and one must be relatively better than others to be satisfied with oneself. However, if you tell people that they are going to die tomorrow, they will no longer equate their value with the value of the world. When every minute or second is precious, you can’t afford to care what the world thinks of you, and you will find happiness through your own absolute evaluation, not a relative evaluation. Happiness in comparison to others cannot make everyone happy. Some people will always be unhappier than others unless things are fair and equal. But if you find happiness through your own standards, there is a possibility that everyone can be happy, even if the playing field is not level. Therefore, under these circumstances, eternal life would not make modern people more satisfied.
Second, let’s consider the case of being happy with the people around you. There are many things that are necessary to be happy in a relationship, but I think the most important is love. Love is defined as “the quality or act of greatly cherishing and valuing someone or something. If we act in a way that is precious to the person we love, we will be able to feel satisfied and happy. In his book Philosophizing with Kim Kwang-Sik, author Kim Kwang-Sik says, “The philosophy of sick love is a warning to us to stop loving and living empty and to love so desperately that it hurts.” The philosophy of sick love is a warning to us to stop loving and living empty and to love so desperately that it hurts. It’s not just that we love, but the intensity of our love that matters. So how can we love so intensely that it hurts? The finitude of love makes it possible. The realization that you can’t love anymore, that it’s bound to end, is what makes love so desperate. Let’s extend the happiness we feel in love to the happiness we feel in relationships. Knowing that the relationship will end makes us feel happier. The phrase “be good while you can” reminds us that when we are happy, we don’t realize that we are happy, but only after the happy time has passed. If we were to live forever, our relationships with others could be more complex or simpler than they are now. However, it would be difficult for our relationships with others to be “cut short” if the insurmountable barrier of death were removed. As a result, it would be difficult for humans to find more happiness in their relationships than they do now.
Additionally, we need to consider the impact of eternal life on our mental and emotional state. Psychologists argue that the limited amount of time we have in our lives allows us to set goals and be motivated. If we had an infinite amount of time, the question of how we plan and live our lives in the present might become meaningless. The finitude of life gives meaning to our choices and motivates us to value the present. If eternal life removes this motivation, humans are in danger of losing the meaning of life.
In conclusion, I have compared the happiness that eternal life would bring with the present in two very simplified cases. I have defined the criteria for happiness in a way that is familiar to modern people, and I have focused on the “I” as an individual. It is desirable that advances in medical technology and science are freeing people from suffering. However, increased life expectancy and eventual immortality may not necessarily be desirable for everyone. As we’ve seen, eternal life may not make people happier than they are now. We may have vaguely fantasized about eternal life and chased after it, so it’s time to reflect on whether we really need it today.
