This article raises the question of whether humans would be happier if they had eternal life, and discusses how death may actually be what gives human life meaning and happiness.
Today, the average human life expectancy is around 80 years old, meaning that once we are born, we live for 80 years of our own free will. Some people will dream of becoming a world-class soccer player, while others will dream of becoming the head of a country. But one thing is clear: no matter what dreams you have, you will eventually die. And every human being lives with the knowledge that he or she will die at some point. But can we say that humanity is living an unhappy life? If humans could live forever, beyond their biological limitations, would they be happier than they are now, living with the knowledge that they are destined to die? My answer to this question is “no”. Before I give you the reasons why, let’s talk about happiness and eternal life.
First, let’s think about when humans feel happy. If you are a child and receive gifts from your friends on your birthday, you are happy. When you’re an examinee and you get into the top school of your choice, you couldn’t be happier. But if you pick up a pretty pebble along the way, would you feel as happy as in the first two examples? You might feel aesthetically pleased with the pebble, but you wouldn’t feel as happy as when you received a gift or got into a good school. But what if the pebble was picked up by a member of a tribe that uses pebbles as currency? Unlike us, who use paper money, if they found a pebble, they could buy something to eat and fix dinner that night, or buy the clothes they wanted and wear them. They would feel truly happy. As you can see, happiness is not only subjective, but also relative to different times and societies. What makes an American happy will be different from what makes an Egyptian happy, and what makes a person happy will be different from what makes a person happy in a capitalist society to what makes a person happy in a communist society. We also often find that as we get older, we experience different instances and degrees of happiness.
Next, let’s look at how humanity’s desire for eternal life has evolved. While no single human being in history has achieved eternal life, Qin Shi Huang is the first person who comes to mind who strived for it. He first unified China 2,300 years ago, built a powerful wealth program, and reigned as emperor of the empire he created. With such accomplishments, his wealth and glorification are self-explanatory. However, he was also afraid of death, which he could not avoid. He worked tirelessly to find the “bulocho” necessary for eternal life, but his attempts were ultimately unsuccessful, and he died at the age of 50. Today, many years later, mankind is scientifically pursuing eternal life. Raymond Kurzweil, a renowned futurist at Google, predicts that humanity will be on the path to immortality by 2029. He says that advances in medical technology will add one year to our life expectancy every year from 2029 onward, emphasizing that life expectancy is the number of years we have left to live at that point. For example, as nanorobots kill cancer cells and treat arteriosclerosis, we could be getting closer to eternal life, eliminating one cause of death after another. If humanity does indeed live forever without dying, I think there will be two types of eternal life. One is aging but not dying naturally and living forever, and the other is immortality, that is, never growing old and never dying. Let’s call the former the first type of eternal life and the latter the second.
Let’s first consider the case of the first eternal life. If we live forever and never die, but our bodies continue to age, we won’t be able to perform as well as we did when we were younger, and we’ll end up sitting in an armchair for the rest of our lives, living each day as meaningless as the last. In other words, the advantages of living forever outweigh the disadvantages of having a weakened body as we age. Therefore, the kind of eternal life we imagine science will bring is more like the second eternal life than the first.
We might think, “If humans never get old and never die of natural causes, we can live a lifetime of doing whatever we want to do and be happier than we are now. Here, we need to recall the criteria for happiness. Happiness is relative to the environment in which we live. Even if we could live forever and do all the things we want to do, we would still have other goals, and we would still be striving to achieve them. There’s no doubt that when we achieve something, we feel satisfied and happy. But there’s no guarantee that it will last, and we’ll set another goal, and we’ll feel nervous and anxious until we achieve it. Think about our state of mind before doing something important. “What if I fail? What if it doesn’t turn out the way I want?” is a natural reaction. You might think, ‘If we live forever, we’ll have plenty of time to worry about this,’ but if it takes 50 or 100 years to accomplish your goal, the devastation you’ll feel will be more than you can handle, even if you think about the happiness you’ll gain later. It’s hard to imagine that you’d be happier than you are now if you were immortal and pursuing your goals.
Incidentally, even if you get a body that doesn’t die naturally, you and your loved ones will live forever, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t get hit by a truck or blown to smithereens by a terrorist. People with the potential to live forever would be unwilling to take even the smallest risks, and the pain of losing a spouse, child, or close friend would be unbearable. Finally, even if a cure for immortality were to be developed, it is unclear whether it could be applied equally to everyone. Those who can’t afford the new miracle cure will be furiously resented. Throughout history, the poor and oppressed have comforted themselves with the belief that death, at least, comes to everyone fairly. Even the rich and powerful must die. The poor would not be comfortable with the idea that they had to die while the rich could stay young and beautiful forever.
This idea of never growing old is not always welcome. If the point of living is to experience happiness in everyday life, then the limitation of death is not necessarily a negative thing. At the moment, humanity cannot avoid the possibility of death. For example, if there is the possibility of eating a candy in front of us and the possibility of not eating it, we can choose to realize either possibility with our will. But the possibility of death is not something we can choose; it is inevitable. It is part of the uniqueness of our humanity. If we recognize this, do the best we can before it happens, and live a life that is satisfying to us, we will be happier than if we live each day in a state of undecidedness (not unknown), not knowing when we will die. Heidegger says that the quality of life is enhanced by the fact that we have a finite amount of time. If you do what you are given during that time, you can be happy. However, if you have an eternity of time, on the other hand, happiness is not guaranteed. If you can do the things you want to do and live with the people you love during the time you have, you will be happy enough, even if it’s not forever.
