This article addresses the human desire for eternal life and questions whether immortality will bring happiness. It explores the nature of true happiness through the pain and meaninglessness that eternal life brings.
In the drama “Do-gaebi,” which aired on Korean television from December 2016 to January 21, 2017, the main character, Do-gaebi, kills many people as a general in the past and is granted eternal life with a sword stuck in his chest as a punishment for his actions. This drama has become one of the most popular in Korean drama history, and one of the main reasons for this is that the unique setting and stories surrounding the existence of goblins have captured the imagination of viewers. The protagonist, a goblin, lives for 900 years, fully remembering his painful past life and watching the deaths of those close to him. In the process, he shows wisdom and anguish gained over the years that humans can never experience, conveying the message that eternal life is not necessarily a blessing. He feels how painful his life is and how lonely eternal life is, and he constantly strives to end it.
Many people who have watched the drama may have thought, “What if I could live forever like him? You may have dreamed of immortality and imagined how attractive it would be to be able to stay beautiful and healthy forever, but the reality is that the drama portrays the goblins’ lives as sad and unhappy. The drama goes beyond just the theme of eternal life, and realistically depicts the heavy responsibilities and suffering that comes with it. So, is eternal life really that sad? What does the human desire for eternal life look like in the real world? Eternal life is still not possible, but human lifespans are increasing. With the advancement of medical technology, science and technology, and changes in the living environment, the term ‘centenarian’ is now accepted as natural.
If technology improves over time, we may indeed get closer to eternal life. But will we be happier than we are now? Or, like the goblin I mentioned earlier, will we be trapped in eternal sorrow, unable to escape? My answer to this question is that we will be less happy. Before I tell you why, I’d like to take a moment to explain what happiness is.
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari writes that “the generally accepted definition of happiness is ‘subjective well-being'”. In other words, it’s the immediate joy or long-term satisfaction one feels with the way one’s life is going. In the United Nations’ annual “happiness index,” the concept of happiness also refers to how satisfied people are with their current life. To achieve this feeling of happiness, people do a lot of things. Some people find happiness through love, others through eating delicious food, and still others through sports. However, not everyone’s happiness is the same. It could be money, work, love, or service.
But is happiness simply a feeling of pleasure in the moment? If so, then a happy life would mean that something pleasant should happen every day. But that’s not the reality. It’s not that people who say they have a happy life haven’t had unhappy experiences, but it’s probably because they’ve had more happy moments than unhappy ones. It’s also because human psychology is such that we like to hold onto happy memories longer. As you can see, happiness is highly relative and depends on how you define its meaning and value. You can feel happy if things are going well for you compared to others, or if your life is better now than it was in the past. So why would eternal life make us unhappy?
Heidegger said, “Anxiety is what makes us live, and tranquility is what makes us happy. The idea is that anxiety about death is an important part of our lives, and the serenity that calms this anxiety makes us happy. However, humans with eternal life no longer feel the anxiety of death. They live with the hope and goal of accomplishing something before they die, and when that hope is fulfilled, they feel happy. Since life is finite, humans strive to hold on to that hope. However, if humans live forever, the concept of time itself will become meaningless, and the fulfillment of hopes and goals will disappear.
By the time eternal life becomes possible, science and technology will have advanced to control human emotions. Humans will be able to manipulate hormones in their bodies with drugs or machines to feel happy. This may provide momentary joy, but it is doubtful that it will be true happiness. As mentioned earlier, happiness is not just a fleeting feeling; it requires us to attach meaning and value to it. Artificially manipulated happiness is just a temporary joy and will not provide true satisfaction. In the end, we run the risk of becoming nothing more than smiling puppets with no meaning.
We often think of happy moments in the past. That happiness came from doing something at a specific time, with a specific person or object. But if eternal life eliminates this relativity of time, the happiness that comes from past experiences will no longer exist. A human being with eternal life might be a shell of a person, obsessed with artificial emotions and only smiling. The increase in human lifespan due to advances in science and technology may have some positive consequences. However, a human being who lives forever will never be happy. In other words, if we become immortal, we will lose the true happiness in our lives.
