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Chewbaccus · 08-22-2003, 07:53 AM

"They'd be reminded of the fragility of life every time one of their own died. It would be a huge deal, a great loss, on the news and everything."

The way I see it, one of two things could happen.

1) If the gene for immortality is present in all humans, we would see the eventual dying out of the homo sapien species. The presence of immortality among all sentient beings on the planet would result in an abandonment of the thought "leaving the world as a better place than when you found it" because, face it, you're not leaving any time soon. This would result in a change of the development pattern from the gradual increasing slope we have now as finite beings, to a period of stagnation interspersed with flurries of advancement whenever one immortal should meet his end - it would probably develop almost into a religious tradition, honoring the fallen with an improvement in the way the world is.

--OR--

2) If it is not present, then UT's theory of isolationism would kick in, and there would almost be a sense of a return to Greek mythology - a constant question of the sort that faced Prometheus. "Do we help them or not?" Millennia ago, the Great Library in Alexandria, Egypt held a copy of nearly every written scroll ever produced - literature, mathematics, philosophy, everything. There were scrolls outlining a theory that the earth revolved around the sun, long before Copernicus, and a working model of a steam engine thousands of years before James Watt. Most of all this knowledge was lost when Caesar, allied with Cleopatra against Ptolemy, ordered his troops to set fire to the Egyptian fleet anchored at Alexandria and the flames spread to the Library. Historians generally agree that this one act set back the species at least a thousand years, that if it hadn't happened, the Age of Exploration would have been centered on space and not North America.

If we had a clan of immortals in the world, this kind of thing would not be so devastating. Like the monks after Rome's fall, they would be living repositories of knowledge, a constantly updating biological archive. The trick is whether or not they would choose to divulge this information to us, if they think we can be trusted with the intellectual flames they bear.

08-22-2003, 07:53 AM	#28
Chewbaccus Freethinker/booter Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 523	"They'd be reminded of the fragility of life every time one of their own died. It would be a huge deal, a great loss, on the news and everything." The way I see it, one of two things could happen. 1) If the gene for immortality is present in all humans, we would see the eventual dying out of the homo sapien species. The presence of immortality among all sentient beings on the planet would result in an abandonment of the thought "leaving the world as a better place than when you found it" because, face it, you're not leaving any time soon. This would result in a change of the development pattern from the gradual increasing slope we have now as finite beings, to a period of stagnation interspersed with flurries of advancement whenever one immortal should meet his end - it would probably develop almost into a religious tradition, honoring the fallen with an improvement in the way the world is. --OR-- 2) If it is not present, then UT's theory of isolationism would kick in, and there would almost be a sense of a return to Greek mythology - a constant question of the sort that faced Prometheus. "Do we help them or not?" Millennia ago, the Great Library in Alexandria, Egypt held a copy of nearly every written scroll ever produced - literature, mathematics, philosophy, everything. There were scrolls outlining a theory that the earth revolved around the sun, long before Copernicus, and a working model of a steam engine thousands of years before James Watt. Most of all this knowledge was lost when Caesar, allied with Cleopatra against Ptolemy, ordered his troops to set fire to the Egyptian fleet anchored at Alexandria and the flames spread to the Library. Historians generally agree that this one act set back the species at least a thousand years, that if it hadn't happened, the Age of Exploration would have been centered on space and not North America. If we had a clan of immortals in the world, this kind of thing would not be so devastating. Like the monks after Rome's fall, they would be living repositories of knowledge, a constantly updating biological archive. The trick is whether or not they would choose to divulge this information to us, if they think we can be trusted with the intellectual flames they bear. __________________ Like the wise man said: Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.