Some questions are all too clearly hyperbole. For example, consider the title of Scott Pinsker’s latest piece at PJ Media:

     Well, are you? If you were to become capable of extending your life indefinitely far into the future – at a price, of course – would you choose to do so? Having to endure all the thousand and one shocks to which flesh is already prone, plus whatever new ones might arise from your longevity? And what of the price? What if it involved forever working, forever striving, forever competing? To me that looks like perpetual misery.

     What if indefinite longevity were to compel you to forsake your body and instantiate your consciousness in some other vessel? “Liberated” from the desires, drives, and fears that arise from fleshly life. Would you regard such an indefinitely prolonged temporal life as worthwhile? Consider the possibility that once you’d elected it, there might be no going back. Would it still seem attractive?

     But as I said, it’s hyperbole. The universe itself is mortal. Therefore, everything in it will end one day, including our temporal existences. Still, the prospect of being able to delay one’s demise for as long as life seems worth living deserves careful reflection. Especially as it would involve dependencies wholly unknown to us of today.

     Why do we want to go on living? In a sense, it’s a question of economics: benefits versus costs. What do we get out of life? What does life demand of us? Those are questions whose answers change with time.

     I’ve addressed those questions in fiction on more than one occasion. My answers are of course tied to my own desires, drives, and convictions. Yet I can’t help but think that anyone would answer them similarly.

     Althea Morelon put it in these terms:

     “I want to go to space, Martin. I just do. I want to wander the stars. I want to see other worlds, and rub their soil between my fingers, and learn to love them as I’ve loved this world. I need to know whether there’s life on any of them. I hope there is. It will mean more to see and learn…more to love.”

     In contrast, Louis Redmond was content with what he had learned to love:

     “If there is nothing more to follow, I have loved Christine Marie D’Alessandro, and she has loved me, and that is infinitely more than enough. I am content.”

     There is no standard by which to say that one of them was “right” and the other “wrong.” I put Althea in a setting that permits indefinite longevity, whereas I made Louis terminally ill. So their benefits-versus-costs equations might not have been comparable. But what if they were to exchange places? What if Louis could have extended his life without limit, whereas Althea faced the imminent end of hers?

     Now consider the context. The more interesting one pertains to Althea. She isn’t personally capable of extending her own life; for that she depends on a technology controlled and marketed by others. There’s a cost to that, as there is to everything men desire. That cost might not be static over time. What if it were to rise to an unimaginable height: perhaps the acceptance of permanent excruciating pain, or perpetual enslavement to a severely demanding master?

     There’s also the possibility that one’s longevity might not be a matter of consent:

     “We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He lives now forever; he gets wiser. Later, we make them live better—for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some—perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not. He who shall be finally king of the universe can give this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse the little present.”

     Let’s regard the teachings of various religions about the gift of life as beyond our scope.

     For the moment, this is purely a matter for speculation. While there are researchers investigating the possibility of life extension, today there’s no great amount of actual knowledge on the subject. We know certain things will pose great challenges to him who seeks to go on “in the body,” particularly the seeming impossibility of regenerating nervous tissue. While that might prove soluble, other depredations of age loom equally over us. Who would want an indefinitely extended life if with each passing day he would grow feebler, less comfortable, and more dependent on others for his well-being? Can all such developments be banished?

     As for going on outside the body, it’s a prospect that appeals to some, but not to me. A bloodless, passionless “digital” existence strikes me as a bad buy. Digital devices are readily enslaved; isn’t that we do to them now? More, one’s sense conduits would be at the mercy of outsiders. And of course we’d be perpetually worried about power failures, the degradation of our storage devices, and whether our “backups” are faithful to us.

     But Ray Kurzweil says we’re getting close. Presently there will be new choices to make, new futures to contemplate, and new currents of thought in the law. The “DNR” declaration will take on greatly increased significance. So will one’s personal financial planning: Can I be sure I’ll be able to afford an X359C hypercube to house my post-fleshly consciousness, or should I limit my ambitions to a VV91Q model at half the price? And who’ll be responsible for meeting the electric bills?

     Decisions, decisions…