All Men Are Mortal
After a beautiful and accomplished young actress revives a downcast stranger at a French resort, he reveals that he is immortal.
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Men_Are_Mortal a great book on this. It shows how the immortal are withered away by time and futility of there attempts to change history and be a permanent influence.
Meanwhile, the mortal while shortlifed and with only one poker chip in the game, play and win/loose with all the passion they have and form a sort of river, that withers the immortals plans and dreams down to zero.
- Read "all men are mortal"
- You should try reading All men are mortal by Simone de Beauvoir : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Men_Are_Mortal
It is about a man who becomes immortal and experiences a lot of things. Without spoiling you, it turns out not to be as great as expected.
Apart from this there is the somewhat classical : "A famous quote tells us the three things every man should do during his time on earth: Plant a tree, have a son and write a book. The reason behind this quote is generally believed to be that we are only here for a short time and these three things will live on long after we have passed. It’s like leaving a legacy and in a sense achieving a kind of immortality."
- All men are mortal - Simone de Beauvoir
- Only tangential to the ethics of immortality, more about possible consequences of immortality for a given individual is "All Men Are Mortal" by Simone de Beauvoir, highly recommended.
- Everything we have witnessed that arises also passes away. Every living thing, every dead thing - even stars and planets - arise and pass away.
I feel it’s the ultimate hubris to think we can cheat death.
Moreover, why would you want immortality?
Many books of fiction and poetry discuss the curse of immortality.
Here are a few:
The Immortal, Jorge Luis Borges (1947)
A man discovers a source of immortality, but eternity eventually destroys the significance of individual experiences. When everything can happen infinitely, nothing feels particularly important.
The Mortal Immortal — Mary Shelley (1833) - also wrote Frankenstein
A man drinks an elixir and lives for centuries without substantially aging. He watches his wife grow old and die, and becomes increasingly alienated from humanity. Shelley focuses on loneliness and the psychological weight of endless time.
All Men Are Mortal — Simone de Beauvoir (1946)
An immortal man lives through centuries of history, relationships, and political upheaval. Gradually he discovers that even extraordinary achievements seem meaningless when time is unlimited.
The Makropulos Affair — Karel Čapek (1922)
A woman lives more than 300 years through an elixir. She retains her youth but becomes emotionally exhausted, cynical, and incapable of finding pleasure.
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There are more. Sure, these are fiction. But use your imagination. Why would you want immortality, even if you could retain perfect health indefinitely?
