Can We Achieve Immortality and Would It Be a Good Thing?

Can we achieve immortality and would it be a positive thing?

Immortality is the ability to live forever or eternal life. This topic interests me as life after death or even no life after death, is something that I regularly wonder about, I think about what happens or what doesn’t happen, and the idea of it possibly even scares me. I often think about my question and if immortality would be a possible feat, at first thought, I would be desperate to have the chance to possibly live forever, especially with prolonged youth to be bale to experience more parts of the world and not worry about wasted time. However, when I thought of this question that relates to the global perspective topic of humans and other species as the over shadowing topic is related to the lives of humans, I began to think about the impacts of being able to obtain eternal life, would we prosper and achieve world peace, or would the issues of, overpopulation – meaning we have excess people and not enough resources, which would the lead to famine, disease and poverty, and would the world turn to a place of war and suffering as a result. These opposing effects are why I chose this topic. I will evaluate different theories, ideas and research on the medical related topic of the possibility of extended or even eternal life. Many different scientists and researches are spending lots of time trying to understand the different methods that could enable humans to live for longer. Then comes the question, if it would be possible, what would this mean for our world? The new discovery could lead to the end of our world as we know it.

Many people may think that giving people the opportunity to live forever and never having to say goodbye to loved one would mean happiness would inject peace into todays far from peaceful society. However, it would in fact brig issues and possibly force the world into further downfall. The worlds population is already set to reach 9 billion by 2050, if a method to reach immortality was discovered, population would increase unfathomable amounts in a short time. In many densely populated countries like China and India, the issue that is arising is that there are too many people for the available resources and it is thought that this will lead to great famine, wars over resources, and more damage to the environment as a result – this was the idea of philosopher Thomas Malthus. If ageing was no longer a problem, population would reach amounts that the world can’t support. Currently the worlds population would be able to fit into the land area of the city of Los Angeles, but in places like Mexico City and Delhi, where population density is high, room would quickly become an issue. In November 2015, the worlds most populated country – China, changed its one child policy to a two child policy, this made 90 million parents eligible to have another baby, this could potentially lead to an increase of 180 million people, in little time, in China alone. Mean whilst African countries are beginning to reach stage 3 on the demographic transition model – this is where birth rate remains high, death rate drops due to social and medical improvements and so the total population soars. Eliminating ageing would cause death rate to fall dramatically, birth rate to increase year on year and population increase would become uncontrollable.