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What Are Some Advantages to Living Forever?

The idea of living forever remains isolated to science-fiction. But if you could, would you want to live forever -- and why would it be a good thing?

  1. Experience

    • One key benefit to being around forever would be the experience gained during this eternity. Anything and everything on your list of "to-dos" could be completed -- whether that would be traveling to far-off destinations, writing 1,000 novels, experiencing exotic cuisines or sleeping 20 hours a day.

    The Future

    • Another positive -- at least for most people -- would be the ability to experience the future. Assuming you grow at the same rate you do now, you would have to wait awhile, but the future would come eventually. An eternal being could experience more advanced types of future technologies, be they advanced nano-bots a thousand years from now or traveling to distant planets and stars. With each new discovery that shakes the realms of science, you would be there.

    Education

    • Learning, educating and absorbing information daily takes up lots of time. With a life of eternity, you could learn endlessly; however, with the rate of new information and discoveries, you might never catch up to learn it all. This wouldn't stop people from learning as many languages as they wanted -- or from reading every book that has ever been on their "to-do" list.

    Science of Aging

    • In reality, living forever might have as many disadvantages as advantages. Life might become less enjoyable due to abundance. If you were the only one living forever, you would have to watch people die around you. But living longer is another story. The process of aging rests in cell division and the speed of this division. Eventually, cells cease to divide and die. Along with studies on altering genes in insects and mice, other larger-scale studies involving eating habits have been studied in recent decades. Experimenters from Cornell University studied the effects of lessening calories consumed and extending life. Although the cause for extending life is unclear, groups such as the Calorie Restriction Society live by this evidence in an attempt to gain a foothold on fate.

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