Ethics Regarding Immortality

Okay, so my work features a setting where much of the population is compromised of The Ageless immortals. I've discovered some Fridge Horror with the premise and am trying to figure iut if certain aspects will turn readers off to it

• Most people can go on living indefinitely, but after a couple hundred years they usually choose to pull a Seen-It-All Suicide. Sometimes they will have a big party to celebrate their life with friends and family before offing themselves. They treat it as a bittersweet thing, as they obviously will miss the person.
  • I'm worried this could sound a little too close to an assisted suicide, which could rub some people the wrong way
• Then there's the fact that some people are mortal, but a few Mayfly–December Romance s happen over the course of the story
  • An 'immortal' person can choose to end their life whenever they want, but how could you pull of a 'happy' relationship of this sort without a Bittersweet Ending to it or having it seem REALLY codependent

With regard to the first point, it sounds like a realistic Values Dissonance between their society and ours.

x-posted from another thread:

In my 'verse, one of the characters is a Robotic Spouse who had a Mayfly–December Romance. Her wife was killed in a diving accident. Even if the woman died of natural causes, her Robotic Spouse (okay Transhuman cybernetic spouse to be technical) would've outlived her by decades.

So a character can shrug off bullets and an RPG would be like a slap in the face, because said character is Nigh-Invulnerable and The Ageless. What if that character's attorney boyfriend was stabbed by a mook? Or he was killed by a drunk driver? Or he simply died in a nursing home while the heroine/hero still looks like a twentysomething?

How does the character deal with the problem?

This could also be the back story:

• Said character survived while friends/family didn't survive in the Doomed Hometown, character has survivor's guilt.

• Character has had several Mayfly December Romances, or the parent(s) of the character did.
  • The Character (or the friend, or the Love Interest ) discovers that "Grandma/Grandpa" is really their parent/sister/brother

• The character becomes immortal and now finds relating to people more and more difficult.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

But it's not like to would be a little too dusturbing, right? It's only mentioned a couple times (mostly in the beginning) But even though it would rub people the wrong way a bit, it's not supposed to darken the piece too much.

The Values Dissonance wouldn't disturb me too much and I think that one of the functions of Speculative Fiction is to push boundaries - some of the traditional stuff has explored worlds where euthanasia is commonplace or where it's normal for people to be killed off once they reach a certain age.

I suspect most readers would understand that it's a different society and that their values differ from ours.

I suspect that, ironically, more people would accept a speculative future society where people are accepting of others who get sick of an extended life and commit suicide than would accept a story set in a realistic past society where people are overtly sexist or racist.

Personally, I don't think "y'know, I think 500 years is long enough, I'll throw a farewell party then off myself this afternoon" is too disturbing.

edited 12th Aug '13 2:57:55 PM by Wolf1066

Yeah, it's intended to push boundaries a bit. People are also MUCH more sex-positive (thanks to effective and widespread Birth control) I'm not going into full on 'pederasty is acceptable according to their culture' but polyamorous (and occasionally bisexual) sexual relationships, casual sex and such isn't a huge deal to them.

Sounds like most of my stories in that respect.

I've got to get a story finished in which there are legally recognised polyamorous relationships while it's still "speculative fiction" - so far social reforms have been happening faster than I can get around to completing a story.

Its not that I find Seen-It-All Suicide disturbing, I just find it to be unrealistic. As I said before in another thread like this, I am firmly in the Living Forever Is Awesome camp, so The Ageless just getting tired of life and committing suicide would break my Willing Suspension of Disbelief. On the other hand, you could make it work if the setting was a Crapsack World where life was truly miserable.

edited 12th Aug '13 5:23:13 PM by shiro_okami

I doubt it's possible to write a story without breaking someone's suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't recommend changing the setting out of fear of it, in any case.

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

While I'd personally find that Living Forever Is Awesome I could buy some people doing a Seen-It-All Suicide if their personalities were written appropriately.

I would probably find it broke my Willing Suspension of Disbelief if it happened too frequently or the characters didn't seem the sort.

I'd think that a lot of people would find there's too much to do to contemplate killing themselves.

It's not treated like it's super common or anything, although it is pretty well accepted, and people ussually do it only after living for very long periods of time (at least 500 years) And even then, most immortal people end up dying in situations/accidents when their immortality is compromised due to magical/situational means.

The one thing I think you might want to consider are people who are immortal who simply refuse to die. For whatever reason. Maybe they really really like this one soap opera that shows no sign of stopping, or they're a recluse, or they jsut really like living.

Read my stories!

Sci-fi isn't always necessarily what we expect, anyway. No one has actually lived for 300 years. I think the conjecture of really old people deciding to die is realistic enough to work as a sci-fi premise. I mean, certainly far less realistic ideas have been used throughout the history of sci-fi, usually without much complaint.

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Exactly. I'm not even sure how Shiro Okami's Willing Suspension of Disbelief got broken—it's not really all that weird for speculative societies, especially Sci-Fi ones, to have different values than we do now. Look at the past.

Also, people allow themselves to die. It's a thing. And it's not always considered tragic—it's not uncommon for a ninety year old great grandparent to choose to pass on in their sleep or something, where an admittedly expensive visit to the hospital could have led to five years of medicine and restriction to a bed full of electronics. I know people who've said they don't want that, or to not keep them alive if they become vegetables.

I don't see how it's unrealistic, in other words, when it happens that frequently.

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

You are comparing two opposite scenarios as if they were the same thing. It's not unrealistic for someone elderly to want to die because they just don't want to deal with aging and pain and medical bills anymore. But that isn't at all what we're talking about here. We're talking about immortality, having a perfect, never-aging body and mind. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to convince me that that could somehow get boring, unless the setting was radically weird or a Crapsack World. Life is a gift, and someone just getting tired of it comes off as being unthankful and weird. Agelessness and death go together like water and oil.

If you want to make me believe that a society/culture would eventually get tired of life, then make the immortality Age Without Youth. Or you could make the society/culture really different and give them totally different standards so that they actually want to experience age, the pain of the body breaking down, the dulling of the mind and senses, etc.

Probably the best way to do it would be to make the dying process completely and utterly different from normal human aging.

edited 13th Aug '13 5:16:03 PM by shiro_okami

Some people would get bored. Others wouldn't. People aren't some sort of one-defined blob.

Read my stories!

You realize there would be no retirement, right? You can't retire if you're immortal. You need a constant source of income, because a surplus is useless when there's no doubt it'll run dry in time.

I get it if you want to live forever yourself, but can you really not imagine someone wanting closure in their lives? Even if you question the logic behind it, you can't imagine it happening?

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

No, not at all. Not in an immortal world. I firmly, firmly, firmly believe that ALL humans who have ever lived, are living now, or will ever live have an ingrained desire to want to live forever. Not to say that that desire cannot be overriden, as suicides do exist.

As regards retirement, what retirement? You cannot apply an institution or concept dealing with aging and mortality to an ageless and immortal society. An immortal society would simply not operate at all like a mortal society. Even societies in real life have not always needed "income" (I assume that by this word you mean "money") in order to live.

edited 13th Aug '13 5:26:30 PM by shiro_okami

Well, then that's what you believe. Many things in sci fi are meant to tackle such things. So I guess in the end, OP's premise just isn't for you. No harm done.

I mean, what else do you say?

What if I say that I firmly believe, no exceptions, that if humans lived past the age 150 or so, they'd go insane, as a human isn't meant to live that long? It's kinda hard to contribute anything useful to a thing like this that's asking for a certain amount of "here is my premise, either accept it or leave."

edited 13th Aug '13 5:30:10 PM by MrAHR

Read my stories!

Well actually, they're immune to being 'physically hurt' but that doesn't mean that they could never sucumb to emotional problems, such as developing unhealthy coping mechanisms to stress (alcoholism, self harm and other addictions) developing PTSD due to a tramatic experience (just because they don't die, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt) or just plain old getting sad. Not that that means that those affected would be Driven to Suicide, but the world isn't just a totally awesome idealistic place.

• But, actually in-universe, most young folks (in story this would be cover until someone reached their mid-100s) don't think at all about planning 'for an end,' especially if they happen to be of a particuarly optimistic persuasion. After that point, they'll usually at least think about it occasionally, but people often choose it eventually after several hundred years (people over the age of 1000 are uncommon, but niot unheard of), mostly because of the whole 'I've experienced enough of the world' but also to make room for a new generation, as overpopulation could become a genuine worry if not for accidents and suicides.

@ Mr AHR: You are misunderstanding the reason of why I was being so opinionated. I could care less if the OP's premise doesn't agree with my own beliefs about immortality. My last two comments were not directed at the OP.

My last two comments were directed at Rem (you might have noticed that each one had the tag). The reason I got so opinionated was because Rem was challenging my opinions using arguments that didn't even fit the actual topic of the discussion.

edited 13th Aug '13 7:24:24 PM by shiro_okami

So it's alright to let yourself die if you're in physical pain, but not mental?

And the reason I mentioned retirement is because you're correct—there would be no retirement. You'd only be working toward continuing existence. Sure, if you love your job or can afford creature comforts it's not such a bad deal, but do you really think that would be the majority? Would you have the motivation to keep at it? We're not even sure what happens to a brain when it lives too long—after all, there's only so much data you can store, and there's evidence suggesting that your brain loses plasticity through repetition—making learning difficult as time goes on.

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

If people usually off themself after a couple of hunded years, people would probably also save up some money during the prior 100 years so the don't have to work the last few years.(So they can spend the last years 'seeing' before the Seen-It-All Suicide.)

and As regards mental pain, it would be quite the opposite. Mental/emotional pain would probably be the most realistic cause of an ageless person committing suicide, since that's usually the reason why physically healthy people commit suicide in real life. Up until The Muse's last comment, I was assuming we were talking about mentally healthy ageless people who killed themselves out of boredom.

You also completely missed the point of what I said about retirement. Retirement is only necessary because the elderly cannot always support themselves. A healthy ageless person can always support themself, thus they wouldn't need retirement. But my real point is that you assume that immortals must have "jobs" and go to "work" in a world that runs on money just like ours. I am saying that a society does not need money in order to operate. You are using the inability of agelessness to work when applied to a single society as a reason for it to not work at all, without applying agelessness to any other sort of society.

Even supposing that an ageless person was to live in our society, that does not mean that they have to get stuck in the same job. An ageless person could back to school and learn a new trade whenever they get tired of their old one. They could learn any number of new languages or even devote themselves to a science, or even become a Jack of All Trades.

As for the brain, it is able to store a limitless amount of data. Even supposing that the brain loses learning capacity over time, that might be a side effect of aging. The brain of an ageless person would work even better then our brains work now.

edited 14th Aug '13 3:31:13 PM by shiro_okami

Seen-It-All Suicide seems to be extremely painful and heartwrenching, especially if the family and friends encourage it. And party is pretty unrealistic, because before suicide or attempts people usually are secluded and sad.

edited 2nd Nov '13 8:49:02 AM by fashionista

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