Ethics Regarding Immortality

Well, the family usually doesn't encourage it outright, many family members might disagree with the person's decision at first and try to get them to change it. There's also the fact that a majority of people in this society believe in some form of a pleasant afterlife, so dying doesn't sound as painful as it could.

• There's also the fact that only so many deaths result from 'accidents' and it is very important for their society to maintain a relatively stable population to avoid overcrowding and famine.
• Some religions in this setting even believe that one needs to experience all walk of life before becoming 'enlightened' and being able to reach 'paradise' (This particular situation of Nothing Left to Do but Die isn't particularly uncommon from some real life religious practices I've researched)
• It's not intented to sound too disturbing, but if it rubs people the wrong way that much, I'll simply have to imply it, rather than outright state it.

  • Oh and I've realized my specific case is much closer to Nothing To Do But Die, rather than See It All Suicide

edited 2nd Nov '13 10:35:01 AM by TheMuse

Culture is culture. If people are raised to believe it's something ok, then how we react won't entirely apply all the time.

That's an excellent point, but I want to avoid people becoming so uncomfortable by the concept that they stop reading altogether. Just because Culture Justifies Anything, doesn't mean people won't find it disturbing potentially

It's probably best to have differing viewpoints within the story itself. The 800-year-old who's completely baffled by the idea that anyone could run out of things to do; the 250-year-old who's already bored out of her mind and ready to pull the plug; the 1200-year-old who was one of the first to get the treatment, and disapproves of suicide on religious grounds that most other people have long since discarded.

With really long immortality, you might even have people volunteering to go on slower-than-light generation ships to the stars to look for new worlds, because that's something new to do.