Dead without death

Death is the ending of all vital functions or processes in an organism or cell, that’s just the definition we have learnt next to the fact that there is a cycle for life which ends with death. However, even if we all know that life will end one day, human beings are the only animals who are afraid of it because its brain it’s the only one able to abstract and assimilate that there is a past, present and above all, an uncertain future, that’s why we can entertain the idea of death and be afraid of it.

One of our biggest dreams it’s never grow older or just live forever, however to reach that goal also could be our curse, can we imagine a world in which not a single person die. It’s true that people wouldn’t die any more but it doesn’t mean that time has stopped; the human destiny would be an endless old age. Now, we have to wonder which the collateral damage of being alive for eternity is.

According with studies at the “Mexican Autonomous Institute of Ecological Researches”, on the best conditions earth could support an average of 8750 million human beings, so, imagine how fast are we going to reach that figure if nobody dies, everything will be chaos, war for the resources and we probably would end with the world because the earth would be overused and natural resources gradually disappear.

On balance, while some institutions would be full, other ones would break, the first would be the case of hospitals and special homes for third age people, on the other hand mortuaries would be empty and people who work burying people, would be without job, think who will buy a life insurance knowing that it’s impossible to die, that mean another broken industry, and we cannot miss out the elder people would be suffering too much, dealing whit terrible illnesses.

Briefly, immortality is just a double-edged sword, humans can have life forever but we have to think if that’s really life, I just can see a potential curse in which people would be damn to be on earth. We should think if living forever means living happy.

Paula Andrea Lengerke Diaz.