this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
195 points (97.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43770 readers
1494 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
All the comments assume everybody else isn't also immortal. I forget the title and author but there's an old sci fi story (or novel?) about a future where everybody lives for centuries, and they've found that the brain only retains a certain amount of experience. They have long careers, get tired of doing whatever, re-educate and do something else, or even have multiple families they eventually forget about. A couple of the characters are surprised to find out they used to be married like a century earlier. To me that seems vaguely like reincarnation, and I kind of don't hate the idea. I really don't see any downside to that scenario, or even just going on forever.
People are focused on having regrets and negatives that last forever. But buck up li'l camper, you can learn to move on from stuff. And I say this as a dad whose daughter had cancer at age 10 (she survived). It was hell and I wouldn't want to live through that whole period again, but I don't consider it a reason not to want to live forever. The trick is to learn how to cope with these things and not let them outweigh the good experiences you have.
Is it: “the age of pussyfoot” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot
That could be it - many elements are familiar, although the title isn't at all, but I have read a lot of Fredrik Pohl. The plot synopsis also doesn't mention the characters finding out they had been married before. Maybe that's a small detail that just stands out more in my mind.
Swear I've read that. Anyone?
Isn't the movie Hancock a bit in this direction?
A scifi short story I read was set in a somewhat idyllic future.
Robots did everything. Everyone was given housing, food etc. Health was covered and people lived virtually forever. Nobody worked, and you could travel and do anything you wanted.
The most prized thing, that everyone was desperate for, was having an original thought.
Reminds me another story about an idyllic world where almost nobody worked and everything was provided. At one point a crew showed up to repair a house, and everybody gathered around to watch, marveling at their work clothes and tools. One guy yearned to use tools so he started making little craft items at home, and trading them to people for worthless little tiddly wink tokens they used for friendly bets on sports. Then his neighbors started doing the same thing and they got a little economy going, using the tokens as currency, until the government got wind of it and squashed the whole thing because commerce was illegal.