Is death inevitable?

You're absolutely right, this film is an enormous load of crud.

I believe that death is indeed inevitable and the only logical thing for all of us to fear. The complete and total end to everything is rather dramatic. Pretty easy to understand the temptation to believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, whatever.

"Ryu-san, you don't quite look your character's age."

Of course death is inevitable.

If all diseases were cured tomorrow and the aging process was eliminated, that still means that people will die in accidents, wars, disasters etc. There will still be famine, suicides and murders.

OK, so there may be a few people that live for millenia, avoiding danger, they spend thousands of years on Earth. Until our sun dies. No matter how healthy you are, a sun turning into a black hole will not be something you walk away from.

Oh, perhaps you've lived long enough that travel to other solar systems is possible. You find a little place to call home. Until their sun dies. Repeat and repeat, running through the universe trying to find shelter from the overwhelming laws of atrophy. Wherever you go, there is still the fact that the universe itself will one day end. You may own an Indiana Jones style fridge, or a shelter made entirely of diamond, but even these things can not survive the overwhelming pressure of a near infinite universe being crushed in to the microscopic mass of a lone singularity.

And don't say time travel, there are too many reasons why that's no sort of get-out-of-jail-free card.

Sorry matey, but whatever we try, we will ALL die. Except Maggie Thatcher. That bitch appears to be here forever.



Why are the right wing always so angry? And why do I find their foolish hatred so very, very funny?

There is one thing you seem to disregard.
If we all live under the threat of death, even if we eliminate the two primary reasons for death, each day you live will increase the probability of death happening.
So, even if a quote from fightclub feels a little bit superficial in this kind of discussion, I feel it still pertains to the topic:

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

My thought is that if we dont have age or disease anymore, we still have other factors that may kill us, and if we are undying creatures, we have an infinite timescale, therefore the chance of death happening is infinite at some time during that timescale (I'm by no means a mathematician though, so I may be wrong about this)

For death to be avoidable we have to remove all causes for it on an infinite timescale.


Some might find me morally challenged or morally ambigious. I prefer morally creative.

I draw a distinction between "identity" death and "biological" death. The former is when one loses subjectivity and their sense of "I"; their identity is totally eradicated, as indicative in people who have had brain strokes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY38pk2hfWI
(SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND WATCHING THIS)

The latter ('biological') is when one's bodily functions cease. One can look at biological death mournfully, but as humans, it is really identity death that frightens us. This is why many mainstream Christians and Muslims have created visions of heaven where one's memory remains intact; however, this is ludicrous, since memory is inherently malleable and impermanent. As that link I gave indicated, one can literally forget their name and everything that accompanies it! The whole cloud of associations attached to the name would dissipate, and one would begin a new life.

Granted, one can have an identity death without biological death, but it seems it biological death must also have the relinquishment of identity.

Granted, I have some final things to say:

If you apply Sorites paradox (i.g., consider a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed - is it still a heap when only one grain remains? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?) to identity's constant change, at what point does it become "drastic"? You cannot logically argue that one forgetting their entire past is more meaningful than one forgetting a huge portion of their life. It is ultimately preference or our subjective inclinations when we claim x amount of memory loss equates to "huge" or "small" change in identity. Objectively, there is no way to determine what is considered a "drastic" change in identity. All there is, is constant change.

Add to the fact modern Neuroscience is showing our sense of self is a social construct and neurologically induced illusion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neuroscience-of-selfhood

Conclusion:
"There is no beginning and no end. Nothing is immutable, everything changes. That thing which does not come into being does not die." - From the film Why Has the Bodhidharma Left for the East?

Accepting these two conclusions:
A) All there is, is constant change.
B) The self is a social construct and neurologically induced illusion.

Nobody is ever born, and nobody ever dies.

nobody knows

Death is inevitable for our planet, for our sun, and perhaps (this is still an open question for physicists, the universe.

I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden
and make every lover the love of my life

The only way in which death would cease to be inevitable would be if humans stopped being mortal, but then they would no longer be human because part of being human is to die.

We may be able to cure all diseases one day.

We may be able to prevent ageing one day.

Why problem make? When you no problem have, you don't want to make ...