Imagine for a second that you are an A-mortal being. That is to say you cannot die from old age or disease. Would you behave any differently to the way you do now?

Now imagine the entire human race is A-mortal, how would societal behaviour change; if at all?

As we chug on towards a state of A-mortality, in a less dangerous world, the question is; *are we becoming less adventurous?

It is a valid question, because at some point in our not-too-distant future, we could be living lives measured in centuries and millennia, instead of years and decades.

In order to answer that question let us first take a brief look at human history. Then let us look out to the stars and lose ourselves in Fermi's Paradox, a.k.a The Strange Case Of The Missing Aliens, to see what we can discover.

The answers we find may have implications for human society as a whole, and may even drive our future direction.

Mortality And Adventure - A Fine Romance

If you have ever studied history beyond a grade school level, then you will be aware of all of these great men and women whom have achieved the nexus of their greatness at what seems to a modern human, at an incredibly young age.

Take Alexander The Great for instance, the King of Macedonia. He embarked on campaigns that allowed him to stretch his empire from the Adriatic sea (Mediterranean) to the Indus River in Asia. From Greece to India and all that lay in between belonged to Alexander's forces. Yet the great warrior died at the age of 32.

History is littered with men and women who by today's standards achieved amazing things early on their lives. From Cook, to Earhart. These early pioneers were well on there way to the greatness that would keep their names on people's lips for centuries to come.

However the mortality rate in these ancient times was a lot lower than it is today. Take Mozart for instance, who gave the world music that is still celebrated today. He wrote six hundred pieces of music, including twenty one operas and fifty symphonies. Yet Mozart died at the age of 35.

Of course not everyone died young in the 'olden days', Charles Darwin lived to be 73. Although perhaps aware of his own mortality embarked on that world-changing voyage aboard The Beagle to the Galapagos Islands when he was just 21.

It wasn't just adventurers who did things earlier than we might today, society in general moved faster. It was not uncommon for women to be married by 16 and have several children by their early 20s. In Victorian England an unmarried, childless woman in her mid-to-late 20s would be considered an 'old maid'.

Of course we do still see this attitude in some cultures today. However as we move towards a more developed society whereby we are living longer, with less danger to our mortal beings. We are having fewer children at later and later stages in our lives.

For instance one in five (20%) pregnant women in 1952 in the UK were teenagers, by 1995 this figure had declined to one in fourteen, roughly 7% of all births.

Youth Eternal

If you are under the age of around twenty five there is every chance that you feel immortal. You know intellectually that one day you will die, however it just doesn't feel that way.

Even if you have come to terms with your own mortality, death feels a long way off. Depending on your geographical location, socioeconomic status, genetic inheritance and luck. You could live for another seven or eight decades. In fact advances in medical technology could extend your life expectancy by another half a century beyond that, maybe even more.

This I argue, is making society less adventurous, less inclined to take risks in order to achieve greatness. If you were twenty five in the year 1541, you may have considered your life more than half over.

Nowadays however we can see it is possible to achieve greatness in your forties, or fifties. Maybe by 2050, we will see the average child birthing age go up from 27.2 (UK national average) to 37.2 or maybe even over the age of forty.

In other words, as a society we are taking our time to do things, where before we were rushing to complete important goals before we died.

I personally have witnessed this just in my lifetime. In the 1970s when I was born, a 35 year old was considered middle aged. Today you're still considered young and cool. Testified by the fact that as a 35 year old, you are still in the 18-35 demographic on most polls and questionnaires.

OK, great, we are living longer, having babies later, and fighting less wars than ever before. So what?

Death Doesn't Become Us

In his excellent book Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari postulates that at some point in the near future, humans will begin to observe death as a curable disease.

He comes to this conclusion because throughout human history we have either cured or eradicated the things that have caused us to die early.

From smallpox to the plague, leprosy to polio, these and many more diseases were once incurable. If you contracted any one of the aforementioned ailments a couple of hundred years ago you died.

In Victorian England, one of the most common causes of death was by way of infection transmitted from a toothache.

Tetanus too was a great killer, scratch yourself on a rusty nail and a couple of weeks later, dead. No cure, no hope, just dead.

As Harari points out, nobody wants to die and it is quite a natural progression for the human race to carry on curing diseases until there is only one left, the disease of death itself. Because of course, there is no such thing as dying from old age.

In reality we all die from something. Harari makes the observation that the amount of natural causes we will die from in the future will be eradicated all together.

In a situation whereby we cure death, the human race would become an A-mortal species. Not quite immortal, because of cause we won't be superheroes, accidents and acts of violence will still be able to kill us. However we won't die of natural causes brought on by old age. Which, let's face it, is the next best thing to immortality.

The End Of YOLO

So if we are getting more cautious the longer we live, then what does that say for the advancement of the human race.

If a person knows that barring accident, or death by violent means, they will live forever. What then does that mean for the types of risks they may take in their lives?

How sensible will a bungee jump feel to an A-mortal being? I'm surprised that it makes sense to a run-of-the-mill mortal being today. However perhaps somebody who does such a thing as attach elastic to their feet and jump from a bridge or helicopter feels that they are going to die anyway, so why not enjoy life while they can?

This is known as the YOLO generation, standing for you only live once. However that can be more directly translated to, we all die. As that is what they are referring to.

In the 1950s, the rebel-without-a-cause generation termed it as; live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.

Boldly Going Since Time Began

It can be reasonably argued that one of the greatest risks a person might undertake would be that of exploring the unknown. For the unknown always holds unforeseen risks and dangers.

Would the first men who journeyed to the moon - and indeed the twenty three after them - have gone if they had known that they might live for hundreds of years or more?

The men and women that have the opportunity to travel to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond, will they go knowing that they are A-mortal?

Inner Space The Final Frontier

In 2011 John Smart first proposed his Transcension Hypothesis as a possible answer to Fermi's Paradox. To remind you, Fermi's Paradox was the question first posed by Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi.

Fermi made the observation that, with so many billions upon billions of stars in just our own galaxy. There must be at least tens of millions of planets orbiting stars just like ours. Yet we see no evidence whatsoever of alien life, no radio signals, no probes, nothing.

Ever since he pointed it out, various astrophysicists and astronomers have tried to answer the question of why we can't see aliens.

John Smart says its because that no matter where you are in the universe, the simple fact is leaving your planet, and your solar system is very hard and very dangerous.

Smart argues that once a civilisation gets to a certain point, computer technology gets so advanced that virtual environments become completely indistinguishable from the real world and can be inhabited by their creators.

On earth we call this moment in time the singularity, a point whereby computers will overhaul us as the smartest beings on the planet and wonderful things start to happen.

If you think about it we are almost there. Walk into a room where somebody is playing the latest Fifa football game on a Playstation or X-Box, and it is quite easy to mistake the onscreen action for the real thing. Also look at games such as Grand Theft Auto which are getting more and more real in not just their appearance, but physical rules as well.

We already have technology we can control with our minds, from electronic wheelchairs to prosthetic limbs. We are slowly learning how to merge our biological brains with our synthetic technology.

The question of whether we will be able to experience virtual environments as directly as we experience the real world, is not really a question of if, but rather that of when.

The advantages of a virtual environment of course, are that it can be engineered to make sure that it is 100% safe for its inhabitants. Another one is that it can be moulded to suit our needs, and that includes the need for excitement and adventure.

These two features alone may be enough to curtail any outer space exploration. Indeed why risk dying on a trip to Jupiter's moon Europa, when you can go there risk-free on a virtual trip that will be indistinguishable from the real thing?

Natural Reordering

It would seem that it is the natural order of things for a person to become more cautious as their life progresses. When we are young we do reckless things in order to enjoy our lives to the full. We race in cars, we jump out of planes, we sign up to go to Mars.

As we get older, and perhaps have children we realise and come to terms with our own mortality. We understand that we are not going to live forever, and that life can be snuffed out in a blink of an eye.

In that way, the old make way for the more adventurous young. They step aside and let the latest batch of fearless individuals boldly go where they no longer dare to.

What then will happen when the young are born knowing that as long as they are careful, they actually will live forever? Will that sense of reckless adventure be snuffed out?

Will it be a case of you only live once, but do it carefully and you can live forever?

Maybe, maybe not, there are surely other aspects to our lust for knowledge and adventure. However mortality is a huge factor, and without the worry of a natural death, but fear of an accidental one. Who then will be left to boldly venture forth?

Sources:

Childbearing for women born in different years, England and Wales: 2015 - Office for National Statistics

Alexander the Great Timeline - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Alexander The Great Biography - Wiki

100 finalists chosen for a one-way trip to Mars - Washington Post

The Transcension Hypothesis:
Sufficiently Advanced Civilizations May Invariably Leave Our Universe,
and Implications for METI and SETI. - * extract John M. Smart* - Acceleration Studies Foundation

We Can’t Find Any Alien Neighbors and Virtual Reality Might Be to Blame - Singularity Hub

The transcension hypothesis: - Acta Astronautica Volume 78 John M. Smart

Fermi's Paradox - Wiki

Further Reading:

The Von Neumann Problem - Where Are All The Aliens? - Steemit, Cryptogee

Where Are All The Aliens? - Is Technology An Inevitable Consequence Of Intelligence? The Argument Against - *Steemit, Cryptogee

Where Are All The Aliens? - The Argument For The Inevitability Of Technology

WOULD YOU ACT ANY DIFFERENTLY IF YOU KNEW THAT YOU WERE A-MORTAL? WOULD YOU TAKE LESS RISKS? OR PERHAPS YOU'D TAKE EVEN MORE? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT A-MORTALITY WILL HAVE A PROFOUND EFFECT ON HUMAN CULTURE? OR PERHAPS IT WILL HAPPEN AT SUCH A SLOW PACE NOTHING MUCH WILL CHANGE?

AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Title image: NASA on Unsplash

Note: The above links contained in 'Sources' are external links. However I am a trusted Steemian with a reputation of 74 and a two and a half year presence on Steemit. Remember to keep your passwords safe, and never to enter them into non-trusted external sites.

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