Because the argument was about "loss". Some of them had lost pretty everyone in their family and it didn't particularly make them suicidal (or at least not that they showed it). Additional decades or centuries wouldn't change much about that as everyone is already gone anyway.
It is not just "loss". It is repeated loss. And it is about the inevitability of loss. Like, most people know they will lose a lot by the time they got to their 90s. But no one think they will lose everything, inevitably. When they look at children, they don't need to think about how they will outlive them. When they look at a new building, they don't need to think about seeing it crumbing away from old age. That is the argument of "loss" for an immortal. Everything is ephemeral, nothing last as long as them and, thus, everything is fleeting.
Like, I am not sure if I agree this is an inevitable feeling for an immortal being. But it surely it is not comparable to the lifespan of a real person.
This ^ when you lose someone, they take piece of you with them. If you live forever and people keep taking pieces, you end up losing yourself.
I don't think you should underestimate how it feels to slowly lose everyone around you, over and over again. Every time you feel like you're settling in, people get taken away by death. Every single time. And you're the only one who sticks around.
Isn't a big part of what makes life and experiences so beautiful the fact that it's finite?
Idk, I think a lot of people underestimate what it would do to you mentally.
Also, while most old people don't really actively think about killing themselves because of loss, a lot of them are accepting and welcoming of death. They're ready to go, there's just no rush for them.
You hear stories from time to time of elderly couples dying days or hours apart from each other. It's not suicide in its explicit sense, but it is letting go of life in a subtle way.
Additional centuries wouldn't change that? Oh I think it would, very much so. Humans can already barely handle losing one lifetime of friends and family. But what about multiple lifetimes? It's not like you just stop making friends all of a sudden.
You might argue that humans are extremely adaptable and you can get used to it... But isn't that part of your humanity being taken away? Isn't that the first step into insanity?
last edited at May 17, 2019 10:53PM