A Reason

Misery doesn’t give happiness meaning; Happiness is meaning itself. ~CGP Grey

I think the crux of the problem lies in this above statement. Not only does this science fiction like future seem a pipe dream, this dream will likely molder into a nightmare when lived out. A theme in C. S. Lewis’ writings, and a truth known by science, is how the evil of pain has virtue. I know the topic Grey eloquently spoke upon was something we might call biological immortality and pain was a side issue, but the parallels in dealing with pain will make the main counterpoint clearer.

There is a disease where the sufferer doesn’t suffer pain. In a world without pain, not to feel pain is beneficial, but in a world where pain is real, feeling it not has terrible consequences. I have said pain is real, and yet said this sufferer felt it not. I should perhaps be clearer.

Pain is real in the sense that sight, sound, and taste are real, in the sense that it informs us of danger. If there were no danger, if pain wasn’t real, then ridding the world of pain would likely as not be a good thing. But in a world rife with causes of pain, not to know, not to sense pain, is a life threatening detriment.

And I think what Grey has suggested would be a sort of anesthesia. A world wherein men would agelessly live would not be a world with immortal saints, a civilization of angels. The experience of age does not breed goodness, nor would the removal of age’s detriments allow age to improve the morality of men. I think, if anything, an aging without the qualities Grey would free it of would take away the major benefit age has, that of finitude.

Death, as Grey rightly, succinctly, and elegantly shows, is an evil, our foe. Not only this, and here I take exception to a certain point Grey made, it is the most unnatural event man suffers. We feel inherently that something is wrong about dying, save in one case: the man who sheds innocent blood society condemns to death. I would go a step further. Death, like pain, tells us something is wrong with ourselves. The murderer—and not exclusively—deserves death, and we all will die.

Now a man, with his three score and ten, can do much evil in his short time. What if he were given more? Or what if he was given eternity? If mankind remains as he is morally, the next to infinite perpetuation of his life would be confining him to an abyss of his own failure, a bottomless pit. He would make his life, to put it into a single word, Hell.