Alyson Trigueros

ELA - Silveira
5/11/21

Why immortality is a negative subject

The novel, Scythe by Neal Shusterman, is a book about immortality and the age of
morality. In Scythe by Neal Shusterman there is this society where they have conquered death,
there is one problem though, with everyone being immortal there is the problem of
overpopulation. They needed to solve this problem and with the help of the thunderhead they
were able to come up with the idea of Scythes. There would be these special chosen people
who would take on the important role of being a scythe, a job where you have to kill others so
there is no overpopulation. These people had found a way to get what they wanted and a
solution to the problem of that wish.
Throughout history people have desired for immortality. Many people want to achieve
immortality because when you are immortal you never die, you don't have to worry about your
death, and you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want to do.
The query being asked in this subject of immortality is if there are consequences and benefits to
achieving immortality. Of course I believe that while there are benefits, there are consequences
with being immortal. There are many factors that prove that being immortal would not be the
best step for humanity.

While I think that immortality is something that shouldn't be taken into action there are
some benefits to being immortal; some of these profits compromise: One you get to live forever.
This is the most self explanatory as it is the one that is one of the biggest reasons why people
want to achieve immortality.One benefit of immortality is that you're able to restart your life as a
fresh new beginning. While in the present time we only have one life and with that life we only
have one chance we are not able to go back and fix our mistakes. Many people would want to
go back in time to fix these mistakes, with immortality you are not exactly able to do this but you
can have many different chances in life. This can be one of the reasons why people would want
to be immortal so they could have more than one chance. This example of living forever shows
that immortality can be a good thing because not only do you live forever but you have lots of
time, you can have a fresh new start in life and not only can you use that immortality for your
own good but also for others in that unlimited time that you have you can help other and the
world itself too.

Next, another benefit of immortality is there are no worries of danger since you can not
die. Many people today are cautious so they can be safe so nothing happens to them. With that
you can miss out on many things in life, but with immortality you don't have to worry and
practically can do whatever you want without the worry of putting harm in your way.
For instance in Scythe there is a character who is known as Tyger. Tyger is a character who
does not worry much about his being, he splats. He basically throws himself off buildings in
confidence that he will be revived and will be okay, he does it since he knows he can because
he is immortal he is able to go through accidents and not worry about the outcome.
Understandably this reason of not having to worry about death and danger shows that
immortality can be a good thing as everyone is safe no matter what. They do not have to pay to
protect themselves and their car for example. Since in the end they’ll alway be okay. With
immortality more people will be more safe and you have the advantage to not worry or fear
death since you're immortal.

Now goes on the consequences of Immortality, there are 2 parts to almost everything in
life the positive being benefits and negative consequences. The same applies to immortality, we
will dive deeper and find some of many of the consequences. One consequence of immortality
is that time goes by too quickly, when you're immortal you have all the time in the world, and at
some point time will pass by too quickly. The years will start feeling like weeks and weeks, days,
it becomes an endless loop driving people to depression and loneliness or even to a point
where they are done.
A piece of evidence where this is shown in the scythe is when scythe Curie is talking about
being immortal how time passes too quickly
“The longer we live the quicker the days pass.How troublesome that is when we live forever.A
year seems to in a matter of weeks.decades fly with no milestones to mark them.” pg#373
And also when Curie is also talking about the woman who came to her door to tell her to glean
her on pages 339-340 This woman was not depressed but felt done, her husband had died
years ago and she wanted to go with him this was the effect of all the time that had passed she
probably felt numb after all this time. This example shows that immortality can be a negative
thing because it can cause people to want to feel done, and since you cannot die you are stuck
in an endless loop of time.

Another consequence of immortality is that time will become useless and boring, at
some point humanity will reach its peak and will have learned everything.
You will start to lose importance of things, most things will become useless like a new phone; A
new phone would be nothing since humanity would have learned everything and there's nothing
new to add. It'll be the same device and all they’ll add would be a different color to market to
people etc. An example of this consequence from the book is when they said they had
conquered death and learned everything where they had nothing more to learn.
“Was there ever a time when people weren’t plagued with boredom? A time when motivation
wasn’t so hard to come by? When I look at the news archives from the age of mortality, it seems
people had more reasons to do the things they did. Life was about forging time, not just passin
it.” pg 101 and “But like so many things, once we have possession of infinite knowledge it
suddenly seems less important less urgent” pg 29. These examples show that immortality can
not only be positive but also be a negative thing because not only will time pass by too fast, but
things will start to become invaluable and life will become boring. Motivation will be hard to pass
by and things that would take a mortal person a long rough time would take an immortal person
a short time since they have all the time.

Overall, the benefits of immortality are living forever and no worries of danger, while the
consequences are that time goes by too quickly and time will become useless/ boring and you'll
start to lose value of your things.
In conclusion , everyone has their opinions on the matter of immortality; but I believe that
immortality is a negative thing that can bring many problems and unwanted things, there is a
benefit to immortality but at what cost ?