If death weren’t a thing, I suppose that that pitching someone into lava or something like that would be pretty bad then.
Only if you’re a pussy and can’t take a few million years trapped in the earth’s crust.
This one gets more complicated the longer I think about it.
My first pass was to imagine humans just as we are aside from the ability to die. Many things about how humans are don’t make sense without death though. Pain, for example likely evolved to cause organisms to avoid stimuli that could lead to their death. Fear largely derives from the anticipation of pain. Would true immortals have either? I imagine the psychology of such creatures would be vastly different from our own.
There’s also the question of what form the immortality takes. If it’s possible to destroy someone’s physical body, but their soul can immediately manifest a new one, and pain doesn’t exist, then doing so is just an inconvenience. If bodies are impervious to any damage or alteration, a large category of crimes vanishes.
It would probably come down to some sort of long-term imposition on the freedom of others, but it’s really hard to guess what that would look like.
Burying people alive
In my opinion killing is pretty bad but there are other crimes that can be worse, so not sure what point you are trying to make
Death doesn’t mean killing. You can die by an accident (falling off a ladder). You can die from a heart attack. Death just means dying.
Then even more to my point. What difference would it make?
Burying someone alive. Or trapping their feet in cement shoes and throwing them into the ocean.
Throwing someone into a universe where nothing exists…
Enjoy an eternity of absolutely nothing (and you can’t even die 🫠
Torture, kidnapping.
No death? As in you can’t die from old age or you can’t die no matter what happens to you e.g you’re throw into the sun, you don’t die? Or your physical body can die but that just means your game is over in one universe and you can move into the next, and so on?
If being thrown into the sun can’t kill you, then you’re invulnerable and torture can’t be a thing. You could be tossed into deep space and not hit anything for a million years, but you could learn how to cope after a few years and make your brain a retreat of imagination.
If it’s just games all the way up into eternity, being the game creator and making pain exist is an unforgiveable crime.
If being thrown into the sun can’t kill you, then you’re invulnerable and torture can’t be a thing.
I disagree. there several forms of torture that don’t involve killing you
How do you hurt somebody who is invulnerable and doesn’t need to breathe? How do you torture somebody who can survive being crushed by the sun? Tickles?
I don’t think any of those mean they don’t feel pain. Or do we assume that instead of flash and bones they are made of steel or another metal?
op didn’t mention invulnerability, though, just that they couldn’t die. if we agree that the question is about a human, we know there are several ways to torture without causing physical harm (e. g. waterboarding, or doing something with those who you care for), but physical harm also does not mean death in many cases
if we don’t agree that the personis a human, or even that they are not a living being, I don’t know what to say but I think the point of the question was lost
The question posits that there is no death. If there is no death, then being thrown into the sun doesn’t kill a human. If you can come up with an explanation for that that doesn’t involve invulnerability, be my guest.
Because they get their invulnerability from rapid regeneration.
Their flesh still burns, their bones still break, but they heal quickly, just to be burned and broken again.
Not putting your shopping carts back.
Unauthorised pregnancy. If no one can die, every new birth is effectively stealing from the limited pool of resources. Too many births, everyone starves, no one can die to ease the burden on the limited resources. Endless suffering for all.
Its no death. Not no aging or sickness.
People are still going to fall apart as they age. So I wonder if there would be a hard cap where you basically have a farewell party and go into a euthanasia booth/coffin.
Unauthorized pregnancies would be criminal. No idea what that world would do with the child in that situation.
Separate comment, because I think it deserves its own discussion, but can there really be aging and illness? It might get a bit philosophical, but if all your cells stop regenerating and die off, eventually you’ll end up a bit of ooze that can’t interpret or perceive the world, so at that point you would be dead?
In my interpretation of the scenario, it would be like “in time”, everyone grows up to 18 (or some arbitrary age), and then you are stuck like that forever after?
How are you envisaging it?
Yaknow there’s a movie about everyone living forever and you basically pay with your lifespan.
Technology advances enough to cure all diseases and stop aging. I think age 23-28 is prime. Some people look way more grown up at 28 vs 18. Also you’re body is done growing and starts breaking down in the mid 30s.
So yeah I’m thinking people are immortal via science. So it’s sci-fi not fantasy.
In fantasy humans would ALWAYS have immortality. It’s not like a switch is flipped in 1990 and suddenly people stop dying and aging.
Our society and culture would be completely different if death wasn’t a thing. One of the reasons we have so many issues is religion. What religion would immortals have? What does war look like for immortals? How do you decide who wins a war when soldiers can’t die? Violence loses its meaning with no death or injuries.
We’d all become non-violent. Maybe war would be decided by board games like chess. We’d be more open to talking things out instead of just killing and taking from each other.
Another issue with humans is overpopulation. Again resources being scarce and countries fighting over resources wouldn’t be a thing in the way we have it today.
See how this goes down the rabbit hole?
Are you referring to “In Time”, or some other film? The Man From Earth is another interesting film about a singular immortal man.
There is heaps to unpack, it really is a complete game changer.
The other issue, is what about other animals. If they end up immortal as well, we’d be litterally drowning in any animals that breed rapidly, like rats, rabbits etc.
Yeah In Time (2011) was there my brain went with the no death thing.
I only saw the trailer, but my mind went to a future state where we solved aging, illness, disease and the like with technology / medicines.
So we change our current culture to conform to that. Including late stage capitalism and the owning class.
Verses everyone STARTING immortal. Its an even playing field since the starting lines are closer together. You don’t have generational wealth with people being born into wealth over and over at the same scale.
The head of the family that actually pulled themselves up from the bootstraps could still be alive and have the same core values of taking care of their workers. Instead of being dead and gone for 3 generations and enshittification takes root.
In time only solved ageing, everyone was still mortal, so you could still die from a car crash or being shot. And there definitely was a tiered classes system in place, with the rich having more “life”, and the poor literally living paycheck to paycheck.
I really liked it, should watch it again.
Yeah that’s my point.
If we had the tech from In Time but everyone would get infinate lifespan, but you can still die.
To the OPs title. Everyone has immortality and can’t die ever.
Euthanasia is still death though, so unless live people are just going to crawl into a box and willingly never come out? And if they do get out, are they going to be okay with having being starved in complete isolation?
And where are their bodies stored? Outside of few exceptions, most human bodies decay away within a hundred years, so the grave sites can be reused, but you cant do that if someone’s still in it?
If the world allows voluntary death, then it gets a bit easier to deal with though.
Well that’s just immortality. Even immortals can be killed in most myths.
The claim is no death. That means if you burn someone at the stake their body turns into a charred husk but they’re still alive and now they’re trapped in this state of unimaginable agony forever, unable to die but also totally helpless and in constant searing pain.
Abortion would probably be impossible too
I was gonna make a joke about ending the abortion debate, but then I went down a rabbit hole:
Abortions procedures would still be a thing, but the fetus wouldnt die. Its just an extremely premature birth. That means that intentional pregnancies could be “harvested” early, for the fetus to grow up outside the mothers body.
Lots to unpack.
Wait, what resources would be most valuable if death was off the table?
Edit: I’ll take a stab at it and say cats.
UNLIMITED CATS 😼
UNLIMITED IMMORTAL CATS
9 Lives * Infinity = ERROR
Seriously (or at least as serious as a hypothetical invinciblity/immortality scenario can be :D): food water and housing. You can live without most other things, but being cold, wet, starving and dehydrated will really make the eternity drag on :)
Stealing from musk.
Permanent mutilation
Assuming that immortality only applies to humans, environmental destruction would be a big one.
People care more about pollution and climate change when they know they’ll be around to face the consequences.
Torture. The main thing about torture is to make sure they don’t die while suffering the pain.
I cant imagine what would be the most heinous torture in a world like this. Maybe casually, “accidentally”, stepping on the same person’s toe ever other day for like one or two million years.
Kidnapping, I say, in a world where killing a death is simply not a concept, being kidnapped for any reason could lead to millennia of torment
