Life is amazing because it's finite. The sense of urgency, the foreknowledge of limited time, trying to get the most out of each moment but at the same time striving to enjoy the simple things, these are all incredible motivators. Take away death and what do you get?
Nobody has any idea, because it's never been done. There's no support for your claims that life's amazing-ness comes from impending death. Meanwhile there's a lot of support for the claim that death causes a lot of suffering.
In any case, an actually infinite life is not possible as far as anyone knows. You'll eventually die when the universe undergoes heat death or the Big Crunch. Is living a mere ~10^34 years sufficient to remove the enjoyment of life?
How do you know that? Some pretty miserable people had finite lives too.
> Take away death and what do you get?
I don't think they'll forbid people to die. It will simply become optional.
As for more practical objections to your opinion - when you're young you live like you're going to live forever. I don't think kids and young people live less happily than old people.
You can't even euthanize yourself in most states. If you want to die, people consider you 'insane' and you get locked up at the govt's (and your) expense.
Life extension / artificial age reduction will purely be a benefit for the rich - the poor will just get injections so they live longer and work harder for their ageless overlords. It's not gonna be good.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/
Just because you can't age doesn't mean you can't die. I think if people started living forever there would be a lot of rebellion from the people who are not given that access. Assuming at that point they can't just use brute force to protect themselves from the masses.
You get lack of genetic diversity, which leads to death. If a species became immortal, it would have to stop reproducing, to prevent overpopulation. Without sex, the gene pool stops changing. Along comes some new infectious organism, and there are no individuals that can resist it. The species goes extinct.
Sex and death are both necessary.
> gene pool stops changing
The above two are incompatible. How can a gene pool decrease in genetic diversity if it never changes?
I think we'll see a huge backlash to artificial age reduction / life extension, much in the same way that plastic surgery / cosmetic enhancement is viewed as an indulgent activity.
Is there any more universal dream than eternal youth, or even youth for a lifetime?
Age extension technology is going to be the doom of humanity as we know it. Death right now is the only equalizer we have to our own destructive and damaging tendencies to the planet and ourselves at large. Living longer just means more waste, more war, more inequality, all the behest of the richest who get access to life extension technologies first. Don't kid yourself.
On a meta level, perhaps those stories are an example of 'sour grapes'? :)
You clearly haven't hit 50 yet. Many mornings when I wake up my back is so stiff I can barely stand. A bit of yoga stretching has me operational again, but too much stress through the day can make my knee pretty sore, too.
So no, it's not all about vanity.
Not looking forward to 50 :( Unfortunately, like fusion power, the cure for aging seems to be perpetually "20 years away."
Overpopulation?
Countries with populations that live longer tend to have fewer children and care for them better. Look at Europe and even he United States, the average amount of children per pair of parents is 1.5 to 2.5 depending on where you look. If you pick poorer places that have way more kids.
I think its clear the mechanism at work here is wealth and not age directly. Richer countries make richer people and richer people live longer. Then something happens and they have fewer kids.
For many social and health issues it seems possible to go the either way. Some place increase wealth to get health, others increase health and get wealth. If someone poor today could be made to live until they chose to die, would the knowledge they accumulate in their unnaturally long life lead to increased wealth in their community? I think it would and I think it would lead to the same long term reduction having too many kids.