E52. "Guilt-Edge Security" - How would you live your life, if you lived forever?

Philosophy | Ethics Short Story Discussions

Named “Top 20 Philosophy Podcast” for 2021!

STORY SUMMARY: A traveling salesman sits at the bar after a long day drinking bourbon. He is approached and cleverly pitched a new product he has discovered on a distant rim planet, Life. The product stops the aging process. The first batch is free, and the salesman returns eight years later to get into the distribution business.

DISCUSSION: There are really three things going on in the story. First, how would you live your life differently if you knew you were going to live forever? Would you value other lives more, or less? Would you take a different review of risk? Second, there is the idea in the story that your soul exists because you have choices, and if you have your ability to make choices taken away, you have had your soul taken away. In the story, arguably, in order to continue to get the elixir, you have to get other people into the pyramid scheme, which means you have no choice, and have no soul. The third minor point of the story is about countries (or a planet in this case) with a single valuable resource can best leverage that resource for prosperity and power without risking being conquered by others to secure the resource supply.

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