Different definition of living forever

      First of all, what I gonna talk about can be all wrong because I failed to find the original text of the speech made by Chiron's father, and I have to make a guess about it according to the context. I am sorry about this.

     An instance in to study philosophy is to learn to die drew my attention: One reason why death should not be feared of is that living forever is a torture rather than a gift. To support his idea, Montaigne mentioned the dialogue between Chiron and his father. I didn’t find its original text (Another well accepted version is that he chose death to save Prometheus’s life), however, according to the context of this quotation, his fear of becoming immortal materially might be caused by the poor health going hand in hand with age: disease, degeneration of organ and mind, and so on. Written almost a hundred years after Montaigne’s death, Struldbrug in Gulliver’s travel can serve as an evidence to explain this idea. Namely, what Montaigne was afraid of is not being immortal, but becoming old and unable to control himself against this world filled with violent uncertainty. It seemed to be that he doesn’t admit the possibility of everlasting youth.

   It is different from our definition of living forever nowadays. Who represent immortal in the modern world own supernatural characters. One of the best examples might be the vampire. Image of vampire has experienced a change. Forget that withered, ugly Duke Dracula( In fact, in recent TV series or novels, he is described as a heart-broken man, still pale, but handsome ). To understand the modern concept of vampire, you need to go to the Twilight. Twilight fails to tell a good story, but it is well accepted. Most people acknowledge the image of vampire created by Stephanie Meyer: these ever-young creatures are perfect but lonely. Getting old is not a threat anymore, while they have to make moves frequently and stay away from people, in case that their secrets might be revealed, which can make them really vulnerable and addict to love (something uncertain, perishable and humanlike) .It is the reason why they always look blue and are attracted by our heroine(except for the special blood ). For them, human beings are so emotional, which means that they can get devoted and sincere company from these short-livings. It does work, but there will be some day when these human friends leave them forever, and the coming back of loneliness will be fiercer.

   In view of the popularity of these two images, maybe we can realize the general desire and worry that modern people hold towards immortal. The most evident difference may be that living forever means never growing old nowadays while Montaigne didn’t think so, and such an endless life caused boredom to life in Montaigne’s century but our ideal example of immortal gradually keep the ability of feeling and their multiple emotion.

   What causes this diversity? In my opinion, the expansion of our knowledge of the world probably matters a lot, especially the medical science. In Of the Force of Imagination, Montaigne showed plenty of cases relevant to physic, and most of them are kind of ridiculous, but these are what people believed in those days. Medical theories mentioned in Madness and Civilization may also serve as   indirect evidences. These beliefs are interesting, but they may not work when it comes to practice, and they did contribute to a short average life in that time. So we could come to the conclusion that a well-educated person living in the same world as Montaigne, everlasting youth and fitness is impossible and inacceptable, so it shouldn’t be mentioned when it comes to immortal, and living forever means bearing the torture of our body forever. However, the improvement of science makes a difference, which means that we can dream about being forever young more confidently, and our plan about being immortal can be more colorful because science also broadens our horizon. What concerned us most has changed from being materially feeble to something more mental. It can be the loneliness or confusion modern people always feel, and this feeling could belong to the Crisis of Modernity after the World War II.

By the way, this change can be kind of funny, for it is science caused our suspect towards itself, by a series of long and severe wars. And the same thing happened to Montaigne. He grew in the belief of Renaissance and Religious Reform, which appeal for happiness in real daily-life and emancipation of mind, but the fact is that he had to be faced with the endless religion war in Europe, and these disasters mattered with what he once believed in. This huge contrast finally made him a skeptic, and so do we. Both of these can be the evidence that reality can influence imagination in turn, or there is nothing new in the history of human beings.

P.S. In to study philosophy is to learn to die, imagination helps us to get away from the fear of death, for most of readers haven’t experienced what is mentioned in this article. But when it comes to In the Force of Imagination, fear and pain also come from our imagination. As a bridge between our inner world and the real world outside, imagination and the contrast it caused can be really interesting, especially when we talk about death, the most extreme occasion of “ individual vs. the world or fate”, or “what we can control vs. what we cannot control”. But I failed to draw a conclusion, so I just put it here as an addition.