Wouldn’t it be Great if We All Lived to 120?

The possibility of immortality has long occupied the human mind. The great religions of the world have been founded on a promise of eternal salvation from the ultimate reality—if only to deny it. In Homo Deus, the avowedly atheist Yuval Harari proposes a different solution: that scientific advances will delay death until well into our second century. But will extra life be extra great? Here, the ‘For’ side argues that a privileged caste would greatly enjoy an extra thirty-plus years of life, provided that the quality of that extra time was sufficiently rewarding. The ‘Against’ side suggests that we would be better served trying to come to terms with the reality of Death rather than in trying to delay its inevitable arrival.