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.
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
Stealing from musk.
Any sex related crime.
Why?
Edit: why would it be worse than when death is a thing? And why would it the “most” unforgivable?
Becauae that shit stays with you… and if you can’t die, you have to live with it for an eternity.
You don’t think after 1000 years it’ll still be with you? After 1 million? 1 billion?
Maybe? You’re thinking about it as a lone singular event and not the trauma that stays with you and causes worse decisions. Maybe it’s a million years downward spiral that you can resolve.
The person could forget it after 1k years. They could go to therapy for a 100k years and recover. They could enact vengeance and see it as closing the chapter on it. You can’t claim to know as you haven’t and probably won’t live 1k years or more.
It’ll still be rape.
Yeah, almost put it in the question too, but felt that would be rude
Yeah that was probably a good call, even I hovered for a second before posting, but rape has always felt worse in my book, like killing someone is a horrible thing to do to someone, but they don’t have to deal with it for life, the other one is a life long thing that could be argued is worse than death.
I might have some news for you about rape statistics - they’re pretty high. That’s telling a lot of people their experiences were worse than death, suggesting life isn’t worth living after rape. That’s a pretty brutal opinion to post on a public forum.
I didn’t say life wasn’t worth living after it, I just see a way where it could be seen worse than death, having to have that in your memory forever because some psychopath decided they can do what they want to you.
It’s a life long issue these people have to unfortunately suffer, one that they never ever should have had to experienced.
A brutal opinion would be, I think we should publicly execute rapists the slow way, that’s a brutal opinion to post on a public forum.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re probably younger than 25. I don’t think you’ve lived very long if you think one traumatic incident, or even a series of them, can ruin a life.
Suggesting someone’s life may not be worth living because of their trauma can be re-victimizing. Since rape and violence are often about power and control, statements like those give abusers more power than they deserve and do nothing to support the victims.
Looking at people brainstorm the worst things you can do to someone, they’re all just different ways to take away someone’s reason to live. And rape itself doesn’t take away someone’s will to live - but being considered a victim, saying they may be defined by someone else’s actions, forever - that’s the kind of thing that kills hope.
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.
Unforgiveable implies that there can be no mistake about the negative side effects for even the dumbest among us before committing the act. Torture is about as intentionally cruel as it gets.
Some other suggestions here are frequently used under the umbrella of torture, for example, by the IDF.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wait, what resources would be most valuable if death was off the table?
Edit: I’ll take a stab at it and say cats.
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 :)
UNLIMITED CATS 😼
UNLIMITED IMMORTAL CATS
9 Lives * Infinity = ERROR
Well some might end up in the mines and others as the first proper space explorers who are just yeeted into space. Deep sea exploration without a submarine might also be on the table.
Its much harder to enslave immortal beings. How do you force someone to work in the mines?
Extortion? Torture? Just because they can’t kill you, doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you or your loved ones.
Right, but you either need to pay someone to do the torturing, or you have to do it to them yourself. If the former, how do you force that person to go along with it, instead of just rising up against you and taking your place? It only takes one guard to realise that with a bit of help from the invincible prisoners, they can successfully mutiny.
Invincibility (which is what I am asserting “no death” effectively is (open to interpretation)) effectively nullifies the threat of violence, which, when all else fails, is the only thing keeping things ordered.
Permanent mutilation
Throwing someone into a universe where nothing exists…
Enjoy an eternity of absolutely nothing (and you can’t even die 🫠
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.
Burying people alive
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.
Torture, kidnapping.
