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Even though death has been around as long as human existence has, it’s one of the most mysterious and unknown things out there. As such, it sparks quite a bit of talk and philosophy in hopes of becoming more identifiable as an inevitability. And maybe we can find a way around it.

And if we do, we can only hope to be thrown back 3,000 years and then we’d be set because folks are already speculating what they’d do under such niche circumstances.

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#1

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I’d totally appear in random moments throughout history and make sure I’m photographed (or painted)


jfk? I’m there. fall of the Roman Empire? I’m there. Boston tea party? I’m there. Standing about 300 feet away from the White House on Jan 6th 2021? I’m there. Just be some weird enigma of history.

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Kirsten Kerkhof
Kirsten Kerkhof
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This! It's a guilty fantasy of mine to have my portrait painted by Rembrandt or similar and sneak in a piece of modern tech, like a wrist watch (nothing too extreme like an iPhone), and see what would be thought of it.

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#2

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back It's a trap, you would end up in space because the earth was a a different spot back then, malicious genie detected

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I always disliked this argument because there are no absolute coordinates in space. We use our most powerful telescopes and we can't find any center to the universe. Without an origin point, position is meaningless. This was a major conundrum for Einstein. Anywhere you look is space, galaxies show the same redshift. It makes it look like we are at the center of the universe, but the general conclusion is that everyplace is the center of the universe. Inflation theory is really weird but that's the best we have right now.

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#3

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I might accept this but I would need more information. 3000 years ago would be like 976 BC. Would I show up where I live now, or some where else? Could I take anything with me. Is immortality just not aging and disease or does it include not being violently k***ed.

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AskReddit has decided to be a bit less serious this time around. Now, everyone’s talking about the idea of being given immortality, but the caveat is that you’d have to travel 3,000 years back in time, to 976 B.C., a time when King David supposedly passed and King Solomon took over. At least you’d know for sure what had actually happened in that court.
#4

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Hell yeah would write my own bible and start a bonkers religion just for the fun😅

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#5

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I might be immortal but I'd still be a woman. So no, I don't think I could hack those 3000 years.

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Petunia Petal
Petunia Petal
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Potentially, that's a lot of periods to have before the sanitary options and painkillers have been invented!

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#6

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I've done 37 years and already feel about done lol

edit: this isn't a cry for help, just sayin a lot more time sounds like a nightmare.

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sbj
sbj
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can't afford to live as it is now let alone forever

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Immortality is a relatively simple concept that has led to not-so-relatively-simple discussions and speculations across human history.

In simple terms, it’s eternal life without death. But it can also be speculated as life during life as well as life plus the afterlife. No matter the case, it has pretty much always been one of the biggest headaches for humanity.
#7

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back No. Because I have kids who I love and if I'm immortal and they aren't....I mean...honest to goodness truth: I don't want to be alive if my children aren't.

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Petunia Petal
Petunia Petal
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Totally agree with this one. Immortality without them would be unbearable.

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#8

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back You really can’t do it. You’d need incredibly specific conditions.

If it’s just the “no aging” immortality, good luck surviving for thousands of years. You’re probably gonna be put in a forest next to a bear or some s**t and die right away anyways. Or you’ll trip over something trying to get out of the forest, cut your leg, and die of infection. Or you’ll starve to death because you don’t know where you are and aren’t a wilderness man.

If it’s the “invincible can’t die” immortality then hooooooooly s**t. Gonna be a fun run. Let’s say humanity gets off Earth and you don’t sit here until the sun expands and engulfs the planet. So you’re not burning inside of the sun for billions of years. Maybe you tour the galaxy, great time much fun. You’re galactic god emperor! Way to go! What an accomplishment I mean boy howdy. How could it go wrong from here?

Well after a few billion years the andromeda galaxy collides with the Milky Way and your empire is toast. Oh well, it’s been a fun run. So what’s next? Good question, well, it’s 10^100 years of suffering. Waiting for the heat death of the universe. Does that kill you? Probably not, because you are pure magic. Protons have decayed. There is no universe. Just you. In empty abandon. Forever. It’s the worst possible thing that can be imagined.

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#9

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back No. No, that sounds awful all the way around. First off I do not want to be immortal second off I do not want to go back to a time when there are no flushing toilets. Yuck!

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Immortality is most commonly seen through a religious or faith-focused perspective. Virtually all cultures have some sort of take on it, either as a survival of the astral body that resembles the physical body, the immortality of the soul, i.e. an incorporeal existence, or a resurrection of the body or re-embodiment. And a lot of it touches upon the idea of whether souls exist?
#10

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Yes, I'm black. Let's just say there's going to be some changes around here.

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#11

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I wouldn't want to do that. I'm scared of the person I would end up becoming by outliving everyone I ever care about, and having to do it over and over again with each person I meet. I feel like I would stop valuing human life and I would become a monster who views people as toys to amuse myself. My concept of time would also be warped due to it no longer being something I care about either.

I'm happy with the life that I have now, and I'd rather make the most of the time I have, rather than be immortal and have all the time in the world.

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Kari Panda
Kari Panda
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That’s a really good point. If you lose everyone over and over and over, and also if you tried to make the world a better place and failed over and over and over (because there will always greedy, power hungry humans who start wars etc.), how would you not develop a "F**k this, I don’t care" mentality?

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#12

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Immortal without health issues, being a perfectly healthy man with current skills and knowledge, then I am all okay to go all the way 3000 years back!

I can manage to build a better world!!!

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Rob Dabank
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to think the same thing about all my skills and knowledge then started to ask myself whether I actually understand the science behind the things we take for granted now enough to be able to explain it to someone 3000 years ago. Turns out the best I can hope for as an immortal living 3000 years ago is perhaps knowing the people in history that I need to suck up to who are actually going to make a difference with their inventions/discoveries!

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On top of that, throw in the concept of immortality being related to personal identity because can a dead person be the same as the original person that once lived? The discussion essentially revolves around the soul, the body, and the psychology of it all.

Whatever the case, science offers quite little at this point, though it isn't idle.
#13

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Hang on 3000 years, you are either gonna be famous to live long, get caught by government and be used as a lab rat forever because youre never die, or living anonymously for the rest of your live.

I need another superpower other than being immortal tbh

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Arnold Larkins
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You have another superpower, and its running the f**k away from the government

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#14

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Can you choose too die at any point? If not the 3000 years is irrelevant, I'm more concerned about being stuck alone in the void 900 quadrillion years from now. 

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David Paterson
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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Lazarus Long by Heinlein. Yes you can choose to die. But people around you will try to talk you out of it.

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#15

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back No pads, no antibiotics for UTI, slavery, and no Beyoncé. Double it and give it to the next person please.

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Parapsychology has shown attempts to justify an afterlife. Apparently, secular futurists see tech allowing people to suspend death indefinitely with things like uploading your mind onto an electrical husk to house you, providing bodily immortality. At least for long enough for your mind to be able to be transferred back into a body so you can rinse and repeat life.
#16

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back No, for 2 reasons.
1. The thought of living forever would be a nightmare for me.
2. I'm a woman, so...yeah, no way.

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Arnold Larkins
Arnold Larkins
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well in the Cavemen times, apparently women had a higher position in the social hierarchy because they were able to get more food (berries and crops) then men (small animals), but that's just it.

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#17

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back I'm honestly not sure I'm strong enough to deal with everyone around me dying, over and over. I am a pretty empathetic person, and I imagine at some point, you lose the ability to form that sort of emotional bond. I find the movie "The Man from Earth" (and its sequel) to be fascinating, but one of the things that struck me is that the main character, who has been alive since cave men were a thing, has a very hard time forming love bonds - he's seen everyone he cared about die so many times over that he's just moved past that emotional experience. I don't know if I could handle that, to be honest.

Also not sure I'd want to live through millennia of being oppressed and confined to the kitchen before being able to live as an equal to men. I really like my life, and would intellectually love to see society develop over time like that (am currently an academic), but it's a lot harder to do academic study in early universities if you're female, as I am. Pretty sure I'd be burned as a witch fairly quickly, so I hope immortality includes being able to heal quickly after injury or something.

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#18

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Hell nah. Word will definitely get around about my immortality and then I'll just be subjected all sorts of s**t (torture, experimentation, etc). There's a show about a similar concept called Ajin.

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Kari Panda
Kari Panda
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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There‘s also a show called "Forever". Ended much too soon unfortunately, but it did address this topic among other interesting aspects. (It‘s a crime series, not some deep drama, but it did have some heavy moments.)

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This is by no means foreign for any of us as you quite likely have your own reasons for why you’d probably want to forego death.

First off, death entails pain and suffering. Possibly excruciating levels of them, in cases of terminal illnesses. But it can also be the pain others have to go through once you’re gone.
#19

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back People who say they'd get bored with immortality have no imagination.

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Auntriarch
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Most people who like the idea of immortality don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon (mangled Douglas Adams)

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#20

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Get early shares in apple, back then it’s just the fruit

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#21

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Wait 3000 years to see my boyfriend get born, and then try to make his childhood happier somehow. 

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And if it’s not corporeal fear, then it’s fear of the unknown, of the non-existence that death brings and of the possible eternal punishment that your faith might suggest death to be about.

It is not yet known what it means to not be living, and even if we do start to get it, it feels like that’s all that there is to it, without the pleasures of life.
#22

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back F**k yes I would accept this.

But I'd research where not to be first. Like not getting buried in an Earthquake or in Pompeii in 79 AD

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JM
JM
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Oh that's a good point. I wouldn't want to spend eternity, alive, buried under stone (lava)

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#23

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Probably lament wiping out the human species due to latent diseases that my immune system keeps in check, but ancient humans wouldn't survive.

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Jorge Gonzalez
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nah. You may cause a pandemic or two but we carry nothing (disease wise) so extreme that can wipe humanity.

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#24

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back 3000 years?

I'd get my hands on as much iron, charcoal & copper as possible.

I'd build a rudimentary lathe.
I'd be the first man to invent mathematics.
I'd be the first man to invent magnetism & electricity.
I'd be the first to construct a battery (lead & sulphuric acid like a car battery)

Before the birth of Christ I'd have given my countrymen the equivalent of 1920's technology.
Before the birth of Alexander the great, we'd have reddit.

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Kenneth Barns
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hmmm. I got excellent grades in high-school level maths, but only studied stats at a tertiary level. I'm pretty sure there would be little I could teach the expert mathematicians of Mesopotamia and Egypt (assuming they would listen to me); and non-numerate societies would probably have little interest in the sort of maths that I could pass on without access to reference material. In 1000 BCE, at _best_ iron was only available in Anatolia, and was hideously expensive there: you aren't a member of royalty, no?

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Ultimately, death is one of those things that folks might say you can cheat, but, as it stands now, not forever. Death means loss of control. Heck, age means loss of control in some regards as your body starts to fade away and you start taking less risks. We can generally control a lot of the situations we’re in, but death has no control over. And it always happens.
#25

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back If I can take my wife with me, yes.

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#26

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Oh God... I would try to divert the catalyst for the Crusades thing. I would be one of those opinionated "witches" who would be burned for coordinating with Devils because I like to read.

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VikingAbroad
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

But do you read Hebrew, arameic, semitic languages of any kind? Because it's gonna take a couple of years before other languages turns into books. And then you'd have to read religious books in Greek, and then Latin, all the way up to the 1500s before it gets fun... 😅

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#27

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Well, I'd probably spend the rest of my life apologizing for causing the Bronze Age collapse.

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And while it is healthy to fear death—so much so as to seek immortality, or at least talk about it on Reddit—it’s necessary for it to not take over us. The stress and distress it might cause us is anything but constructive and productive.

Instead, focus that energy and motivate yourself to do something about it. For some, death is the single most important push to get something world-changing done.
#28

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back 3000 years back as An Australian would get pretty s****y. There wasn’t a land bridge back then to meander up towards more interesting lands (like Europe, Asia and the Middle East).

Id be stuck with the (not megafauna they were extinct but there were cool endemic species that aren’t around today) and indigenous Australians. As a white dude I’m not sure how that would go…

But if I could get sent back to somewhere in Europe, maybe… if this is the (can’t die at all) immortality and not the (just won’t age) immortality

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François Carré
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bold of you to assume Australia would be boring and the Native would have nothing interesting to teach you. Yeah they would find you look weird, but I see no reason why they should reject you. You could easily spend some centuries walking around from tribe to tribe, sharing stories and learning things, before you actually decide to build a boat and go to Indonesia and further.

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#29

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back Try not to be burnt at the stake

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Libstak
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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or crucified, or beheaded, disembowelled, fed to the lions, sacrificed on an altar, drawn and quartered, maimed.....

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#30

30 Folks Speculate What They’d Do If Given Immortality, But Also Sent Back 3,000 Years Back It's not a cost, why do you say it is. It's a bonus.  With all my present day knowledge i would become a king and rule the globe. 
Humanity would advance 2-3 times faster, if not even more. 

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Kari Panda
Kari Panda
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The question is, would it really help though? I know antibiotics exist and what they do. I know cars exist and have a basic understanding of how they function. Do I know enough to explain to someone how to make antibiotics, how to build a car? No.

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Note: this post originally had 60 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

So, what are your thoughts on any of this? What would you do with immortality in the 10th century BC and why is it ahead of all the things that people admire today? Share your takes and stories in the comment section below!

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