Originating in the Latin immortālis , the adjective immortal is used to describe someone whose life is eternal since they cannot die . Death, therefore, never comes to one who is immortal.
It is important to keep in mind that every living being is born, develops and dies: there is no one who is truly immortal. Always, sooner or later, those who live end up dying. That is why immortal beings belong to the realm of fiction or mythology .
Death , as the end of life, is the result of the extinction of the homeostatic process . In the supposed case of an immortal, this does not occur and the organism remains functioning.
It can be stated, in short, that biological immortality is impossible , at least in the current state of scientific and technological development. There is no way to avoid aging and deterioration of cells that lead to the death of the living being.
It is possible to speak, however, of another type of immortality. For some religions , the body dies but the soul is immortal. This means that, when a person dies, their soul continues to “live” in another dimension or is reincarnated in a different body.
There is also another type of immortality, linked to the subsistence of the legacy or footprint of an individual after his death. That is why it is expressed that personalities such as the writer Virginia Woolf or the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , to name two cases, are immortal since several centuries have passed since they died and yet they continue to be remembered and present in culture .
Human beings are characterized by longing for everything that was not given to them by nature : wings, telekinetic abilities, the ability to travel through time and, why not?, immortality itself. While all of these things may seem like the realm of fiction, there are currently those who claim that we are getting closer to achieving some of them, especially the last two.
The engineer José Luis Cordeiro , who is in charge of a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (generally known by its acronym MIT ), is one of the several defenders of immortality as a possible goal to achieve through science. . According to him, by the year 2045, human beings will be able to defeat death and thus achieve eternal life on Earth.
It is important to note that although there are numerous studies that support this theory , there are also many detractors who call it pseudoscience. In any case, before knowing if researchers will ensure that our body does not age, we must ask ourselves why we would want to be immortal. What attracts us so much to eternal life? Or, perhaps here lies the secret: why do we fear death so much?
Without thinking twice, we can all say “yes, I would like to be immortal.” The reasons could be as superficial as they are valid, since they respond to personal issues: "I don't want to be separated from my friends", "I love life and I don't want it to end", "I would like to travel around the world without a time limit" , etc. At first glance it may seem like an issue that should be resolved only in the scientific field; However, if we stop to think for a second about the repercussions that if its citizens were immortal would have on the organization of a country, we would understand that it is a highly complex issue. Overpopulation, unemployment, the continuity of the species through reproduction, housing and food are just some of the many problems that would arise.