Hey MyIGNers! I hope you've had a great Christmas, some nice memories and neat games too! Sorry, this isn't a Christmas celebration blog even though I love celebration blogs (as do we all) but for now, I've been wanting to return to something that would be more thought provoking rather than use laughing at videos. Over a year and half ago, I wrote a brand new blog series which was designed more to engage the readers more and in a way, I guess it meant more and more were likely to read all the way through the blog because it would be a question that would apply to you, the audience. I linked it more with video gaming in the first blog which are both my 2 favourite topics and would relate more to the reader even if they hated Mass Effect and Star Wars but after publishing the blog and it's wide success, I decided to think about the next blogs which included focusing on more philosophical aspects that I thought about in which both choices would provide similar concepts but also, slightly different meanings. In particular, the view of immortality made me think that maybe there's more than one aspect of it from ageing to invulnerability. By the way, I'm also sorry if you've been an avid fan of the series and have been waiting for a sequel for so long so I hope you like this. 
There will be certainly be more on the way and for those of you who are new or just have never met me, here's the original blog which provides for some extra reading right here
The question for this blog is which aspects of immortality would you prefer?
1. The ability to never age but become vulnerable to things which could harm us now such as diseases, conflict and our worst TV shows.
2. The ability to age normally which would eventually lead to death but become invulnerable to diseases and the normal things that could hurt us and the harsh impacts of injury would cease to exist.
Throughout this blog, I will detail the several pros and cons which I believe apply to both situations which might help you with your choice and I will also talk about the choice I would make.
Although before I go any further, anyone with superhuman abilities or people who maintain attributes of immortality will not be able to participate in this blog... Sorry Superman and Thor. Bearing in mind also that these aren't actually real choices but just for fun. They won't actually give you special abilities so wrinkles are still likely to occur!
Never age
So you can never age for some reason. Miraculously you can survive the many years without your appearance altering and your joints and bones seem to be working all at their best capacity as the years... Sorry, I mean centuries progress. even if ageing is a response to time and in a way, a disease itself... but lets say everything was just fine... although would it be just fine?
Pros
It would be so cool to live for so long and live past the usual life expectancy currently. Assuming that many other things can be avoided (but we'll get to that a little later) and we could see so many things change around us. I mean imagine living from the Egyptian era and seeing the building of the Pyramids and then the rise and collapse of empires. The technological innovations and the point at which the very Earth itself begins to change both in terms of climate change and the geological processes. The same could easily be said for the future. We may not have lightsabers or superpowers (yet) but we could still see the new changes of the world in terms of Human civilization. You would be able to see the all the different video game consoles all the way to the Playstation 122 until some new companies finally decide to arrive... and most of these new companies could be from very different species from ours. Whether we create robots or develop another species we have evolved on the Earth to become similar to us or in fact an Alien species... which we might have evolved to become similar to us. All these new changes could allow us to see not just the expansion of the Human Race (if it does) but also what might happen to other beings and how we may ourselves change overtime.
However I believe the most substantial at least to me would be the fact that there's so many things to do in the world already! I don't think I would be able to play all the games, read all the books or watch all the movies which are simply currently in existence... neither do I think I would be able to experience every form of entertainment such as comic books and anime just within a single year alone. Most likely, the quantity of things to do will only just increase once virtual reality and being able to teleport finally becomes a reality. Throughout my life, I've always wanted to write out my ideas and my ideas only just increase as the years pass by. Therefore, I could easily think about new story and game ideas indefinitely but the current form that I have doesn't allow me to do all that. Then again, this power would allow me to do just that and I would have less worries about not being able to think about my ideas for the rest of my life. As well as being able to do all the fun things in the future from hoverboarding (even though it's out already but nothing that can zoom in to the sky) and journey to other worlds. I mean we will never know all the questions of the universe but that's what makes it so fascinating and being able to combat age would make us see the whole bunch of possibilities of Science, Historical discoveries (especially if there's a time machine) and of course, video gaming!
Cons
Then again, despite the large amount of potential positives about being to able to finally defeat ageing, there are also a whole list of problems which in some respects might topple the pros altogether and the most important factor would probably be the view that it doesn't secure a future for the individual to survive forever in the long term or short term. In particular, during the long term, It's likely that there will be many changes over the next few centuries which could very well alter our very being and lifestyle. We could become integrated within a computer (which would be horrible because I'm really not all that great with computers) and robots may force us to become something we don't want to. We don't know what kinds of challenges we may face in the future especially if empires begin to take over and even if we survived that, we would have to take on the physical and mental scars... assuming that without ageing, we could still heal wounds at a similar pace. There will never be a perfect timeline and thus challenges will always continue. Simply, we will go through different challenges. Although it may also be the perception of the changes within the future.
I mean, soldiers from the 16th century (if they had this power) would probably still maintain the mentality of what they lived through and wouldn't want the world to move forward and therefore, wouldn't be for them especially since many would see their traditions fade away or perhaps the future and many different eras may not be for many of us. Already many still maintain nostalgia of their memories when they were growing up and most people have similar attitudes but simply across different time frames. Many from the 70s may have loved those times but hate the 2010s. Some people from the 1990s may enjoy video games of the Playstation 1 and 2 but not so much with new consoles and try to remain within that era in some way by playing a whole bunch of Crash Bandicoot games.
There are also the individual aspects that we may have to change our lifestyle. Unless an anti-ageing cure is developed (but it probably wouldn't be distributed because of population growth), then many might look us suspiciously and we may need to remain off the grid in order to survive captures for experiments for our strange yet desired ability amongst many as well as potential assassinations. Those who pick this would probably have to become shadowy characters in society especially if there is a larger amount of control and knowledge over the population by the government or higher powers. This might not be a problem if we people become used to travelling and changing identities but what about all the people we know and love? Assuming this power is only for us personally, many of our friends and family would only apply to a small time frame of our vast lifetimes. The new friends and family we could make in the future may also suffer the same fate.
In fact, even with this power, many wouldn't be able to surpass the age of 100 because the 21st century could be one of the most dangerous for Humanity with problems with super diseases and all the issues Humans may cause in the future. I mean, looking back to the past few centuries, we haven't have such fluctuating events of the Earth since the Stone Age. Since we're a more connected society, we could still survive but there would be huge impacts on almost everyone from a small ice age to a supervolcanic eruption.
As well as the development of new technologies which makes both the future exciting yet dangerous. Exciting at the fact that there are new things happening in the world's climate and more questions, as well as new technologies allowing us to play games in HD but dangerous of how these could turn against us. I mean, I think we're more closer to Nuclear War or a new era more than ever even though I believed that it was more likely in the further future in the 2040s or something when I wrote about the threats to Humanity last year. I won't go in to the details of why because people will probably go crazy here and there. However even if the Human Race was to survive, it doesn't mean that those who can't age will be the lucky ones. Ultimately, this would be the short term problem as opposed to long term because it would ultimately deem the power almost useless if those who can't age can't reach above the life expectancy.
Was that a convincing choice? Wait! Don't go anywhere! Remember there's another possibility to choose...
Invulnerability but ageing
Through this path, you can age normally around the life expectancy or even past it although not by many decades or centuries for that matter. Instead however, diseases and the smallest things that may cause us doom and gloom in the future will not be able to harm us with almost no pain or injury inflicted. The only threat that there is down this path would be ageing.
Pros
Ah, the things that try to hold us back in life and cause so much heart ache from complications of our body, being at the very center of a catastrophe or even the smallest things that might have easily been avoided such as a car crash which could have have been evaded by mere seconds. With this path, I guess it would be more of the quality rather than than the quantity of years you might live. For example, you would be able to live in the most dangerous areas in the world, go around the world without any worries of injury. It could make you avoid the things in life that could cause heart ache amongst your family and friends. Things which could potentially harm a normal Human being would be deemed as a miracle perhaps with no scars or injuries with no pain. Hopefully that wouldn't cause people to try and capture you for DNA experiments so they can try and harness your powers of anything like that. Perhaps this would even give more incentive to have more confidence in the world and making the most out of what life has to offer and try things no one has ever done before. You could become the actual superman of the world! Breaking so many feats like the longest time to bathe in a lava pit or survive in outer space without a space suit. Not that anyone else would want to try it.
It also wouldn't necessarily impact your life if you simply wanted to live normally. When compared with living without being able to age, you could start a family and grow up without having the fear of knowing that those around you would probably always die before you. There would simply be less worries about you, yourself being hurt. There is also the positive view that might top the use of non-ageing which would be if it's better to live within the eras that we live today. Perhaps if we could never age, we wouldn't be able to get used to all the new things and there could be many things that we just may not like that could have taken the world by storm... like Facebook for a while.
Cons
Although there are a few issues just like the ability to never age and a lot of these disadvantages arrive when comparing between the two abilities. If you were to live forever in terms of ageing, then if there are bad moments in your life, then you might be able to continue and start again but invulnerability yet ageing might not offer that. If awful things happen for much of the lifetime like a war, it may consist of a huge percentage of the lifetime. New memories and future events would only be limited towards the number of years until the ageing process finally decides to defeat the Human body. So therefore, horrible things that might have happened would probably create a huge impact on us whereas without ageing, there is the chance of seeing new things in the world... or worlds.
If another financial crisis happened that limited us from wealth for many years, a lot of the time that we could have potentially been able to visit other areas in the world and buy expensive things probably wouldn't exist for a while until a few years later. So in a way, it would be more stressful with the clocks ticking away. I mean, there's always been a notion that we should do the things we want to do before we get older and if there are things which hold us back, we may not be able to do completely everything we want to. This is reinforced by the aspect that we wouldn't be able to experience the new possibilities of the future from the newest additions of our favourite video game franchises to reading up on new comic books. As the years progress, new things will be developed but we may not be able to try every single video game we want to and when we hear things on the news in the future about new technologies and discoveries, our time to try out those things simply might already be up and finished.
Ultimately with this choice, there would definitely be an end at some point whereas with living past life expectancy without ageing, there are almost limitless possibilities... as long as you're able to survive the wars, diseases and alien invasions. With ageing still being an issue, there would be fewer chances to take.
I have a feeling that a lot of Science fans might pick out flaws of being able to age is the result of us being vulnerable in the first place and therefore other things could happen... but this doesn't necessarily apply to this choice.
What would Mikeerik do?
So now the question boils down to me! I had a thought about which choice I would go down but in a way, I was appeared to always be fixed on the one choice and that would be the first one. To never age but still be vulnerable to things that might affect us. I've just been the kind of person who's always wanted to see so many things in the future and looking back at the past with developments of historical aspects, there could be many great eras on the way which would allow me see how the world is changing and improving. I'm not really sure whether I would want to start a family in the future and in a way, I guess I could just live from all the wonders of the world and so friends wouldn't necessarily be hugely essential especially if most of the population were robotic and talked like the boring hardman characters we see on in mainstream TV series all the time. I admit, there are some problems which is why I listed them out to help come to my conclusion. In fact, we really don't know what will happen in the 21st century or even the next few decades for that matter. Perhaps a super artificial intelligence will take over us. Maybe we'll create a goo which will take over the planet. Even mobile games could take over video gaming as a whole which could lead to doom for us all!
So what would you pick?
Oh also, would you like to see more blogs like this? Both which you would prefer and thought provoking blogs?
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.