# Would you be a "Highlander"?



## Brian G Turner (Aug 25, 2003)

Thinking especially on the first film - which was a classic - how does the thought of living forever sound?

I'm sure there's a necessary appeal in eternal life - but the film nicely touched upon the emotional strains of living beyond your loved ones.

But does anybody here actually think they could cope with that? Or does having to prance around with a fancy sword sound just like too much like a male hormone run? 

Would immortality be boring?

And did anyone ever watch the series?


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## dwndrgn (Aug 25, 2003)

First - loved the series (especially Adrian Paul  ;D), loved the first movie, could live without the second two.

Second - I think it would be okay to be immortal.  Yes, you would outlive your loved ones (but we live with that possibility all of the time - and we even live the reality of it to a lesser degree if we own pets), yes it would suck having to defend your head all of the time...but think of the wonderful things you could accomplish having all the time in the world and being impervious to just about anything.


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## littlemissattitude (Aug 25, 2003)

Yes, I've watched the series.  Not on a regular basis, because it kept bouncing around from channel to channel and time to time; often it was on at about two in the morning local time.  Now that Spike TV is rerunning it, I hope to see some of the episodes I haven't ever seen.

As far as the question of immortality, that is a question that has intrigued me for a long time.  In fact, I am working on a story idea about immortals right now.  Personally, I can see the problems inherent in being immortal.  But, in the long run, I think the advantages would probably outweigh the disadvantages as long as one could keep on an even keel emotionally.


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## Foxbat (Aug 25, 2003)

I think mortality makes us what we are as a species - driven to move forward. Death creates space within the population and allows room for mutation, change -  call it what you will. I believe that to live forever would be to kill that spark within us. I also believe that knowing you were immortal would push you into a form of lethargy where tomorrow would always come....so why do it today?

Simple fact is that death exists for a reason - why it exists, nobody can truely say.


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## mac1 (Sep 9, 2003)

Death is the greatest unknown. Past death is the distinct possibility that we cease to exist, that all spirituality and religion is simply an act of arrogance of the behalf of mankind as a species to perpetuate itself past death through the ignorant misbelief in a soul. If death is the end then eternal life is surely a positive. On the other hand, if we were to live forever as a species we would simply overpopulate our planet. If I chose to live forever and nobody else was able to, how am I to know that beyond death there is not some "heaven" in any sense of the word, that I had denied myself. Those with "faith in God", a concept for with I have little comprehension bar its obviously psychological comforts, would say we live forever in some form anyway, but the only reason they "believe" this is tradition (their great-grandparents believed, and raised their grandparents to believe, who in turn raised their parents to believe, and their parents raised them to believe), and surely a belief acquired through tradition and not an analysis of sense-datum is completely irrational. In short would I want to live forever? I could probably ponder on that question forever and still not come up with an answer. Would I like to run around Scotland with a sword, fighting epic battles, beheading my enemies and becoming stronger? Well - Of Course!!!


Btw - When I was up in Fort William in Scotland last weekend I was chatting to a guy staying at the same B&B as me over breakfast. He was telling me that he was going to the castle where the first Highlander film as filmed that day. I would love to have gone myself, but it was the day we were due to fly back.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 9, 2003)

About 3 years ago we had a family holiday near the Isle of Skye - apparently the village we were staying in was the feature in the TV series "Hamish McBeth" (I had barely heard of it, let alone watched it!).

It took us 10 hours to reach Fort William, by which time Hannah had thrown up copiously all over herself and pee'd in her car seat as well. I also had developed a thumping migraine and had to stop and use the car park by the loch to empty my own stomach. I got on the road for just another 15 minutes, when we found a guest house where we could all clean up and rest and stay the night. Quite an experience!

Point being, the place we were staying - Plockton - was another 2 hours drive away, and the Highlander castle was very near it - can't have been more than 30 minutes away from Skye Bridge itself. So you'd have had a long journey to reach it.

It's not actually all the interesting - the scenery is superb, of course, and the castle looks great from the outside - but the castle itself is wee small within - basically, I remember it as like a little glorified farmhouse with spirial staircases. Better from the outside. We didn't know the relevance of the place until we drove past, and I immediately recognised it - the bridge is particularly distinctive.


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## mac1 (Sep 9, 2003)

Nice. I hope you got some pics of yourself in silly poses outside!


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 10, 2003)

Do you mean Fort William cr park or the Highlander Castle? 

No pics, I'm afraid - no scanner. Not yet. But one day, oh yes...


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## mac1 (Sep 12, 2003)

> No pics, I'm afraid - no scanner.


Damn it, had you said to me 3 weeks ago you wanted a scanner I could have got you one from work for £8.11. We had them on a special clearance offer. D'oh!


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## Omega (Sep 13, 2003)

The only difficulty being immortal would be watching your loved ones grow old and die around you, whilst you didn't age at all.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 13, 2003)

Besides, think of the amount of taxes you'd end up paying!

And darn it for missing on the scanners - thanks for the thought.


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## Omega (Sep 13, 2003)

Hmm,

Imagine that an Immortality Tax.


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## dwndrgn (Sep 15, 2003)

brian said:
			
		

> No pics, I'm afraid - no scanner. Not yet. But one day, oh yes...


Brian - these days you can buy a one-time use camera from Kodak that will give you digital pictures.  You can then upload them at places like Ofoto.com or snapfish.com and share them with friends and family online - for free.  You would only pay if you wanted them to print your photos.  Or, you can do the same if you have a digital camera (which I would assume you don't have from your note - you wouldn't need a scanner) and for regular camera film, when developing you can get them on disk as well as developed and then do the same thing.  I've even got a photo of my house up there so I could share with my family when I bought it.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 15, 2003)

I'm sort of hoping to save for a digital camera one day - one that does motion as well as stills. Then I can _sooo_ torment you all with uploads. 

As for Immortality Tax - I hear that our great Tony Blair government has decreed for the next budget that longevity is subject to a charge of 7.5% Value Added Tax.


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## dwndrgn (Sep 15, 2003)

Taxes are sooo fun.  Soon they will come up with a fun tax, you are not allowed to have fun until your taxes are paid up...
I already pay a poor tax, my bank charges me for not having enough money in the account!


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 20, 2003)

dwndrgn said:
			
		

> I already pay a poor tax, my bank charges me for not having enough money in the account!


Those ones are the most fun. 

And to think - in ancient and mediaeval times - people thought themselves hard done by with a 5% income tax!!


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## dwndrgn (Sep 21, 2003)

Taxes aren't so bad (even if it can be annoying to see a great deal of the money you worked for go away before you can use it).  I think the worst part about taxes, as least for those of us in the States is that we don't have a lot of say in where it goes.  I mean, ostensibly by using our democratic right to vote for the people we think will do well by us we have a 'say' in what happens to our tax dollars but really it is like a crap shoot.

I think it would be nice if when we do our taxes each year we would have a list of things that tax money pays for and we could allocate our little part in percentages, say I would like 20% to go to education, 20% to police, 20% to defense or whatever.  And, salaries for people like congressmen and other elected officials, should be tied to the overall budget.  In other words if the defecit increases, their salaries go down and if there is a surplus their salaries could go up.  That way they have a huge incentive to work together and get things worked out.  Heck, a great deal of the stuff they have is free for them anyways, why do they need such huge salaries?  Ok I'll stop rambling now.

Still wouldn't mind being a Highlander!


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 21, 2003)

That's actually not too bad an idea about assigning taxes.


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## dwndrgn (Sep 21, 2003)

Of course it is...i'm a genious!  Just kidding.  Actually it would be very difficult to administrate (I'm sure) and would probably cause more trouble than it saved.  But, it is a nice idea anyway.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 21, 2003)

Ideas don't have to be practical.


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## kiwimac (Apr 28, 2004)

Being Immortal could be a lot of fun!

Kiwimac


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 28, 2004)

Well, hello, *kiwimac *- good to see you back.


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## polymorphikos (Apr 29, 2004)

To be immortal wouldn't have any problems attached because you could simply build a guillotine and behead yourself when you got sick of life. Assuming you got a job as a librarian, then it would be great, because you got read every book ever written. I love the idea of an immortal getting gaoled for life. What would the warden do when you'd been in there for a hundred years and were still fine and dandy.
  The question does arise, however, of what would happen if an immortal got cut in half. Would they live on forever without an abdomen? What about if they were blown-up in an explosion but the head, neck and shoulders remained intact? I cooked-up a character once who was an immortal who still aged, and suffered all the wounds recieved over the years. He was basically a decrepit mass of scars with only half his limbs and various unpleasant attributes.


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## Vodstok (Apr 29, 2004)

wow, could you imagine a lazy immortal? someone who would live for thousands of years and never accomplish a thing.....


Okay, i would think after the first 30 years, he may be the FAttest immortal ever...

I always thought i would love the idea of being immortal, but now that i am engaged, the thought of living for centuries without my future wife really bothers me.


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## polymorphikos (Apr 29, 2004)

Hence the guillotine


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Apr 30, 2004)

I've quite seriously wanted to live forever, and have read up on frontier technologies in medicine and biology that promise a prolonged life-span. Lately though, I've decided that when it comes to life, as with all other things, quality matters more than quantity. 

BTW, here's one of the more interesting things I came across in on the topic of extending lives, an interview with Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge anti-aging researcher: http://www.speculist.com/archives/000056.html


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## kiwimac (Apr 30, 2004)

Obviously the need is for immortality plus healing plus youth plus not going senile (an immortal vegetable, WONDERFUL!)

I chose Vampire, nice clothes, able to sneak into things disguised as a mist or a rodent of some kind, liquid diet, sleep all day up all night, regenerative abilities, control of animals and the weather and even if someone does kill you, only little drop of blood anywhere near your corpse and GUESS WHO'S BACK?

Kiwimac, nice to be back after a lengthy soiree elsewhere


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## Elohim is plural (May 2, 2004)

...immortality

...spent a lot o time thinkin' about that one...

i loved the original "highlander" so much that i automatically gave respect to its cinimatic offspring by watching them...even that mario van peebles monstrosity...i only rent, so my tv series experience is limited, but i have watched it...unimpressed

...i shall now leave the limitations of headlessness and comment on true immortality...

...given the choice i would kill for immorotality...sorry, but its true...the first thing i would do is walk around the world...literally...i would walk west from my east vancouver home right into the pacific and walk on the bottom of the ocean clear to japan...i would be forced to be creative concerning buoyancy, obviously...

...sanity would be my biggest worry...but how to know what sane is after 2000 years?..$hit, i'm not so sure what sane is after 31 years especially after saying i want to walk under water...

...i realize that watching your peers fade away may be seem as a major draw-back to immortality but i think you'd get over it...not to sound cold-hearted but i'm already watching loved ones die and peers wasting away, i can never expect it to change...acceptance is paramount to immortality...

...imagine the projects you could get done when you knew time was not an issue...10 minutes a year adds up

...i would think that after a few epoch had passed that you woud find yourself in some pretty strange situations...like an immortal ameoba...though i have no doubt that an immortal homo sapien would seem very impressive to another homo sapien, but what about when homo sapien is long gone?...an un-killable freak out of antiquity?..ameoba's were once top of the food chain 

...now what if all the inherint benifits of ever-lasting life(ie. reading all books, expanding your conscienciousness, understanding women) became moot...
what if the limitations of humanity plagued you forever...you could watch a lifeform be born ,with more abilities than you coud ever accumulate, in time...devolving to the significance of an ameoba...and always representing for homo sapiens

immortality is a responsiblity much larger than the human equation...are you really up for it?

sign me up
EIP


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