...and how to convert people into immortalism in a few simple steps.
There were countless times when I've heard something like "I'll leave this behind" in different forms from different people. Or even as a question: "what are you going to leave behind?". People say this being serious, they don't have a clue. This socially-accepted principle, saying that a finite life is okay and aging is a good argument in any controversy and a respectable excuse for virtually anything, is wedged deeply and firmly into their heads. But...
If you're not alive, you're nothing. And the world doesn't exist for you, too. So does everything (or everybody) you've left there, because you don't exist in the first place. You'll become nothing. Void. Zero. What a null pointer points to. Just try to imagine this. You're reading this blog post right now, but in a single moment it disappeared. As did a device you're reading it on, as did a room where you're doing that, as did a server where it's hosted, as did the city, as did the country, as did the planet, as did you... Nothing. Everything just turned into nothing, including yourself. See that? Great, let's move on.
This is a main argument when there are no valid arguments left. It is typically used as follows:
— Whenever you'll have children...
— I'm not going to have any children.
— How come? Are you alright?
— Yes, I'm perfectly fine. I just don't see any point in that. I'll better improve myself.
— But wait, you need to procreate.
— For what exactly?
— Who are you going to leave behind? (this can come in different forms, including "who's going to bring flowers to your grave", but the meaning is always identical)
That's all, every following argument is invalid. After this, I usually start reciting the beginning of this post.
If I'm going to cease to exist, it doesn't matter what would be in a world without me. Because if I'm not going to exist in it, it's not going to exist for me; that's like a full-featured end of the world. If I'm not going to cease to exist, there's also no reason to have children: they're only needed because of mortality, they require inadequate amounts of time, they add a crapload of new responsibilities and ultimately make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Don't seek a rational explanation, you won't find it. It doesn't exist.
One another argument that people really like using: "they'll do for you everything you want/dream of", or even "children are our immortality". And it's not valid, too. They won't do for you things you want; they're separate personalities, not your own helper robots. They've got their own life and their own missions in it, and it's in no way a sequel to any of parents' lives. It's like a new branch in a version control system, if you know what I mean. A branch that will develop by itself and, most likely, will never get back to master, no matter how much you'd like to think the opposite. It's much more useful both for yourself and for the humanity to improve yourself instead of teaching basic things to a brand-new human that's going to take his own route, and that route likely won't match yours. So no, children are not our immortality. They are the best way to kill time (and eventually yourself).
— But evolution...
Seriously? No. It's no longer needed. Imagine this world as it was 300 years ago. There was no internet and computers, no electricity, no cars, planes, and trains, many of those things we can't live without today just weren't invented back then. All of this had been invented or discovered in those last 300 years. Impressive, isn't it? And the scientific and technical progress isn't going to stop. Can you remotely guess what new will be introduced in the XXI century? So can't I. Do you see how fast the humanity is developing? It does so by itself, without any external intervention and without any help from the nature. Natural evolution was intended to adapt species to the environment but it's not of much help for a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going to the space because they've invented rockets and space suits, something the natural evolution won't ever do. We've already superseded the evolution, so we don't actually need it any more.
— But that's natural...
Are you living for yourself or for the nature? If the latter, immediately quit your internet, find yourself a partner of the opposite gender and go to an uninhabited island, without any belongings. It'll be a success if you hit 30 years living there. It's natural to reach puberty, pass some genetic material along and die, not to read posts in my blog. The nature isn't our friend. It's our enemy. Yes, it gave us our lives, it gave us this planet with everything we can find on it. But you also shouldn't forget that the nature stands behind, among all other things, the most terrible diseases humanity had ever seen, natural disasters and, ultimately, the fact that the human life is finite. If the nature doesn't care about humans, why should humans care about it?
— But it'll be boring to live forever!
You've got tired of your life, it became dull and everything around you drives you crazy? Take a nap. Play some video games. Read some reddit. Chat with your friends. Learn a new skill. Go traveling somewhere. But please, don't say that the life can become boring to the stage where you'll want to terminate it. Because you can't have unsolvable problems as long as you're alive, whereas a dead person has exactly one such problem: they have no way to come back to life. So no, it won't become that boring. Any problems go away as time goes by, except the aforementioned one.
So, you can really come to one conclusion from all of this: