I don’t think love is a consequence of wisdom at all. Love and wisdom are two completely separate things. Love is a chemical reaction in the brain that supports reproduction and the protection of your offspring. Wisdom does not cause it at all. Any fool can love as strongly as the wisest man alive.
I do agree that death is not something to be feared, in the current state of affairs. It is still inevitable, and to fear the inevitable is foolish. Avoidable death should be feared, but death from old age shouldn’t. As for how immortality would turn out, that’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t exactly rule out the possibility that some people would eventually voluntarily relinquish their immortality, but I can’t think of any reason why anyone would.
In a culture where natural death isn’t a thing anymore, would anyone really ever consider that they’ve “done everything”, are “ready to go” ? There’s always more to do, more knowledge to assimilate, more questions to answer, more places to explore, more boundaries to challenge. And even then, that’s a final choice. One that you cannot go back on. That is really scary, and that’s a lot you’d be giving up. You’d potentially be giving up infinity. The more reasonable choice would be putting your consciousness on pause and getting revived a few thousand years later.
It seems to me like you guys are equating “natural death is no longer a thing” with “death and suffering are also no longer a thing”. People commit suicide every day, and they have suffered for mere years or decades. Imagine all the trauma and suffering you could accumulate in centuries. It only takes to make the decision once, and it is final.
If someone is perfectly happy for 279 years and then they get a streak of bad luck for 2 years (say, a war), that may very well be too much suffering for their untrained mind, and they may want to just switch it off. How many outlived friends/daughters/true loves would it take to make you at least consider it?
I’m not saying I’d do it, just that it probably wouldn’t be that rare, given that there’s probably no possible cure for non-natural death.
For my part, I think Dumbledore could have made a more compelling argument. One can easily claim that one should fear death, and that in fact everyone alive already does, whatever their belief system says. But saying that is like saying one should wash one’s hands before eating, until someone washes their hands until they bleed. Or that protecting people against harm is a good thing, until someone enslaves everyone against their will in order to better protect them...
Dark wizards do not merely fear death, or simply desire immortality, like we all do. They are obsessed with it—consumed with it, to the point of a mental illness, such that they are willing to do any harm to anyone in order to avoid their own mortality. That was the element in Voldomort’s psyche that Dumbledore couldn’t understand.
I don’t think love is a consequence of wisdom at all. Love and wisdom are two completely separate things. Love is a chemical reaction in the brain that supports reproduction and the protection of your offspring. Wisdom does not cause it at all. Any fool can love as strongly as the wisest man alive.
I do agree that death is not something to be feared, in the current state of affairs. It is still inevitable, and to fear the inevitable is foolish. Avoidable death should be feared, but death from old age shouldn’t. As for how immortality would turn out, that’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t exactly rule out the possibility that some people would eventually voluntarily relinquish their immortality, but I can’t think of any reason why anyone would.
In a culture where natural death isn’t a thing anymore, would anyone really ever consider that they’ve “done everything”, are “ready to go” ? There’s always more to do, more knowledge to assimilate, more questions to answer, more places to explore, more boundaries to challenge. And even then, that’s a final choice. One that you cannot go back on. That is really scary, and that’s a lot you’d be giving up. You’d potentially be giving up infinity. The more reasonable choice would be putting your consciousness on pause and getting revived a few thousand years later.
It seems to me like you guys are equating “natural death is no longer a thing” with “death and suffering are also no longer a thing”. People commit suicide every day, and they have suffered for mere years or decades. Imagine all the trauma and suffering you could accumulate in centuries. It only takes to make the decision once, and it is final.
If someone is perfectly happy for 279 years and then they get a streak of bad luck for 2 years (say, a war), that may very well be too much suffering for their untrained mind, and they may want to just switch it off. How many outlived friends/daughters/true loves would it take to make you at least consider it?
I’m not saying I’d do it, just that it probably wouldn’t be that rare, given that there’s probably no possible cure for non-natural death.
For my part, I think Dumbledore could have made a more compelling argument. One can easily claim that one should fear death, and that in fact everyone alive already does, whatever their belief system says. But saying that is like saying one should wash one’s hands before eating, until someone washes their hands until they bleed. Or that protecting people against harm is a good thing, until someone enslaves everyone against their will in order to better protect them...
Dark wizards do not merely fear death, or simply desire immortality, like we all do. They are obsessed with it—consumed with it, to the point of a mental illness, such that they are willing to do any harm to anyone in order to avoid their own mortality. That was the element in Voldomort’s psyche that Dumbledore couldn’t understand.
I don’t think Harry understands it either.