Iwona Marczak
25067011

In South Africa our everyday lives consists of the realities of serious diseases such as cholera, malaria and AIDS. However, the population rate in South Africa is still growing at a rapid rate. In fact, populations all over the world seem to be growing bigger and bigger. The subject of immortality has been asked since the beginning of time and so it seems that it is almost natural for humans to try and find the one thing that will make them live forever. Humans are afraid of the unknown and the inexplicable, such as death. Immortality may be a reality or there may come a time that immortality will come close to our fingertips in another form. In history, people would seek immortality through potions and magic and now it seems that technology has become the modern day potion. With South Africa in mind, the subject of immortality would be controversial on a number of levels. Here in South Africa, our internet dial-up connections aren’t even close to the standards of broadband width in America and so if there were to be a breakthrough in something like cryonics and it worked, it would take decades before the technology could even be considered to be brought into the country. Then the questions remains, who would pay for this kind of technology? Would it be something that started out exclusively (such as the iPod) but so many people bought into it that the prices would drop and everyone would be able to live forever? I have no doubt that there would be hordes of people trying to save themselves from death. Whilst we might become the most technologically advanced African country by buying into this immortality factor, it seems that people have forgotten that we have to first break certain barriers, such as whether people in this country (with all our different cultures) would want to live forever. And our population count and disease count would either sky-rocket again or it would completely diminish. If people could be cured easily from serious illness and live forever, perhaps diseases would take on new and frightening evolutionary twists. And perhaps, if we live in a country full healthy and immortal people, they will see an opportunity to do whatever they want and gain power over others because there is nothing that can stop them.