So I was driving home from work, and for me that's a good hour and change to get home. Now that's a good while for my mind to start thinking on things and one thing that popped back into my mind was an old music video I saw. I can't remember the band or the song, but in it there was a particular guy who saw clocks above peoples heads that ticked down to the exact moment they were about to die. My mind started to think about it more and then an interesting question popped into my head: What would it be like to live in a world where everybody knew the exact moment everyone else was going to die?
A world without any kind of order is nothing but chaos and discord, so here are some basic ground rules for how the world would work:
1. Everything is essentially the same except that now everybody is born with a digital timer above their heads that ticks down to the exact moment you're going to die. It doesn't interfere with everyday life, if you try to touch it your hand will just go through it and such, but everybody who looks at it, yourself included, can see it plain as day. There is no way to hide it and it only appears just after you are born.
2. Everybody is born with a random amount of time.
3. There is also no way of adding to it or taking away from it. If you try to get out of dying the way you were supposed to, the universe will simply kill you another way. If you do something stupid that would kill you in this world and you still have time left on your clock, you will still live but must live with the consequences. (i.e. If you were to lose a limb, you wouldn't die right away but would live out the rest of your time without said limb.)
4. You do, however, have a very limited control over how you die, specifically what you're doing beforehand. If you're in the city when your time is up, then there is a much larger spectrum of ways to go. If you want to specifically go in your sleep, you may want to buy a heavy dose of sedative to knock yourself out before the timer hits zero.
So I guess here's my basic question to my fellow Escapians: Would you want to live in such a world that death is no longer a surprise? I can think of a slew of pros and cons to such a place, but I'd rather people try to come up with some of their own. Plus, my post is already getting kinda big now... For those wondering, I came to my own conclusion that living in such a world wouldn't be such a bad thing in the long run.
TL;DR Would you be willing to live in a world where people could see how much time they and everybody else has to live?
A world without any kind of order is nothing but chaos and discord, so here are some basic ground rules for how the world would work:
1. Everything is essentially the same except that now everybody is born with a digital timer above their heads that ticks down to the exact moment you're going to die. It doesn't interfere with everyday life, if you try to touch it your hand will just go through it and such, but everybody who looks at it, yourself included, can see it plain as day. There is no way to hide it and it only appears just after you are born.
2. Everybody is born with a random amount of time.
3. There is also no way of adding to it or taking away from it. If you try to get out of dying the way you were supposed to, the universe will simply kill you another way. If you do something stupid that would kill you in this world and you still have time left on your clock, you will still live but must live with the consequences. (i.e. If you were to lose a limb, you wouldn't die right away but would live out the rest of your time without said limb.)
4. You do, however, have a very limited control over how you die, specifically what you're doing beforehand. If you're in the city when your time is up, then there is a much larger spectrum of ways to go. If you want to specifically go in your sleep, you may want to buy a heavy dose of sedative to knock yourself out before the timer hits zero.
So I guess here's my basic question to my fellow Escapians: Would you want to live in such a world that death is no longer a surprise? I can think of a slew of pros and cons to such a place, but I'd rather people try to come up with some of their own. Plus, my post is already getting kinda big now... For those wondering, I came to my own conclusion that living in such a world wouldn't be such a bad thing in the long run.
TL;DR Would you be willing to live in a world where people could see how much time they and everybody else has to live?