Please do.Why does it have to be a choice between endless suffering and eternal bliss?
I think the emotions of the moment would become less and less relevant as you slip into millennia of existence. Put up against a ticking clock, humans relentlessly pursue happiness--in reality, chasing that next endorphin rush. You just try to get through life with as few "bad" feelings as possible. But if your existence has no prospect of an end, I tend to think you would realize the triviality of such an attitude.
It's a complex issue and I could probably write many pages about it, but I will try not to.
First of all, I don't believe that humans are pure hedonists who merely pursue happiness.
A small part of ourselves doesn't care about creature comforts but is utterly crazy. Take an ape, when he cannot get a mate he behaves pragmatically and searches another one while we do, at least sometimes when we are deeply in love, not care at all that we cannot be together with whom we love. If anything the impossibility makes us more obsessed.
Workaholics or creative people are also not behaving hedonisticly. When you discover something, as a scientist, as journalist, as artist or as ordinary guy happiness doesn't enter the equation, you are ruthlessly obsessed with the object of your passion while being irrespective of your own animal needs.
I think that's coming from a very mundane and dull view of what "happiness" entails. We are made happy by much, much more than satisfying our animal instincts. If you think scientists aren't made happy by their discoveries, I feel bad for any scientists you learned that from.
The joy of discovery and exploration is its own happiness. I work in software--my job is, basically, solving problems. I get a thrill from finding and executing solutions to problems. It's a better sensation than, say, the fleeting joy of eating something delicious.
Most people pursue their passions because they enjoy it. What do you think makes someone passionate about it? The pleasure they derive from it!
I think it is the more basic forms of happiness--the kind that come from satisfying our animal urges--that would diminish over time in an immortal life.
That doesn't make much sense to me. If you are going to live forever, you have a vested interest in making sure the world around you is stable, safe, and enjoyable. Who wants to live forever in a dystopian nightmare?
I think you also do humans a disservice when you claim we can only accept morality when it is forced on us from a higher source. My ethics come from what I consider a very rational place. I want to be alive, and the people around me do, too. At a minimum, we must respect each other's right to live. Take a step past that, and we all want to be free to pursue our goals in life, without impinging on the freedom of others to do the same. You can build a pretty workable ethical system from those bases, no higher power required--just our own will to survive and pursue the kinds of lives we want.
I don't see it necessarily as "eternal balance." I see it as gaining a greater perspective. For instance, in the developed world, people are expected to follow a rather predictable trajectory:
1. Go to school as a child.
2. Go to college/university and get a degree.
3. Start a career.
4. Get married/start a family/advance your career.
5. Retire and enjoy the years you have left.
6. Pass on a legacy to your children.
A lot of this centers around material acquisition and financial security. You only have so much time in which to earn and accumulate, so you want to make as much as you can and save as much as you can, for that not-so-distant day when you will retire and be able to enjoy what you saved.
Without that countdown to mortal escape, what's the rush? Why not spend a hundred years or a thousand years learning a field, inside and out? What if you had centuries to hone your skills, perfect your art, and develop your view of the universe? It's an interesting thing for me to imagine.
The overall effects on the economy and sociological factors would depend on what kind of immortality we're talking about. If it's simply a form of clinical immortality in which, as long as you eat and stay in reasonable shape, you can live forever in good health, we'd end up with an immortal upperclass and I imagine things would be pretty awful for the mortal majority.
If, on the other hand, it does not come with a dependence on food or other material sustenance, we are dealing with a whole other kettle of fish.
So many of our social dynamics would have to change, regardless of which kind of immortality we're talking about. Retirement would be a laughable concept to an immortal. The only goals which would matter would be those you set for yourself--you aren't on a deadline, so you can bide your time. Family may be less important, either because people stop breeding entirely or because you see your family grow so enormous it becomes an abstract concept rather than a comprehensible reality. In the latter case, of course, resource exhaustion is a huge concern.
I don't see how it would become boring, though. I think those who'd find it boring are also bored by their current lives. If you are excited and engaged about life, how would that change with the prospect of living forever? You could set goals that would be simply unthinkable for most mortal people, and take as long as it takes to achieve them--centuries or millennia or more.
I agree that if you put someone like that up against a modern human, though, they would be vastly different. I think that's part and parcel of the perspective shift inherent to such a life.
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