The Many Cons of Immortality – Video

Transcript

Hello, everyone. My name is

Hillary, a.k.a. Kai, and this is

Kai’s Cozy Corner.

Okay, so, today we are going

to be making this

sweet dream

thing. I’ve already made

two. So I’ve made this one.

And I also made this one.

Yes, very cute.

this is a little

faux cake that I made out of a wood block

paint and

caulk. let’s get started.

Okay, so

As I’m making this, I will also be

talking about, you know, the many

cons of immortality. I think that

immortality is really overhyped,

and that, frankly,

sounds kind of awful. And probably

not for some of the reasons that you

think. By the way,

my drink matches my outfit,

black and white. White top. You can’t see

it, but I’m wearing a black skirt. Also,

a pop of green, because this is a matcha.

Again, you cannot see my matcha, but

it’s a matcha.

Delicious. I made it at home.

All right. Let’s get started.

So first

things first, it says we’re going to make

a cabinet. I love doing these because

I feel like a little builder, and

it’s of course not true because I’m

not a builder. Um

To first start talking about

immortality.

What is immortality? So immortality

basically means that you’re living

forever, right? It does

not mean that you’re invulnerable,

though, which is my big gripe.

Why? Why Now, some

people are immortal and invulnerable.

Some people are really immortal because

they have transcended

humanity and whatever, so They’re just

in a league of their own, for real.

But for

the rest of us who could

gain immortality,

um you have it,

and you can still get hurt. That’s

ridiculous. That’s so silly.

Sorry, there are going to be a lot of

pauses in this, because It’s a

lot of me looking at this and

going

Which direction is this?

A very common immortal being that

people talk about a lot has to

be the vampire, and I get it.

A lot of people find vampires hot, ok,

ok, whatever. That’s a conversation for a

different time. Um

I think that being a vampire

Sort of sounds like trash. Ohh I can hear

people now. How dare you! Vampires are

so cool! If I were to be

anything, I would be a vampire.

And you know what? Good for you.

Good for you. And I wish you all the best in

being a vampire. I know that me,

personally, I wouldn’t like that. Now,

I do go out into the sun, and I don’t want

to get hurt by that.

So to talk a bit more about vampires

and why I think their immortality is

kind of janky, so

There are many different ways to

get rid of vampires. They

are not the invulnerable immortals.

They can

perish through

getting staked through the heart.

I, too, would perish if that happened to me

Umm

if they go out into the sun and this

isn’t true of all vampires if you’re like

well in this vampire thing that I

watched or read that didn’t

happen and to that I say yeah people have

a lot of different interpretations of how

vampires should demise so um but

yeah they can be staked through the heart

they can be

set ablaze by the sun.

Um They can sort of

fizzle, not necessarily die

if they are around holy

objects.

And then back in

the day, they had some real complicated

stuff about what vampires could and

couldn’t do. So

they were like, yeah. If you

go to a vampire’s grave

and then as they’re

sleeping in there, you cut off their head

and then

stake them, then they’ll be really dead.

The whole thing about vampires is

just that they’re a little bit of a

menace and people really want them gone

but media really does show vampirism as

being so cool now

one of my favorite

shows yeah it’s a really good show and I

enjoy it is

What We Do in the Shadows

and it talks about you

know the kind of not so fun and glamorous

parts of being a vampire like you would

have to have a minion 24/7,

because how are you supposed to do

anything? Also, so this

conversation is all in relation to an

essay, and um in that

essay I talk about the fact that how are

vampires supposed to

earn money? And here’s something that I’ve

noticed.

People, by people, I mean

in shows and books and whatnot,

they do not talk about

how these vampires are earning money.

They just talk about you know old

vampires, people who are ancient.

Like they’ve been alive for forever,

and they’re ancient,

and they just have money.

And I’m thinking, what if you

were turned during or

after the Industrial Revolution in a

Western country. Like, what are you

supposed to do? You can’t get a job.

Imagine being turned as a vampire right

now. How are you supposed to get a job?

The remote work is being taken away from

a lot of people. How are you supposed to

get a job? Like, you would have to

almost exclusively work at night, which

is fine for some people, but not fine

for most.

And I know what you’re thinking. Wow,

that should frankly be a real

non-issue. But if you

are a vampire, you have to think about

that. You do.

we live in a capitalist society.

And that capitalist society says that

you have to earn a living in order to get

healthcare. Also, ooh,

how is healthcare working as a vampire?

Who knows? But since they can’t

go out during the day, they

can’t have daytime jobs, so that means

that they can’t work in a corporate

office, or really just sort of

any office space, so that would

mean that they’re almost exclusively

working at night, and unfortunately,

a lot of night jobs are

not paid well.

So they’re not going to be

earning a lot of money for modern

vampires.

Also, I don’t understand how vampires

aren’t moving all the time.

But whatever. I I could talk about why

vampires confuse me for

forever, and we just…

That’s not what this is about. This is

about immortality in general. oh shucks.

y’all this looks adorable thus far.

Can you see it? It’s adorable thus far.

I’m not going to lie to you, this is

going to take me forever and a day, so

there are going to be a lot of jumps, and

you’re going to go, Wow, when was that

finished? It was finished. That’s all you

need to know.

Where are my beads?

When I tell you these beads are tiny,

they’re teensy.

Itty bitty.

Yeah, I’m gonna have to pull out the

tweezers.

Now, a creature that isn’t immortal that

I would 100% love to become, a werewolf.

And I know what you’re thinking. Oh, wow,

that’s why you’re dogging on. Well, those

tweezers are not doing anything. That’s

why you’re dogging on vampires. It’s

because you actually like werewolves

more. I don’t believe that we

have to live in a binary

where it’s either or

I think you can absolutely like both it’s

just that I personally don’t like

vampires as a concept.

Oh my gosh.

I finished one. Yay!

Also, each time I show this to you guys,

I feel like an Animal Crossing character.

I’ve completed a lot of stuff since

I last saw you.

this already yes it’s a little

shelf cabinet

now there’s a little desk

thing

and then we have a little

it’s a little shelf that goes on the

wall adorable

We also have signs.

I don’t know how well you can see these.

So you can sort of see nothing except

shapes, but that’s all that matters.

I made these, ignore that.

And I want to talk to you about

another immortal. Okay, a man who

actually wished for

immortality, okay?

Walter Bedeker. If you are familiar with

The Twilight Zone, then you

maybe have watched the

Walter Bedeker episode.

And if I’m pronouncing his name wrong,

apologies. Um

But essentially, Walter is a

guy who meets

A person. And that

person says, I can give you immortality

if you give me your soul, basically

Like, we’re going to go into a little contract. OK.

And Walter’s like, yeah, I’m tired of,

you know, getting injured and stuff.

So he does have the invulnerable

immortality.

Guess what, y’all?

In the Twilight Zone episode, he has a

wife, and after he gets

his immortality, she’s

concerned because

he’s doing a lot of really scary stuff

he’s going around and setting

himself on fire and doing all kinds of

wild stuff that is truly

not advisable at all.

And he’s just trying to test his

invulnerability. He’s been eating stuff

that’s poisonous, and

she’s concerned. And he goes up

onto a really tall building

because he wants to see, Okay, well what

would happen if I fell off? And

she’s up there with him going, Walter,

you know, this is wild, you’re acting

weird, I’m concerned for you, blah blah

blah blah blah. And she falls off.

Girl.

You know what his first words are?

I wonder how that felt. You wonder how

that felt? OH, my gosh. And

then he is

sentenced

because nobody believed that she just

fell off that building, because why would you?

Everything about that is

wild and shocking.

he was sentenced to life in

prison. Life in prison. You all think

about this for a second. What are the two

things that he is? Immortal.

And what? He gets sentenced

to life in prison.

It’s like truly worst case scenario.

And then after a certain point, he’s

like, wow, I hate this so much. I don’t

want to be here. And then the

guy who’s basically a

devil is like, Time to reap

that contract, and then he

dies.

It’s one of those wild Twilight Zone

episodes. And I know what you’re

thinking. Aren’t all the Twilight Zone

episodes wild? No.

Some of them are, you know, sort of life

lessons about how we treat others and

how we

interact with the world. And then some

are like this where it’s like, wow, yeah.

I guess don’t do deals with the Devil,

but I already knew that from

The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

I’m in the final throes. I mean, I made

this bag, I made it far too

big. Oops.

Um I made some

tiny paper bags. I made a whole bunch of

stuff. I made a little book. I

made this accordion. Can you see it?

You can’t really see that, but um

Now I’m going to make the bed, and

hopefully life gets easier.

Alright,

we’re going to cut some orange fabric and

fold it. Before I do that, I need to

figure out how big this bed is. So this

is, I’m pretty sure, the bottom of

everything. I’m going to put that there.

I’m so scared. I’m

so scared that I’ve made everything too

big.

This bed is looking teensy.

This bag is as big as this bed.

No. Okay, it’s going to be comically

large. That’s okay.

as I think about my mistakes,

let’s talk about Phoenix.

The Phoenix. Not

any of the basketball teams or any of the

many sports teams. Um, no.

I’m talking about the Fiery Bird.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of

the Phoenix, it’s that there’s a fiery

bird that um

hatches from an egg, as most, if not

all, birds do, and it

lives its life, and then once it perishes,

it burns,

and then reforms in an egg.

Now, tell me that’s not very cool.

Doesn’t that sound awesome? I mean, not

the whole burning and then

reforming part, necessarily, but

It sounds cool in concept. Like, not in

actuality. I wouldn’t want to do that.

But that sounds really cool. Now I know

what you’re thinking. Whoa.

Immortality that Hillary agrees with.

Listen, it’s not that I disagree with any of these

you know, immortal beings, I guess.

It’s really just that

I think the whole process of

immortality is not only

gross, but also mostly

really scary and bad.

the idea of burning

in order to be reborn,

personally, don’t like the idea of that,

but that’s just me. Um Other people can

do it just fine, and I’ll say this:

my favorite character from

Dropout.tv’s Dimension 20’s Fantasy High is

Ayda Aguefort, the daughter

of the Phoenix and a

Black wizard man.

Families come in all shapes and sizes,

and also

Sometimes your dad’s a wizard and your

other parent is a Phoenix, and so that

means that she is

rebirthed all the time.

And with her living so many

lives, she has

notes from her past lives and they tell

her how to do X and how to do Y.

But the idea of living forever

and then not seeing those that you

love again as

you continue on. And

in Ayda’s case,

basically being a completely different person

But I do love her.

When Brennan Lee Mulligan played her, I thought, you know what? I think I’m going

to love you forever, because you remind

me of me, in

some ways. But yeah, I can’t

imagine living that life, frankly. But,

hey, pros and cons. Pro, she’s a

librarian. Pro, I’m a

librarian. Well, abouts to be.

Con,

I just–

I actually don’t even like being hot. So

being warm, and then

perishing, and then,

and then being a baby again.

And then who’s supposed to raise me?

You know

And then you have to like arrange for daycare for your future self in case you perish.

And that’s a whole thing to think about.

Yeah, all of that just seems really

complicated. Also, this

has really nothing to do with what I was
saying. This,

whatever this black stuff is, I

don’t know what this is. It

is getting

everywhere.

My fingers are black. I don’t know what’s

going on. We are almost done.

I usually make these in a few

days, so doing this all at once

was absolutely the wrong move.

So, about

immortality.

Again, this video might make

me sound a bit like a hater, um

Especially a hater of vampires. I don’t

think vampires are bad. In fact, I think

it’s fascinating that so much stuff can

take them down, considering

they seem like on paper you

would think, oh, this thing is

invulnerable. But then it’s actually

like, well, if you look at it wrong, then

it’s gone.

And I just think that’s neat. That’s neat

that that was a choice that was made

I also think immortality is fine as a

concept. It’s not something that I would

like. I don’t like the

idea of being conscious for

forever. Um That just is

not something that sparks joy

Also I’m going to fix stuff, okay?

So I will come back and show you what it looks

like at the very, very end,

because I am going to change some stuff

because, oh golly gee, there was

there was stuff that

I did a little wrong,

and now I want to change it.

Hello?

Hello Hello

Okay.

Y’all, I’ve made so many mistakes.

I’ve made so many mistakes

while making this. It’s actually

egregious. These are completely

backwards.

But I promise you, once you see that

finished product, you’re gonna go, Wow. I

would have never known if you hadn’t have said something.

Okay, so,

how well you can see this.

This is how it turned out. Don’t worry

about the outside.

I made a lot of mistakes.

But you would never be able

to tell. It doesn’t matter what it was

supposed to look like, because this is

all about creativity, and that’s

what was most important.

Also, if you would like to

read something

that doesn’t quite sound like nonsense

and actually sounds like it was a little

researched, I do have an essay called

The Many Cons of Immortality on my

website. I’ll put my website in the

description. And I have

a whole bunch of essays there. I have a

whole bunch. I have four, okay? Let’s

slow our roll. Okay, but yeah,

this was fun, mostly, partially.

And it’s over and it’s done with, and I’m

happy that it’s over and done with, and I

get to add another one to my collection.

So I will see you all next time. Bye!