Live Long… and Prosper?
He’s an interesting factoid – I’m not exactly sure if it is in fact a fact… but it does sound good – so……
I was reading a book recently (of which more later) where the author began speculating on how long people would live if all other causes of death – except accidents – had been eliminated. The figure he produced (apparently from a study of actuarial rate tables) was 1,500 years. That’s right. I did type it correctly. FIFTEEN-HUNDRED-YEARS. Now that’s what I call a fair bite of the cherry.
OK, it’s not exactly immortality but maybe it’s pretty close to e-mortality. Just imagine it…. 1,500 years – presumably of reasonable active life. Because 1,400 of senility would be pretty close the Hell right? Then again no countries economy at the moment is set up for over 1,400 years of pensions – so we’d probably have to work the first thousand years of our lives to afford to pay for 500 years of leisure.
Such an eventuality (unfortunately not in the lifetime of anyone reading this) would mean a radical change in not only our economy but just about everything we hold as basic to human life. Children, families, relationships, employment and much else would have to change. Just think about the perspective we would have to adopt to even cope with such a long life span. How would you change your life if you could pretty much expect to be alive in the year 3509? I’d hardly know where to start. But I’m pretty certain I’d have a better understanding of life, the universe and everything by the time I made it through the first thousand years or so. Who knows where such knowledge could lead…….. [muses].
4 comments:
That's the problem. Too many people lead their lives knowing they won't be around for another 100 years. And they don't care what kind of world is around then. It would certainly make people reconsider how they live.
I personally would love it. You could basically go to school and become an expert at absolutely every discipline you were interested in. You could read every book ever published. You could travel to every country ... hell, you could travel to every city in that time.
The figure I've seen is 600 years. Still, it's an interesting thought.
I guess I could fall all to easily into the eternal life=eternal boredom argument, but dbackdad is right.
There would be a hell of lot of stuff to do :-D
dbackdad said: It would certainly make people reconsider how they live.
Most definitely. When you can't just leave the clean up to your kids or grand-kids you're much more likely to clean up your own messes.
karlo said: The figure I've seen is 600 years. Still, it's an interesting thought.
Isn't it just. Actually I saw in the news recently that some scientists had been investigating a drug that increase the life expectancy of mice by 38%. Even half that in humans would be impressive - though I can't help but wonder how much they would charge for the pill.
dbackdad said: You could basically go to school and become an expert at absolutely every discipline you were interested in.
Imagine being able to take 20 or even 50 years out to learn the piano... Wouldn't *that* be cool!
dbackdad said: You could travel to every country ... hell, you could travel to every city in that time.
Imagine a 200 year *walking* tour of Europe......
TF said: There would be a hell of lot of stuff to do :-D
I doubt very much if you'd run out of stuff to do... A life of 75-100 years is far too short. You just start getting the hang of things and you start forgetting people's names. Not fair!
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