Like everybody before you, you’re going to die. But thanks to modern medicine and health practices, you’ll probably live much longer than your ancestors did. On average, at age 50, you have more years of life ahead of you than your great-grandparents had at age 40. Not just more years of decline, but more years of health. And these changes in life and health expectancy aren’t just happening in rich countries. They’re transforming the world.
That’s now. But aside from bad lifestyles, accidents and such, research into longevity might one day extending lifespan to hundreds of years. Imagine the changes that would incur and require. Issues like health care, population density and so on. And if we reach a point where you die only when you want to, suicide would have to become an accepted part of life. Mandatory birth control? Serial marriage contracts?
So, would you want to live forever if you could? If not, how long? Assume that we’re talking also being able to at the least, push off our current physical and mental health issues of old age until you’re hundred of years old so you are active and productive all that time. Science fiction has dealt with this issue for decades. How would you if it were possible?
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I don’t understand how anyone would want to live forever. The story says that the period of our good health is longer too, but so would be the slow road of degeneration. You want your life to be good and then suddenly get bad for as short a period as possible.
It also didn’t mention mental degeneration which has become more and more a probability the longer we live despite physical health, so basically you could live a lot longer but you’d still loose your marbles at age 75-80 and then live like that (or worse) for eons after. Kind of like Barbara Cartland I suppose.
I want to live until I get tired of living.
When I turn 65, hit me with a Mack truck doing 90.
Live hard, die young, and leave a good corpse!
#2 lame, weak and off topic
#5 you rule
What’s amazing is the reduced birth rate/life expectancy ratio is the following the same western trend all over the world with the exception of Africa.
Gotu Kola will keep ya ticking 250
My father is 88 and in his 6th year of Alzheimer’s disease. No one should live an extra day like that. Fix the mind and body then let’s talk about longevity.
Politicians seem to outlive everyone despite doing things like drinking booze, smoking cigars, eating fatty foods, cheat their wives with men and stuff. Maybe they do have signed a pact with the devil.
As long as there’s an opt out button.
And as long as I’m productive and interested.
There are still a few books I haven’t read.
Only if I get a robot or something to go to work for me. I want to live forever, not work forever.
#7 foolbar says: lame and off-topic.
Really?
Do you believe corporations will employ a 200 year-old person?
Do you want to be treated by a 200 year-old doctor?
How will a 200 year-old person handle their day-to-day expenses?
I’d bet that when our technology is that advanced most of us would spend our days in a virtual reality.
Living longer because we are actually healthier, or living longer because we can use technology to keep our unhealthy bodies from dying when they should?
2 months ago I may have said yes. A little over three weeks ago my wife died. I have 3 sons in high school, they are my only desire to keep living.
That chart is BS. How do they know the life expectancy of people born in 1990?
The 1900 part is probably bent due to World War II.
Just how friggin’ old do I want to get? How should I know? And I want to keep it that way. But that’s me, without heart-bypass surgery or a hundred life prolonging technological gee-gaws and do-dads.
The development of soap, hygiene, and epidemiology has caused more trouble from the discovery of one water pump in London as the source of the spread of cholera to the billions of people now cumbering this planet.
We should never have discovered penicillin without seeing the side-effects. Somebody needs to shoot the “every sperm is sacred” religious leaders who didn’t get the WHO memo.
We’ve gone from potential cold war “over kill” to the planet needing Taliban style neglect of basic facts occasionally helping the inevitable along with a Kalashnikov to the head.
#16, ouch, sorry to hear that. Time is the best healer, and while the scars will always be their, the joy of life and your family around you will help with the pain. Good luck, and remember to live for yourself too.
Back on topic however, I don’t think I would want to live forever, but several thousand years? Sure, as long as its healthy, and my mind is still working. Think of all the things you could do with such a long lifespan.
Human society would have to change a great deal before I’d be willing to live forever. Right now, even though we live twice as long as people did 400 years ago, many people lives are extremely hectic and stressful. Would you want to work in a dead-end office job that you hate for 400-500 years?
The only people that would really be happy would be the ones that do work they actually enjoy, and live their lives for happiness and contentment, rather than for money.
As a hobbit, I’m counting on 130 years anyway.
My opinion is that the current system of taking on a new biological unit and the automatic forgetting about the previous one works pretty well. The deterioration process isn’t all that enjoyable, but it is a necessary part of the process no matter how long it gets extended.
Wow! Imagine the cost of a lifetime supply of vigara!
Ok, everyone retires at 65 and then lives forever… or until the pills run out.
#16 – Consolations for your loss. My wife died 12 years ago. Your children need you and you them.
news flash: we already do.
-s
That chart doesn’t mean anything. The infant mortality rate screwed the age down in the 1800 and 1900’s.
We simply increased the average age by decreasing the infant mortality rate. It used to be common for children to die before they were a year or two old. Now we have better machines in hospitals that will keep premature infants alive until they are big enough to survive without machines.
Here’s the deal. If I could have my memory wiped every few hundred years or so and start over (like a reincarnation) I’d consider that. Otherwise it would be like sitting in a waiting room for eternity.
#28 is right. Less babies dying is what brought up the life expectancy age. I think genetically there are people who live long, others don’t. My grandfather is 96 years old, he has been smoking all of his life and still smokes, was a professional boxer, and he’s been deaf since a child. He’s still in better shape than most people in their nineties.
I don’t know how long I would want to live. Have you ever been to a retirement home? It’s a depressing site.
jbensen2
Limp wristed politicization of every topic is lame.
#31…that’s the difference between a having a point of view and a being a partisan. Partisans blame everything on their opposition.
I’ve heard it said that no one really wants to live forever, just an exceptionally long time and in good health and sound mind. The figure they cited for a good, long life was 1,000 years followed by self-immolation. It’s I suppose as if when you live long enough, you finally have your fill of it and realize that there’s something more after death, and you become anxious to experience it. It seems that our current lives are unnaturally truncated, resulting in a knee-jerk reaction desire to “live forever”.