Want to Live to be 1000?
14 11 08 - 03:00said Woody Allen, expressing an ageless desire in mankind. This desire to live forever is a recurring theme reflecting the human mind, whether it be for a physical fountain of youth, for re-birth in a future incarnation or an eternity in a here-after, in the latter case rejecting the planet and future generations entirely."I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
the words of Aubrey de Grey, a leading gerontologist at Cambridge University. The research is coming on leaps and bounds. A couple of years ago it was thought to be further away from being realised than it is now."The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today ... whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries"
If people could expect to live decades longer than they do at present, thanks to advances in anti-aging research, it would have a profound effect on their attitudes to life right now. If they could expect to live, with the necessary treatment, for centuries longer the effect on the human psyche would be even more profound. Every calculation, from what to eat that day, how much money to save, which books to read, when or if to have children would be affected. And society would change drastically from how it is today. Ironically people would become more precious about their lives, since risk avoidance would have become far more important. If there is a one in a hundred chance you will be killed in your lifetime through a car accident now, how much more cautious do you have to be knowing that your 1000 year lifespan brings the odds up to one in ten?
Accidents can still happen. Back in the early years of the third millennium an American biologist, Professor Steven Austad, studied death rates among 11-year-olds, the age at which disease is the least likely killer. On the basis of these figures, which included death by accidents of varying degrees of improbability, Austad calculated an “immortal” human was likely to live an average of 1,200 years.
And so, in 3194, blooming, youthful, beautiful, 1,200-year-old Sally is strolling along Esher High Street. A piano falls from a sixth-floor window and kills her. Sad, but never mind, she had a good innings.
All of this — well, not the piano — is exactly what Aubrey de Grey and an increasing number of scientists around the world expect to happen.
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Not everyone would want to live to the maximum available years, but most would. And to do this, they would have to concentrate like never before upon keeping themselves fit and healthy, reducing the necessity for operations and replacement limbs, grown using stem cells, which they would have to endure periodically. Cancer would have been eliminated by the removal of key genes - this being a major reason for the longevity. Would this be freely available as a right to everyone, or would it be a privilege to those who could afford it, or in some way were considered deserving? How would that affect relaitonships between those that could afford the treatment and those who couldn't or were denied it? Faced with being on slave wages and working constantly simply to afford the rejuvenation would not appeal to anyone. As the society would be drastically changed so would philosophical outlooks, ideology and politics.
Henry Ward Beecher"Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life."
While many would have little more to aim for in their lives than prolonged mindless entertainment during their spare time, just as they do now - others would continue to read, learn and absorb knowledge.
""How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?
Joseph Addison
How wise could people become, who could live for many centuries and maintain their intellectual faculties?
Think of all the events that have occured throughout our history in the last thousand years. If you could live that long now, and remember (as well as having access to the records) all the upheavals and momentous events that could come to pass, you could not so easily be taken in by lies about how your culture used to be and how people thought and behaved. You could see the direction things were going in and have a sense of urgency to prevent the rapid decline we face today. You would know that it really is decline and not just another of these imagined crises that each generation with its paltry 60 or so year life expectancy inevitably imagined, another tale that we are told to dissipate any enthusiasm for taking action.
Will the planet be able to sustain life for another thousand years? Many experts doubt humanity itself will be around for such a long time. The damage done by humans to the environment is a product of short-termism and the "why should I care what happens after I am dead and gone" cop out. Problems are carelessly left for future generations. Yet if people are now given the prospect of living to be 1000 years old - surely that outlook is drastically changed.
It is not just the damage done through climate change, over-fishing, over-population using up resources including fresh water; there is also the dysgenics making people stupider and weaker. Medicine may improve the health of the individual but it ruins the health of a population in the not-so-long term, replacing the ultimate natural maintenance of health that comes from natural selection. The pollution from industry threatens to sterilise humanity and cause birth defects, like the mysterious virus did in the movie "Children of Men". Could it be that overpopulation will not be a problem with a 1000 year lifespan because we can no longer give birth? It could be decided that only by extending our lives like that can we have the chance of living long enough for science to figure out a solution to the alternative of extinction.
Selecting who may or may not avail themselves of the 1000 year treatment would be an inevitability, whether it would be chosen by merit or purely by wealth. This fact would have to restore new interest in eugenics. There would be unavoidable massive discrimination. Everyone could not be given the treatment, and the world could not cope with the greater increases in population from a lack of dying. There is really more reason, however, to assume that we are heading for a halving of life-expectancy as is happening in some areas, due to AIDS and obesity, and future diseases that may result from human mad cow disease or even nanoparticle pollution.
Nanoparticles that are one milliard of a metre in size are widely used, for example, in cosmetics and food packaging materials. There are also significant amounts of nanoparticles in exhaust emissions. However, very little is yet known of their health effects, because only a very small portion of research into nanoparticles is focused on their health and safety risks.
Nanoparticles have even been dubbed the asbestos of the 2000s bys some researchers, and therefore a considerable threat to people's health. While the use of nanoparticles in consumer products increases, their follow-up procedures and legislation are lagging behind. The European Union chemicals directive REACH does not even touch upon nanomaterials.
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But the technology to allow you or I to live to be 1000 is close to completion. Imagine that you will be around all those centuries into the future. What kind of world have you bequeathed to yourself? People seem to care more about their own individual experience, when they should be just as eager to make sure the children of the future don't inherit a messed up planet full of threats that only exist because of the carelessness and destructiveness of past generations. Ancestor worship will have been fully replaced by ancestor hatred! Now there is the prospect that it will be you who is cursing your younger self for not having been more responsible.
Let your immortality be the life you breathe into the future.
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