This End of the World party could leave you will a hangover you regret
27 11 08 - 05:09 It's a remarkable fact that many thousands of people seem to relish the thought of the world ending in their lifetimes, and many more than this really don't mind if it is to end, just so long as they get through their own life first.There is some kind of "death wish" mentality, a coctail of dispair mixed with denial. A determination to have as much of a good time as possible in one's own life without any thought of what happens afterwards.
The first group I mentioned, the "end of days" Bible bashers like Sarah Palin who think that a Biblical prophesy is coming into fulfillment and that armageddon is around the corner are not the people I am addressing in this article. They have their beliefs and they are sticking to them. The latter group however have no ideological dogma leading them to conclude, as they typically do, "I don't care what happens in 50 years, since I won't be around to see it". They are not responding to supernatural prophesies when they say this. They are reacting to the deep concerns of the various scientific experts and environmentalists who are increasingly anxious that humanity should change course before we deplete the planet of the resources we, and millions of other species, need to survive, while also polluting and altering the environment so as to destabilise every ecosystem and cause massive sealevel rises. All these predictions may sound like the ravings of religious doom mongers but science has now firmly established that we are well into this process at this moment and that it must be reversed.
Humanity has, with few exceptions, a fatal flaw of always making the wrong decisions and never doing anything to rectify things. Humanity likes to stick its collective head in the sand and imagine somehow things will turn out fine or delegate responsibility for sorting things out to God, to leaders, or to fate itself. Like an obese woman, told that she will die of a heart attack next month if she doesn't change her eating habits and start exercising, many people, assuming you can get them to even accept the path that we are on, will even be honest enough to admit that they simply don't want to allow such an uncomfortable thought into their minds, let alone to change their lifestyle in a way that inconveniences them. A close relative confided "I wouldn't want to live in a world where that was necessary, so I refuse to think about it". Indeed there is this determination to attack the messenger, as if he is really the one creating a threat. The psychology behind the huge determination to give credence to climate change denial, and wave aside all arguments regarding the many other consequences of our unsustainable lifestyles, while the economy is a monster we must continue to feed at any cost, has much to do with this displacement behaviour. "The messenger is making me uncomfortable, he is the real problem" - that is the mindset. One reason for the low western birth rate could be a subconscious decision to cut life off at the point of the individual's death, having made the decision to surrender to the idea that there may be nothing for anyone in the future to live for.
Short-term thinking; making a profit while you can for yourself and refusing to think about the consequences - this is the way to make a lot of money. The length of the human lifespan is a key factor in these calculations. The whole attitude is selfish to the point of psychopathy. It is like a mass insanity. Even though only a minority get rich and do so off the backs of everyone else, corporate capitalism is accepted as legitimate. The attitude is this: I want to (try to) enjoy my life and I don't want to think about what happens after I am dead. Or even: I have enough problems of my own and don't want to add to that by acknowledging I need to take responsibility for the troubles of future generations. Even people who are very charitable to others in their lives often feel this way. That is because the charitableness most often has a self-centered motive behind it anyway: making the giver feel better, or improving their status.
How might things change if people have this bombshell dropped on them: your lifespan can be expanded ten fold, you could live to be as old as one thousand years?
Humans were not evolved to grasp the concept of living over such a length of time. It would cause a revolution in the way we do almost everything: from relationships and having a family to how we plan to use our time, to how we intend to keep ourselves fit and healthy, and ambitions. It is fairly impossible to go into speculation about how much it would shake up our lives if it became possible for most of us to opt to live for such a lenghth of time. Yet with the self-centered obsession that leads people to prioritise their own life experiences over those of future generations, most people would leap at the opportunity to live for centuries.
Now there is increasing reason to believe that this incredible possibility is going to become reality very soon. How many people will be hoping it happens in their lifetime? Perhaps as many as those who say they don't care what disasters humans store up for the world as long as that happens when they are dead and gone? The irony!
says Aubrey de Grey, a leading gerontologist at Cambridge University."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"
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Breakthroughs from stem cell research and genetic engineering have resulted in some scientists, not just de Grey, expecting that very soon it will be possible to do with humans what has already been achieved with yeast.
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Humans, unlike animals who think no further than their immediate needs, would have to reevaluate their world-view dramatically on the assumption that they could really be around to find out first hand what a state the planet has been left in. Instead of future generations cursing their ancestors - you can't expect ancestor worship to last when your ancestors have bequeathed you a hell on Earth, it will be we who are adults today who may be forced, like Ebenezer Scrooge compelled by the Ghost of Christmas future, to have a look at what our greed and irresponsibility has led to. And if nothing is done now, we may yet live experience the pain. So let's make a tomorrow we would look forward to instead!
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