BS: How long do you want to live?

Subject: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:24 AM

I am going out on a limb and say that we all would like to live longer. I know I do.   What would happen if we did? On the whole I believe things would be better if we all kept learning for 700 years. We live as long as we do because our age span has been most successful for the species to adapt and survive. Yet today we live just long enough to forget the collective gains we have made in our civilization and allow immortal institutions to continue their self interest beyond our grave. Civilization seems to inherit more legends and mysticism than facts. I believe that the human life span may be the key factor in determining the progress and enlightenment of the entire species. Wouldn't it be nice if we could ask Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln (If he had missed the play) or Mark Twain, just exactly what happened and whatthey are thinking now?

Time is what you make it but certain groups have always used specific time scales. The ruling class seem to base decisions for their family on a multi generational basis. The middle class works toward the well being of their immediate children and the poor live day by day. As immortal as certain power wielding groups may be, they still seem to make a few short sighted stupid decisions. Long lived individuals could certainly be as irrational in the long run as we are in the short run but at least there would be time for them to know better Getting rich quick and not caring a whit for the future would lose some of its appeal since we would have to live in that future with all its consequences.


   If we lived to the age of 700 instead of 70, imagine how different Veteran's Day or Memorial Day might look. Most of us might avoid repeating the same war every two generations. We could remember the great mistakes and work hard to avoid making them again. We would clearly see a slow motion class war or environmental problem in a new perspective. Maybe history won't have to repeat itself as we do now by repeating the abuses of the Gilded Age. Maybe the argument that the public isn't ready for some profound disclosure would lose its rationale. I always believed that transparency is best.


   Whatever my kids experience, immediately becomes their social cultural norm.   For example if we all had flying saucers in the garage, your teenager would think it quite normal to ask "Hey Dad, can I borrow the saucer tonight?" The words the young learn along with their new definitions become the way they view the world.   I remember the same words and definitions had a nearly opposite meaning 40 years ago thanks to Orwellian think tank projects. I am 58 but I remember a much different American norm than our newest generations.



   I remember when one bread winner was sufficient for a household. I remember that a January thaw meant that we had temperatures in the high 30's, instead of a 75 degree winter heat wave. I remember that there were no thunder snow storms. I remember we made steel.   I remember President Eisenhower warning against something he called the military industrial complex although we have many other names for it today. I remember what water vapor jet con trails used to look like. I remember that the police were our neighbors and known to everyone instead of faceless SWAT teams conducting 60 missions a day across the country. I remember that vote fraud was a regional oddity instead of the norm.




   I remember when a businessman failed and looted his business he was punished instead of being rewarded by golden parachutes. I remember being beaten in the high school locker room after I said in class that Red China was making incredible progress. I remember a sickening racial and gender discrimination. I remember an endless Viet Nam war and people demonstrating at virtually every University and city across the nation.   I remember that the very idea of trashing science was unpatriotic and stupid on its face.


   I remember being sent to the Jr. High principal's office for writing an essay on evolution and then again when I made a clay female nude in art class. I remember seeing films of a million American soldiers sent to defeat militaristic nations that were based largely on state corporations, mysticism, eugenics, torture, bio weapons and mass murder. I remember loud mouthed demagogues and their shills were paid the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars… well some things haven't changed.


If overpopulation could be solved fairly and humanely,
(Aye, there's the rub)
I believe that a healthy 700 year life span for human beings would provide clarity for civilizations on the Planet Earth and worlds beyond.



   There will be lots of changes of course. Some of you might have a 680th wedding anniversary or people you would like to see go, won't.   Youthful indiscretion might actually extend to 55. Surely there is no fool like an old fool but if we lived longer we might all know what is truly foolish and what bears fruit in our inherited garden of Eden. With recent breakthroughs, we may have to decide sooner than we think if we want to live longer … and if we are not careful, it too will be a reserved secret for a select few like Pat Robertson, Bill Gates or George Bush.

with best regards Don Hakman

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:28 AM

At least until I die.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:29 AM

btw
some are confused by the term 'immortal institutions'

They could be nations, the Vatican, religions, certain families or other on going organizations either known or unknown to you.

I'd settle for 300 which seems to be the speculated upper limit for cells to replicate - with possible future treatments.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:29 AM

And that's just about the best answer to the question, short, sweet and to the point

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Bee
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:35 AM

Me? Forever. I cannot imagine running out of things to learn, do, investigate, experience, or people to know, appreciate, love.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:38 AM

Living until I die would be desirable. Dying before I'm actually dead would be depressing, and I don't have the dental requirements to be one of the living dead.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:46 AM

what the?

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:53 AM

Since I had my heart trouble, I've had to think about a very finite future. You can feel stuff packing up inside. And I may be here next year, or the year after and with real luck ten years.

I've already been a lot luckier than many people. So I've got nothing to bitch about.

But if I'm in this shape after less than 60 years, the prospect of lugging round this carcass for 700 years is a bit daunting. I think you would be glad to make any kind of mistake you're capable of after all that time. I imagine there might be a certain destructive pride in starting another world war - a bit like breaking the label on another bottle of scotch.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:00 PM

Most people don't read posts anymore, they don't bother writing an an intelligent reply when they can spit out a one liner.

Culture shock. I've adapted to a lot of things, including computers. Technological change has picked up speed to where I do what I did in math class: fall off the boat and let it sail on without me. Nevertheless, I want to live while I can still find inspiration, and not much of that has to do with technology.

Up to a certain point, the learning is fun. After that, you have to deal with being left behind in some respects and find some ship that's going the speed you want to travel.

And maybe this isn't so intelligent, but it's better than graffiti.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:07 PM

Yes, but some thread titles beg for a smartass answer and "How long do you want to live?" is one of them.

I want to live as long as I'm having fun, singing songs, learning new things, sharing with others. If that's two more hours, fine; if it's 700 more years that would be okay too.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:11 PM

I agree with WLD. The curse of immortality has been covered by many stories, like the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman... doomed to live until the end of the world.

I've seen a lot of people get old- most of them seem to do fine until about 80, when rapid deterioration often sets in. Your prospects thereafter depend entirely on how much support you can attract- either from loving relations or by being rich enough to buy it. For those who can't, life can be indeed bleak- lonely, dying slowly of marginal neglect in an uncaring and impersonal "home", or struggling on at home, without good access to shops and other facilities (even if you can afford it, it's often out-of-town, there's little public transport and the car has long gone, even if you weren't too far gone to drive it), can't get to pubs and they are too dear anyway....

So I want to live until I start to deteriorate, then die quickly.

It's unlikely that any realistic reversal or even prevention of old age can be developed. We have too many late- acting genes that aren't selected out because we have long ago reproduced by the time they are expressed. In any case, they may be advantageous when we are young.

Imagine if the first life to develop had been immortal- it would have locked up all the carbon and other resources in the planet, and the development of complex life could never have happened. Death is the price we pay for being what we are, so pay the carbon tax willingly when it's called for.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:16 PM

I fully agree with Rapaire on this one, I'm not wordy by nature, I say what I mean and I mean what I say, it's that simple.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:23 PM

A thoughtful and interesting question, Donuel. I love the idea of 700-yr lifespans; Heinlein explored some of the ramifications in his Merthuselah series, and it looked pretty good to me.

With one caveat!!! You may recall that Heinlein's heros stayed in good nick all the way through. I am not going to spent 600 years in what amounts to the body of a centarian today, of you see what I mean.


A

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:26 PM

forever ... without ageing ...

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:39 PM

I have no doubt but that when the time comes I will struggle to survive; it is the nature of the beast. Cerebrally, however, I have no attachment to living a L O N G life. (I knew a man once who was 98 years old. He was bedfast, blind and profoundly deaf. His goazl was to make it to 100. Why? Who was keeping score?)

I also have no desire to take heroic measures. Just because a procedure is available is no reason to utilize it. I have no desire nor intention of 'buying' myself a few more weeks or months, if those weeks and months are to be filled with the pain of trying to recoup from surgery or other interventions.

The people we call 'statesmen' have always been able to take a long view. They can do that in fewer than 70 years. They do not need 700 years. (At least I now understand where the figure of '700' comes from. Previously it reminded me of a number plucked out of a hat. Kind of like my daughter at age 15. She informed me that she wanted to lose 20 pounds. I said, OK, I'll help. Aim at losing 5 pounds by the end of next month. She said, No! I want to lose 20 pounds.)

Wealth does not in itself connote either long life or happiness. Look at Ted Kennedy. He certainly has enough money to have avoided the tumor, if money were the issue. As for happiness, think of Howard Hughes.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:44 PM

Forever. I mean it. I don't want to ever die, I might miss something!

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:49 PM

I'm not too concerned about the number of years I live, Donuel, but I am concerned about the quality of life while I'm living them.

I can well imagine getting too old to want to be here anymore...depending on various health issues, etc.

If I could stay young and healthy forever, though, then I'd probably opt to live for a very, very long time...several hundred years.

I figure my spirit will live on forever regardless, so I'm not too worried about the longterm situation. I'll just build myself a new body a cell at a time (courtesy of my next mother) when the time comes for the next Earthly go-round.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Bee
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:51 PM

As far as culture shock, or future shock, goes, one learns, that's all. My earliest childhood included kerosene lanterns/no electricity (briefly), no indoor plumbing, no recorded music, no TV. At eighteen, I'd never been on a city bus, a train, or an airplane. No one person ever understands all the technology that surrounds them.

The historic environment Donuel remembers doesn't match my memories:

"I remember that a January thaw meant that we had temperatures in the high 30's, instead of a 75 degree winter heat wave. I remember that there were no thunder snow storms." - Donuel

Climate is changing, yes, but weather anomalies have always been around. And snow storms with thunder have never been that unusual.

Other than that, people on the whole are the same. There are always crooks and liars, and bad leaders and good cops and bad cops.

Technology has done this much: we know a lot more, a lot faster, something of what is happening outside of our own small communities. Some people take that information and grossly misinterpret it, others integrate it into their personal worldviews.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 12:55 PM

Life Rools! <---that's graffiti!

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:01 PM

I would never make it to 700 years. About the third or fourth time the latest technological breakthrough necessitated my having to completely relearn how to do the same old shit I'd been doing for the last two or three hundred years, I'd just go ahead and off myself.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:03 PM

You can always move out into the woods, build a tree house, and live the old way. Who says ya gotta put up with ipods and shit like that if ya don't want to?

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:06 PM

I want to live as long as there is one Democrat, Liberal, liberal, Progressive, Leftist, Socialist, Communist, or whatever is out there at that end of the spectrum remains to change their ways...I expect to live a long, long time! I expect human colonies on the moon before that happens. LOreallyL

The real answer is that I hope to live as long as I am able to get around, my health is reasonably good, and my mental acuity remains, and my money lasts. In other words, I don't want to be a burden on my family or society at large. Not a(n) LOL matter.

WLD-being eleven years away from heart bypass myself (I was 57), I feel lucky, and every day is plus. But I don't dwell on it, as I'm sure you don't. But having twice cheated death (caught in a rip tide once) I neither fear death, nor exactly look forward to welcoming it. I just want it painless and quick.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:14 PM

L'Chaim!! LEt us all live well, first, and then let us concentrate on living long.

A

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:17 PM

It is when all is said and done a matter of quality over quantity, though some people seem to think quantity is equatable with quality.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:22 PM

"I imagine there might be a certain destructive pride in starting another world war - a bit like breaking the label on another bottle of scotch......."

Oh I really shouldn't, but perhaps just one more.........

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: lady penelope
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:27 PM

I mean this in no flippant or sound bite manner. I want to live until I don't want to say "Not yet!"

It is the essential question of quality over quantity. I'd much rather quality. Like Little Hawk says, sooner or later, one way or another, I'll be round again soon enough....

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 01:45 PM

I don't think having older people around prevents war. The Viet Nam generation was running the country when we invaded Iraq. The folks who had learned the lesson, Powell, Zinni, Shinseki were ignored. It was the shirkers that got us into the quagmire.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 02:03 PM

This about growing older, or not..not about who was and who was not responsible for getting involved in wars. Though some people simply can't resist poking can they?

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 02:12 PM

I don't mind dying, I'd just rather not be there when it happens, as Woody Allen put it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 03:13 PM

touche' Jeri, I too am guilty of not reading entire threads but even worse, I often do not proof read. Only after proof reading do I begin to approach my intended meaning. I plan to submit this piece to 'This I believe'.

Rapaire, rip away, right or wrong, I treat titles like proper names, they are almost meaningless. A journalist would probably feel differently.

Some days I feel like an analog man in a digital world especially if I am doing an oil painting. Technology might allow for a trip to another star ergo a trip to a distant future waaay beyond 600 years, but we are not really talking science fiction here. We really do know that there is a stop gene respondsible for ending cell replication. Tinkering with it has been done with worms and quadrupled their life.

Radiolab.org has a archive show on 'immortality' that I highly reccomend.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: kendall
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 07:35 PM

I want to live as long as I want to live, and not a minute longer.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 08:58 PM

I don't care if I live another minute.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 09:34 PM

Bee reminds me: Snowy thunderstorms are nothing new at all. My grandmother - born in 1874 (wow!) - used to say that any thunderstorm meant that the season it was would become more typically seasonal, in other words if it was in the summertime it foretold hot weather. If in the winter it was going to turn cold.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 10:11 PM

I used to say I wanted to be the last human, so I could see 'how it all turned out', but now I wonder.

I am doing fine right now, and enjoying my woodworking and being amazed by all the new discoveries in space, in genetics and by the amazing amount of things I can access by the internet/WWW.....but....I am s-l-o-w-l-y seeing stuff develop that does not please me, and that I do not expect to adapt to easily.

(such as the changes in the music I care about, the environmental problems which I do not believe are being addressed seriously enough, the eroding of the educational system and consequent 'dumbing down' of society, and the amount of gratuitious scary stuff & violence being used for entertainment on TV...and yes, it IS worse overall than 20-30-40 years ago....and more. I could write pages explaining each of those.)

Thus, I can imagine a day when the infirmities of age coupled with the stuff noted above, will tell me I'd just as soon go as stay.


Don't get me wrong: I am not giving up, and I hope that the good stuff will keep me entertained for another 20-30 years (that would be to 90 or 100, for those who wonder) but I am a bit of a pragmitist, and I can't reconcile a 700 year life span...or even 200...with the population issue. I don't think I would want to be around 100 years from now if it all goes as I kinda expect.

and, BOY do I hope things happen in the next 10 years to change this somewhat gloomy view!!!

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 11:18 PM

Apparently there is some "depreciation" as one gets older.

"In 2002, the EPA decided the value of elderly people was 38 percent less than that of people under 70."

(EPA knocks $900,000 off value of a life
The Associated Press
updated 3:34 p.m. CT, Thurs., July. 10, 2008)

[After the move became public, the agency reversed itself.]

I'm quite grateful that medical progress has kept me going for about ten years past what I could expect from family history and genetics; but unless they can reverse the creeping decrepitude I can't see great joy in adding more than another hundred or so years.

John

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Teribus
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 01:46 AM

I think I'm with Little Hawk on this one quality of life is the governing criteria not duration.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 11:34 AM

Anyone remember the episode from Star Trek when Kirk is kidnapped to breed with a local girl on a planet where death and illness was almost a thing of the past? If we all lived for 200 or so years the world population would increase at such a rate as to make the quality of life dreadful. Whilst I have no great desire to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet I really don't want to be scratching for an existence and the thought that I may have to work even longer than the 15 years I have left to retirement fills me with horror!

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 01:01 PM

Joe F, your answer saddens me. If you need a sympathetic ear, PM me (I am a member when not at work).

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 02:19 PM

This is living?????????????

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lord Batman's Kitchener
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 02:25 PM

Long enough to see this thread end......?

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 11 Jul 08 - 02:42 PM

The classic toast was:
"May you live as long as you want to. And want to as long as you live."
Works for me.

Subject: RE: BS: How long do you want to live?
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 12 Jul 08 - 12:56 AM

If things keep going as they are, I won't be able to afford to live 'til
I'm a ripe old age. Besides, I don't want to grow old alone, so if things don't change soon, I really don't care how long I live. Sometimes, life is such a struggle.
LL