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I respectfully disagree with you. One must be wary of the modern cult of technology as just another way to bypass the human condition. Even if you live to be 2
by SeamusBrady 17y ago
I respectfully disagree with you. One must be wary of the modern cult of technology as just another way to bypass the human condition.
Even if you live to be 2000, you cannot bypass suffering and you cannot stop change. Our attention span is between 5 and 15 seconds and you will have to share that present, that moment with all other human beings, just the same as if you only had six months to live.
The point is not how long you live, but how well.
As Marus Aurelius says in his Meditations:
"For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."
- staunch 17y agoI don't know. Imagine an earth filled with up to 2,000 year old humans. Many (not all) of them would be amazing in a huge variety of ways. They'd have had the time to spend 10 of our lifetimes learning how not to live well, and another 10 learning how to live well.
- ericd 17y agoI see a planet of profoundly bored and weary 2000 year olds. But with 100 years of productive youth without a corresponding increase in time spent being very young or too old to work effectively, there would be outsized productivity gains.
- anigbrowl 17y agoFor all you or I know such long lifespans might produce nothing but cranky sadists who are too jaded to find pleasure in anything but stripping folks like yourself of their naive enthusiasm. I'm not especially enthused about the prospect of major life extension. Gerontocracy is already far too common and in the US the older demographic seems oblivious to the fact that the generations following behind are going to be stuck with an absolutely massive bill so the boomers can enjoy their retirement. At least Japan is trying to address the problem by developing better robots, while we are heading for spending 20% of GDP on health care.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]