The value of longevity
I realise that the subject of longevity, the length of a human life, is somewhat off-topic for a maths blog, but since one of my aims is to learn to think about and discuss ideas clearly, to encourage such thinking in others, and to have fun interacting with ideas and the people behind them, I see no barriers to exploring this topic here.
Why do we wish for a long life? The “we” in that sentence is telling: it cannot be taken to mean everyone in every culture at all times. It certainly seems to refer to a majority of the members of the comfortably well-off classes in the rich countries of the modern world. Those of us who enjoy comfort and leisure, and who are used to putting our pleasures above those of others and above societal concerns, are those who tend to yearn for a few more years, and fear death greatly. I suspect that comfort and leisure are not sufficient to generate greed for life, that an additional selfishness in outlook is required, but I am not able to back this up rigorously. Contrary to this, Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life (which argues for a positive view of a short but good life) suggests that even rich Ancient Greeks bemoaned what they saw as a short life and were desirous of cheating death, despite having had in addition a strong social consciousnesses. Certainly being able to prioritise others or society ahead of individual desires alone is insufficient to generate a clinging to life, as an oppressed and unhappy member of any number of regimes which subsume the desires of the individual will tell you, or indeed any monk.
But perhaps it is our modern industrial, or post-industrial, culture which provides the most fertile conditions for the illness of clutching at life. Because surely it is an illness, to cankerously steal from future generations, to bloat the planet and no doubt beyond with people rusted in their ways, ever consuming beyond their time. If comfort, leisure, and selfishness alone or even together are insufficient conditions to cause a plague of desire for the long life, what other causes could there be?
Our medical technology is one suspect. Neil Postman has argued that we are entering into a Technopoly, in which technology completely directs and dictates our decisions and lives, with minimal input from any historical, social, or moral world-narrative. We see the human body - my body we say, as if we own the stuff from which it is made, dead star stuff and recycled dead things - as a machine to be fixed, with medicine the technology to effect the cure. The doctor is the trained technician who interprets the machine language of the medical tools for us mere heart-beating things.
The god is not in the machine, it is the machine, and we tear our hair that our supplications to it do not result in eternal life. Our narrative is that a literally Eternal Life underlies our current mortality, that we must have experienced a Fall which has alienated us from it, and that correct worship of the Machine will reunite us with it. Eternal life is the default setting, we assume, and we are just stuck in a strangely terminating loop.
But what about the quality or meaning of life? If an early death is “tragic” or “a waste”, why should living longer imply a non-tragic, or better-spent life? What is it that we do in those extra journeys round the sun that make our lives better? We spend our money to buy things which increase our comfort and leisure, and we do so for us and us alone, regardless of the impact on other people in far-flung lands, or those yet to be born. The connotation of the metaphor of “spending” time is that spending more means a happier, or better life. But since more stuff does not really mean more happiness, even what the metaphor denotes is nonsense. (There is an ironic link between the denoted and connoted of this metaphor.)
There is a Buddhist saying: “better to live one day as tiger than a life as a sheep”. The man we know as Buddha taught a release from the torment of eternal rebirth. Read again: the torment of eternal rebirth. Without excessive comfort and leisure and selfishness, the prospect of an endless succession of lives was deemed a torture. How telling, and what a summary of the above ramble, that many in the modern world see reincarnation (confused with rebirth) as something to yearn for.
Filed under: big picture | Tagged: buddha, buddhism, culture, death, life, longevity, postman, seneca, technopoly
Excellent post Phil. Goodness, there’s a LOT of food for thought there!
Two things spring to mind for starters. As far as I know human beings are the only creatures endowed with imagination of such fabulous capability that we are the only ones to be able to imagine not being here any more. In other words, we live with some, usually unconscious, continuous knowledge of our own mortality. Some psychologists claim that every single fear is, at base, a fear of death. Certainly it’s hard to take on board the knowledge of your own impending death (that’s why I wish oncologists had better training in communication skills - so often, terminal illness is not handled well)
So, my first thought would be that people desire longevity as a way of avoiding the reality of mortality.
Secondly, I despair at the “thin-ness” of medical research. I try in vain to find anyone taking whole of life perspectives on medical treatments. So often researchers claim that a drug will reduce “mortality from all causes” which is such patent nonsense! What they really mean is that for the duration of the study that was true (most studies last weeks only, some months, and very, very few years - and none I know of for the whole of the subjects’ lives) What does it mean to prescribe say, statins, and reduce the number of people dying from cardiovascular disease? The thinking shouldn’t stop there. We have to understand what kind of lives people can expect instead. If they don’t get their heart attack at 70, what do the remaining years hold in store? Cancer? Dementia? Degenerative, incapacitating diseases? Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying let’s all have heart attacks. I’m just saying this lack of thought about quality of life and of whole of life (life as we can expect it to be rather than just the most years we can have) is sad.
Thankyou for raising this very difficult issue. There aren’t any easy answers
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Thank you, Bob, for your thoughtful response.
Your first point brings to mind something Epircurus wrote. I’ll quote the relevant paragraph here, but I try to carry around just the last bit of it (in bold):
Fear of “not being here any more” suggests that there will be a conscious awareness of not being here, but where, then, would we be? If there is no such awareness, then there is nothing to fear, as Epicurus observed. If there is such awareness, what hellish afterlife is it that we fear being thrust into, that our separation from here should be so fearsome?
Your second point is very poignant, and I wonder if you could have said it in your former life as a GP! When I first met my wife 10 years ago at the tender age of 19, I was shocked to hear her say that she’d rather die a bit younger but in health and vigour rather than linger and decay before death. It actually upset me to hear her say this, and I couldn’t work out why. Fear, of course. Now I couldn’t agree more with her, and with you.
You’re right that there are no easy answers, but it feels great to get these things out in the open and talk about them like adults. Rather like finding out your god is a glove puppet. I really appreciate your input.
I’ve only stumbled across your blog, ‘cos I’m referenced by Google for longevity stuff.
I think many of your assumptions are questionable.
Whilst you’re right to query “we”, your deduction from that is odd. I doubt you, or anyone, knows what “we” think; indeed, what anyone else thinks.
I only know what I think. But the evidence of other’s actions is that they will, and overwhelmingly always have, go to extremes to perpetuate their lives. Virtually everyone of whom we know - the Egyptians’ religious rites to enable an afterlife; Homer’s Achilles bemoaning the horrors of life-after-death; alchemist’s search for the elixir of youth; all the Judaic-Christian-Islamic belief in the after-life/resurrection. All showing a keen desire to not die.
The acknowledged oddity is explaining those who choose to either die or be prepared to die for ideals, ‘cos the norm is to avoid it ‘like the plague’!
All societies, everywhere, of whatever wealth and comfort. There are case histories of peoples abandoning family, friends, etc in exchange for life, food, etc. Putting up tremendous struggle to remain alive. Again, it is the odd occasions when this is not so that are called to account.
This seems true of all life, not just human life. Indeed, life itself seems to be a denial of the assault on everything to become more chaotic, less ordered, dead.
I do not understand your phrase “illness of clutching at life”, nor that it is stealing from future generations. At what age would you say one has started to steal from the next generation? This makes no sense to me. How can it be an illness to stay alive, the very antithesis of illness - being less well. Why cankerously (cantankerously)? The evidence is the elder are happier with life, contrary to your assumption. The elder support the younger both socially and financially.
With age comes a accretion of knowledge, wisdom - usable for all, and especially one’s family. There is recent research that supports the thesis that (a) having older people around helps the whole society - grandmothers looking after their grandchildren; grandfathers siring children, perpetuating longevity genes for everyone’s benefit - shorter-living societies do less well in the competition for resources.
If I do not own my own body, who does? Sounds suspiciously like you might be advocating that the State does.
You have a category confusion, in claiming that “technology completely directs and dictates our decisions and lives, …. etc” Only animate things decide, direct, make decisions - abstract and inanimate stuff cannot and does not.
Er … you may think an early death is tragic or a waste, some (me) think any death is - at any age. Life is good, more is better.
Buddha is wrong. No surprise there - he was wrong about a lot of things. Beware your hidden worship of gods like this one - they are just other people, the fact that they are worshiped by millions doesn’t alter that.
Perhaps when life is miserable, the hope of coming back to a better one helps make it bearable - whilst rearing the next generations. It is maybe easy for the rich and comfortable like Buddha to cast aspersions on the needs of the poor and miserable.
Hello, Ian, and welcome! Many thanks for your input, which raises so many points that I hope I manage to cover them all. Before proceeding, I would like us all to bear in mind the final sentence of Bob’s comment above.
You are quite right that neither I nor you know what anyone else is thinking, or even whether anyone else is thinking! I notice, however, that it doesn’t stop you from thinking that I “worship” (in a hidden way, apparently) Buddha, even though I say nothing of the sort.
I’m glad that you observe that other people’s actions indicate “that they will, and overwhelmingly always have, go to extremes to perpetuate their lives” since this is one of the main points I was trying to raise. I was not able to back it up with data; neither are you, but the fact that we have both observed it is promising. I was not saying that only moderns feel this way, nor was I saying that to feel this way is unnatural, nor that I don’t feel this way. I was asking under what conditions our natural finiteness is deemed unnatural and terrifying to the extent that we bewail and moan our mortality and “trouble deaf heaven with our bootless cries” about it all, to quote the bard. Part of my suggestion - and I was careful to use qualifying words to ensure it was read only as a suggestion - is that a combination of comfort, lack of social conscience, and viewing the body as a machine contribute to a desperate clinging to life.
You seem to suggest that a belief in the afterlife and a desire to live long are the same thing. I’m not so sure. Perhaps they both spring from a fear of death. But if so how contradictory! If death is followed by another “life” of some sort, then why fear passing through that dark gate? I’m reminded of an episode of the Simpson’s in which the deeply religious Flanders family has their house flattened by a tornado. Pulled from the rubble by her husband Ned, Maude Flanders says something to the effect of “Oh, Neddie, I thought I was headed for the eternal bliss of heaven. It was awful!”
Moving on, you say that elders support the young socially and financially. This may be true (you use the word evidence a few times without providing any) so long as they retain their health and wealth, but longer life tends to mean more infirmities and illness, more dependence on pensions, and financial and everyday care from one’s offspring. Imagine if everyone lived two hundred years, or three hundred, or however long you want: how would we feed them all, find jobs for them, support them in their infirmities? They would spread like a canker (the dictionary has lots of nuanced meanings of canker, several of which I intended). We would no doubt have to limit births quite severely. Does that seem fair? What is it about your genetic combination or mine that is so good we should preserve it instead of welcoming more diversity, more adaptability to change, with new births? You say that “perpetuating longevity genes” is to everyone’s benefits, but this is begging the question.
You ask “If I do not own my own body, who does? Sounds suspiciously like you might be advocating that the State does.” Goodness, could my writing possibly have been so unclear that you inferred a meaning so abhorrent to me? I must strive harder to make myself clear! I mean to ask, what in your body do you own? Is it the organs? How are they “yours”? What right do you have to them? Did you make them? How about the atoms? Have you been carrying those around since your gestation? No. Practically every atom in your body is replaced every seven years or so. You are more a pattern than a thing, more process than object, more wave than iceberg. Of course, if you don’t own your body, then neither does anyone else! But you certainly have a right to defend its integrity since it carries around the things necessary for your survival. My point is: when does that defence of our perpetuation become so selfish that it actually harms others? And why do we do it anyway?
My point about Technopoly is better put – argued in book-length form – by Postman and I respectivelty suggest you read his work, because I can’t do it justice. I didn’t mean to imply that machines make decisions themselves, but that the faith we place in machines means that our decisions are influenced more by them than by moral, ethical, or humanistic considerations.
My reference to an early death being tragic could have been better put: it was inspired by a (short, so far!) lifetime of attending to news reports in which such deaths are usually described in that way. You say that all death is tragic: getting at the question of why this may be so was the aim of this post.
I wonder what you think the Buddha was wrong about, and why you feel like I need to be reminded of his fallibility. It was the millions of people of his India who felt that an eternal cycle of rebirth was a torment. Whether or not such rebirth exists was not my point, but that they felt an eternal life was torment. Further, my understanding is that he often reminded his followers of his fallibility – and indeed of his mortality, telling them not to weep at his passing (much like Socrates as he picked up the bowl of hemlock). Even though we’re getting a bit off-topic here, I feel like I should point out that although Buddha had a rich and privileged upbringing, he abandoned all that for the life of a mendicant monk, and put himself through such appalling ascetic practices for six years that it was said one could see his spine through his stomach. He lived and taught among the poor and possessionless for the remainder of his life. He taught kings and nobles, too.
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Phil,
This is a terrific post. Thank you. Reading the Stoics is a perfect way to get some perspective on this subject. And, dying is the big one as far as I’m concerned. I like Edward de Bono’s comment that life is a holiday from non existence.
I think it was another chap with ‘de’ in his name who made me aware of Seneca. That was Alain de Boton. In his book, The Consolations of Philosophy he talks about Seneca and how Nero had discovered a plot against him. A friendly centurion came to Seneca with the news that Nero was on to him, and advising him to take his own life. There follows a story about how a problem occurred with every method of suicide he tried. His veins were too thin, hemlock didn’t work, but eventually he suffocated in a bath of “vapors.” He died in torment but with equanimity.
Seneca said, “Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.” To me this is a statement about life. For a goal-oriented culture how little we talk about how we would like to die, imagine our own death, and decide what is a good death.
Of course, we are frightened by it. I am. I volunteered to be a hospice volunteer a couple of years ago. I only did it for a few months. It scared me. I was very uncomfortable about it and I admire those that do this work.
Marcus Aurelius pondered the meaninglessness of simply more life. It was reading him that made me think about what it means to come to terms with no longer existing. But really we no longer exist as conscious beings when we are asleep. And for those of us who are adults, where is the child that we were? That person no longer exists. So we shouldn’t worry about not existing. For me, like many others, it is pain and suffering we are frightened of. It’s the prospect of being helpless and dependent.
My neighbor died last week. She lived in this building since 1955 and died in her nineties. She was terrific, intelligent, and a renter. She traveled the world and was a museum docent up until the week she died. She had a good death. She fell ill and died within a week. I admired her.
I so agree with the sentiment “better to live one day as a tiger than a life as a sheep.” Our approach to death is so culturally conditioned. Suicide is seen as a bad thing, but to die by one’s own hand for a Samurai is the culmination of a life well lived.
Understanding time is a non-renewable resource is something that comes to most of us only later in life, and along with that, if you’re lucky, comes appreciation and kindness.
Christopher, thank you for your kind and thoughtful response to this post.
I have read the philosphers, ancient and modern, you mention and I think they influenced my post in the ways you highlight, although this was quite unconscious (raising another aspect of “who am I?” since at the time I wasn’t able to consciously call to mind the relevant names and phrases).
Another man of deep philosophy I could mention here is Albus Dumbledore. It might seem trite and risible to some people, but I was very moved by “his” statement
Adventures are perilous and terrifying, and have no guarantee of safety or success, but with courage we may choose to embark upon them.
de Boton’s “Life is a holiday from non-existence” reminds me of Richard Dawkins’s image of an immense yardstick of time, with a tiny spotlight inching slowly along it, and what a miracle it is to find ourselves in that light.
Your comments also bring to the foreground the notion that many of us fear dying, rather than death, and this is something we may be able to have some control over, even if it is only in our attitude towards that inevitable moment.
Thank you again for your comments.