To a long life
By M on Monday 16 October 2006, 12:39 - Journal - Permalink
Every few days I think about longevity. Today I got an early start, as there was a piece on the radio saying that recent research had shown that many people would not want to live to 130, say, if technology permitted it. Several reasons had been given:
- people thought they would get bored
- some thought it was playing god and therefore wrong
- others worried about population growth
Conversely, those who did want to live a very long time had the following reasons:
- they still had several things they wanted to do
- they felt a duty to stay around until a family member reached adulthood
There are two separate cases of longevity in my thoughts: my own and my
parents'. That of mum and dad is probably easier to consider.
My principle thought is that as long as mum and dad are able to enjoy life, I
hope it continues - to whatever ridiculously high age is achievable. The crux
of the matter is the easily-overlooked proviso: as long as they enjoy
themselves. I am not sure they always do. Actually, I know that they have more
than their fair share of miserable days. I've mentioned more than once the most
obvious cause of misery for them: mum's belief that she has had a stranger
foisted upon her, and dad's having to suffer her denials of his place in her
life and her bitter aggression towards him. That's the misery, but there is
also a void.
Social service people have occasionally asked the question:
'Do you suffer from depression at all?'
Both mum and dad have denied this (dad usually says 'No. I'm an optimist') but
I am not so sure. They both sit around for hours with their heads down. They
generally have little to look forward to (which is why dad's enthusiasm for day
care is such a blessing). Without our visits, and without the cats to keep them
engaged, I sense they would spiral towards an uncommunicative stupor.
So the conclusion is obvious: the family needs to take responsibility to ensure
that mum and dad enjoy life as much as possible. It is more than just 'being
nice', it is life-preserving. They need to have things to look forward to
without having to worry about them, they need social interaction that distracts
them from the deleterious aspects of their own relationship, and they need
intrinsic pleasures that they are no longer able to organise for themselves,
such as going out for tea.
As for myself, it is a different matter entirely. I have absolutely no belief
in life after death ('death is death' was once my stock contribution to any
discussion of afterworlds or reincarnation). Why I think it is a ridiculous
idea is something I enjoy talking about, but I shall show restraint and raise
only one question: why is it that people who claim to have had out-of-body
travel see the world they pass over with exactly the optical properties of
human binocular, three-primary vision? This seems a peculiar dependency on
transient biology for an immortal spirit to have!
Having no belief in matter-independent life does not compel one to want to live
forever. Quite the contrary; believing that death is absolute oblivion means
that it does not matter where or when one's own takes place other than to
consider its effects on other people. For myself, it matters not whether I die
before I finish this post or 100 years from now. However, I can see pros and
cons to both sides of the picture.
Long life would permit me to do the several things I still want to do, for
example:
- visit Venice and Florence, Antarctica, and several other places
- learn Japanese properly
- read (and write) great books
- understand my origins
- master the brush
But it would also bring problems that have already intimated themselves to
me. I think it was in Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' that the Comte de
Saint-Germain, in the person of Aglie who, having lived for many centuries,
laments that after two hundred years life becomes terribly depressing, as one
witnesses one's fellows repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Every
time I see us advocate technologies we cannot master, begin wars we cannot win,
excuse disasters that need not happen, I feel some affinity for the
Comte.
You see, I grew up in a post-war generation that implicitly believed that
things were always going to get better. Maybe that was always a silly idea and
the sooner I discard it the better, but I just cannot be quite that
disinterested. I reason that we are, or at least have been, in charge of things
on the face of this planet. That we have proved so incompetent is an argument
for our replacement with something more benign rather than an argument for
giving us a second, third or fourth chance to screw things up. Rather than
repeating mistakes, we steadily increase our capacity to commit even bigger
ones. And now that it seems we have recently lost control the picture has grown
still darker. The habitability of the planet is being reduced, our principles
for dealing with each other are being discarded, and our plans for the future
have already disappeared. I need a good reason to want to hang around - but
there doesn't seem to be one.
Comments
I know. I agree...well, with exceptions on the afterlife thing. The question of an afterlife, for me, is mostly emotional. Sometimes I hope this is it. Sometimes I hope this isn't it, especially since I like to talk to the dead, full well appreciating that they are, most likely, nonexistent in any sense. At any rate, despite loving to play with the idea of reincarnation, too, I'm fairly sure that anything that transcends death is not something of each individual, but something of All That Is, which we are incapable of recognizing and which is incapable of and disinterested in personally recognizing us. As for our individual lives, well, our lives are so enmeshed in being THIS HERE that it seems intellectually ridiculous to me that when our THIS individuality dies out HERE, it could possibly go on "somewhere else".
Fun, fun, fun to play around with hereafter and yet-again ideas, though.
I don't think our generation is the only one that has believed life will get better and better. I think this is common to most, if not all, generations, simply because we are a problem solving species. However, I completely agree that the evidence is in: This is merely a belief, not a reality. My personal way of handling this is to consider that we humans (and our by-products) are no more or less natural than anything else and, since 99% (or more, I think) of all species of life ever existant have extinguished, so will we, and there is no need for shame about this; there is, in fact, nothing we can do about it. Maybe we're the agent that will significantly alter the earth in preparation for yet another peculiar round of existence.
Aside from this, I am in empathy with your thoughts about the quality of your parents' lives. Your family's determination to provide them with a social reason to continue is the same thing, really, Mike, as what you've referred to (and what I've waved aside) as my "devotion" to my mother. Despite the fact that I am a happily entrenched loner, I know that most people, including my mother, aren't. While it's true that if I did not know her I probably wouldn't worry about providing the social climate she needs to continue her enjoyment of life (and her life), I do know her. My devotion, though, even though it is peculiar to her, isn't so much to her as it is to honoring her enjoyment of life and, in doing so, honoring life. Although I know that if I weren't here she would not have lived this long, she would, as do lots of left-alone elders, have failed to thrive, I can't say that would have been a tragedy. It just seems to me that, since I, personally, know her interest in life and her determination to go as far as she can in it, if she needs help in this (which she clearly has), why not help her? Even us staunch loners identify ourselves as such against (rather than with, as do most people) a social structure. Loner or not, social bonds are what define us, and, ultimately, what underlay whatever are our individual definitions of "enrichment", I think. If we can provide enough enrichment to interest someone, anyone, about whom we care to live another hour, another day, another week, another year, well, this seems to me an honorable pursuit.
Also, while intermittent stupor, I think, afflicts us all, however hardy we are, I agree that it is especially deadening (several meanings implied) for those who have passed the point of being able to entertain themselves. The catch is, many who are no longer able to do this want to be entertained enough to continue to look forward to living, wish they could do it themselves and often make confused and inevitably doomed efforts to try to do it themselves. They may even refuse help in this. I think, if the desire for entertainment is apparent (and, mind you, I use the word "entertainment" with the knowledge that, ultimately, all we do in life, including securing our survival, is entertainment), there is no reason why someone else shouldn't fan the flames.
In case you're wondering how it is I had all this on the tips of my fingers, I've been working diligently, as I can, on that "failure to thrive" post I mentioned a couple of months ago in my journal. It's taking me awhile. But you've nicely covered some of it here. If I'm at all smart about it, I'll not repeat the points you've made, as you've been eloquent, as usual.
Maybe your post should be called "Too Long a Life."
I'm not thinking so much of the philosophical questions concerning longevity, but of the state of humanity in modern civilization. At least in the US, vast numbers of elderly are staying alive, but it's a life that can only be lived on support systems of one sort or another. My husband and I have four very elderly parents, three of whom are alive now only because of the intervention of medical technology that was not available to their parents' generation.
Only one of these four could stay alone in a house for more than 12 hours, and he's the one who did not require intervention to keep him alive.
Between them, my two parents take 20 medications daily. My mother's sole task in life is keeping track of the pills, doses, times, renewals, etc. It gives her something to worry about, and something to give shape to the day.
Do they want to die? No.
Do I want to live to be in that condition? No.
Mike, it's hard to know where to start. I think our generation expected more from life and is now more pessimistic than our parents' generation was (Ok, I'm generalizing.) But I'd like to think we can make some small contributions and have small pleasures that make life worth living.