Longevity is not a desirable result of medical advancements. Instead, extending the human lifespan is the probably worst mistake that medical science have made for several reasons. First, humans should not tamper with nature. We have a life expectancy of around 60 years for a reason. Second, longevity comes at the end of a person's lifespan and not in the middle. Society has not managed to adapt to the new needs of the modern human-turtles. Third, medical measures have not moved with the times. Many of the health indicators are still based on data gleaned from my great-grandfathers' generation.
Human life expectancy is determined by the surroundings that a person is in. Where there is poor sanitation and malnutrition, people live shorter lives but while they are alive, they give birth to more babies. Where there is good sanitation and abundance of food, people live relatively longeer lives but they may decide to have fewer babies but instead invest more heavily on developing them. Such is the nature of natural selection.
What we have done now is to extend life years beyond accepted norms through medical intervention. Human lives are extended beyond their actual use by dates. Transplants, surgeries, vaccines and other interventionist measures have helped humans live longer. However, such a move runs counter to what nature intends for humans.
A certain amount of attrition along the human life cycle is necessary so that the larger Earth environment can be in equilibrium with the human population. What is happening now seems to be that the environment is strained because not enough deaths are happening. This is disastrous to Earth, especially when the increase in the life expectancy actually cause the older folks to strain on the younger folks, rather than make them contribute towards alleviating themselves as the burden on others.
This development is marked in the way society fails to move in tandem with increases in life spans. Even until now, with the average Singaporean gaining 15 years of life over the past generation, the Singaporean society has just increased retirement ages in baby steps from 55 to 57 to 60 to 62. Even then, raising the retirement ages have met with stiff resistance from both companies and workers alike.
One cannot really fault the companies for not willing to hire the overpaid, underperforming old fogies. The labour movement recently coined the term, "Cheap, fast and good," to spur the Singapore workforce to bounce back and become leaner, more productive and deliver higher quality products after emerging from the financial crisis. Think about it, how could we keep the old folks cheaply? We make them retire and then rehire them on contracts at reduced salaries. How can we make them fast? We move them down the job ladder because they should take on less responsibilities to justify their lower pay. Hopefully, they can keep up with the quick march that the companies demand of their younger colleagues in the lesser jobs. How can they be good? This is up to the management to decide and one litmus test is the renewal of their employment contracts.
Age increases have not been kind to the people, since the economically productive years have not risen in tandem with longevity. It is not a surprise, however, since the human body is designed to deteriorate and eventually self-destruct once it peaks at between 18 and 21 years of age. We have not managed to unlock the mystery to keep the body well-oiled and highly functional. We have only managed to stop the body from finding the self-destruct button fast enough. And perhaps we have also managed to find certain restart buttons to help the human body run a while longer on extra or borrowed time. And such times are often at the end of the human lifespan, where the body is no more than a mere vessel to keep the soul in.
Such a sorry state of development brings about certain questions that bear rethinking. For instance, have biologists barked up the wrong tree? Who insisted that longevity was the only acceptable measure of medical advances? What about higher weights, taller heights, higher blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, higher liver enzyme levels, higher blood lipid levels, lower bone densities, higher IQ, fewer neonatal illnesses, lower infant death rates, among other measures?
I have just thought about how I am considered way off the charts for certain measures when my indices are compared against charts applicable to my great-great-great-great-grandfather. I could be thin like my ancestor too. I can have my blood pressure, cholesterol and what not, all lowered till I meet the indices left behind by my ancestor. However, that would mean that I might have to spend 6 to 8 hours of my waking time exercising in a gym to simulate the living style of my agricultural ancestor. My great-great-great-great-grandfather probably spent his waking hours foraging or growing crops, moving around on his feet at all times. He may or may not get enough to eat - he probably did get enough to eat, so much so that he passed on a copy of the fat gene, which I inherited.
Take a step back and think about it. If I had to spend most of my waking hours exercising, then I would never have been able to push papers as a bureaucrat or lecture in an airconditioned classroom and sit down and exercise ONLY my brain to grade papers.
My lifestyle is entirely different from my ancestors'. How then can I be measured against those indices? And if I could, then how can I contribute anything at all to economic growth?
It probably does not take a rocket scientist to realise that there is a huge contradiction here but why do we still indulge ourselves that what we are looking at is the truth? It is not, because the earth is telling us that we have got it all messed up. And it is a big time mess up.
Honestly, I am not at all happy to have to pay for the collective human stupidity. I will eat all the meat I want, all the eggs I want and all the food I want. And since I get to have it, I will use all the medical services I need. Until one day the powers that be come to their senses, an ordinary man like me should just live out each day like it's his last day on earth.
Who knows? It just might be.
3 comments:
Each day on Earth is our last day but until the trials of age bear upon us, few recognize that and many of the aged deny it. Worldwide youth culture beginning in the Twentieth Century relegated death and dying to the dark shadows of their lives – if un-believed, it did not exist – denial in other words.
As you rightly demonstrated, modern medicine has aided and abetted this “cultural norm” in attempting to prolong life but at the same time we in the West face the prospect of overweight, high blood pressure, diabetes, and assorted heart issues. The increased lack of physical exercise, smoking, and high concentrations of sweets has not supported an healthy eld. It is as if the medical world is at odds with common practices by people it purports to serve.
The net result, as you again pointed out, is that people live longer, yes, but in an unhealthy state that reduces the overall quality of living for the individual. In doing so increased life spans under those conditions has burdened geopolitical entities almost to collapse. In this we agree.
Now that the issue is agreed upon, consider the potential for solutions: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World comes readily to mind as a humane means to “off grandma”. It you had an emotion reaction to that last sentence, then, upon reflection, you will readily understand the underlying issues here. Aging is not solely a cognitive issue, but deeply wrapped in human emotions – inconvenient perhaps - but pertinent all the same.
The issue of death has perplexed humanity early on as Neanderthal graves demonstrate. And as of yet, we have been unable to definitively answer the age-old question, “what happens after death?” Fear of the unknown resides amongst us still with the continuous quest for the fountain of youth yet underway and searching for the magic bullet to make us young; modern medicine being the most recent candidate.
Irrational, yes; but none the less real in our lives for all its irrationality. But back to solutions. We are faced with two (at least) potential alternatives: The slow education of the populace about death and dying as a natural part of living or draconian measures by those powerful entities who determine matters of life and death of its populace. For contrast I paint starkly: reality mostly is somewhere in the middle (I hope) of that extreme. Quality of life for the aged becomes the central issue.
Quality of life – what is it – how is it defined – who determines it? These are questions on which I would like to see additional discussion before potential solutions for the aging issue are explored.
Micheal,
What you have written is exactly what I am teaching for freshman writing. What is a life worth living? What is so fearful about death? To what extent will the terminally ill or physically disabled go just to stay alive?
No one has the answers (yet). For as long as religion and government do not keep their fingers out of natural evolution, humans will unlikely to live and die with minimal interference - a key criteria for quality of life in my opinion.
Yes, artificial interference with the processes of life is key here. And with the rampant fear of death resident in contemporary society, how to keep that interference at a minimum is the issue. I would think that the expanding population would eventually have a causal affect – but maybe too late. And then, the Earth as an ecosystem has corrected imbalances before. It could again. We are as transient at the dinosaurs…
Does that mean I abandon seeking a solution, no, but that’s reality.
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