How long should we live?

[SpoiledPrincess]

In this life, I don't even want to think there's an afterlife where your reward or punishment rests on just a few short years.

 

[dong20]

There's a school of thought that the immortal would almost certainly be, or become impotent/unable to enjoy sex, bear that in mind when considering.

 

[Ethyl]

In this life, I don't even want to think there's an afterlife where your reward or punishment rests on just a few short years.

I can understand that but if we found a way to halt the aging process then the only way to die would be to inflict it on ourselves or ask someone to do it for us.

There's a school of thought that the immortal would almost certainly be, or become impotent/unable to enjoy sex, bear that in mind when considering.

I couldn't enroll in that school. I'd flunk. :biggrin1:

 

[wldhoney]

My first reaction is to agree with Hazelgod.

Pro: Imagining all the beauty that could be seen, created, and protected.
Con: Imagining all the damage we could do if we lived longer than 80+ years. Look at all the damage we do now in such a relatively short life span.

Hopefully we would become wiser, but we would need to slow way down on our birth rate..

I would go for as long as I could as long as I was healthy and self-sufficient and had all my faculties.

 

[D_Bob_Crotchitch]

I would not want to live on this earth forever. It is filled with too much sadness, pain, and evil. Humans don't seem to be getting better. They seem to be getting worse. We can't even get along on the internet much less in real life.

 

[Ethyl]

Hopefully we would become wiser, but we would need to slow way down on our birth rate..
.

Yes, unless we found a way to make other planets habitable for humans soon. I would also worry about arbitrary laws created to prevent x amount of pregnancies or end them.

I would not want to live on this earth forever. It is filled with too much sadness, pain, and evil. Humans don't seem to be getting better. They seem to be getting worse. We can't even get along on the internet much less in real life.

It's also filled with beauty and life in all forms and it's impossible to see, experience and share all of it in an average lifespan. That is what makes me wish for a few more years.

 

[dong20]

Con: Imagining all the damage we could do if we lived longer than 80+ years. Look at all the damage we do now in such a relatively short life span.

Alternatively, one side effect of longevity may be that our shit would catch up with us. Shit that our present shorter life spans currently leave for someone else. Man made climate change being a handy example.

That realisation may force a rethink of our strategies for life. I know, I'm just trying to be optimistic, for once.

 

[No_Strings]

Alternatively, one side effect of longevity may be that our shit would catch up with us. Shit that our present shorter life spans currently leave for someone else. Man made climate change being a handy example.

Man cannot change earths' climate - we merely make it happen a little faster, or a little slower, than the ongoing cycle would anyway.

 

[Ethyl]

Alternatively, one side effect of longevity may be that our shit would catch up with us. Shit that our present shorter life spans currently leave for someone else. Man made climate change being a handy example.

That realisation may force a rethink of our strategies for life. I know, I'm just trying to be optimistic, for once.

True karma? The ability to experience the consequences for our actions, be they positive or negative? That's both optimistic and realistic in my book.

 

[dong20]

Man cannot change earths' climate - we merely make it happen a little faster, or a little slower, than the ongoing cycle would anyway.

Well that's your opinion, others have a different one. Anyway, isn't speeding or slowing a natural change, changing it?

But, my point was that if one lived 250 years or more, a little faster may be enough.

 

[Male Bonding etc]

But maybe if we lived longer we might accumulate more wisdom and not be so destructive?

Maybe, if humanity could truely learn forgiveness.

Could you imagine the prisoners of the WW2 or the Jews of th Holocaust living for all time, never forgiving the attrosities of mankind?

Death isnt perhaps a bad thing in the sense that with it the past may be allowed to be just that, the past.

Until I became bored of living.

Hopefully we would become wiser, but we would need to slow way down on our birth rate..

I would go for as long as I could as long as I was healthy and self-sufficient and had all my faculties.

I started expecting to live to be 100 when I was a child. Knowing or believing that one is going to live with the consequences of our actions does tend to make one more "conservative" about those actions.

Now, with increases in life expectancy, I'm thinking I'll live to be at least 120, maybe more, can't quite hope for 200 yet. That does increase the sense that we are going to have to live with our own mess; so, we'd better avoid making a bigger mess than we have to.

Regarding fewer children or slowing the birth rate down, I continue to believe I will someday have a child or two with a woman I love, and once that child is (or those children are) secure and ready for the challenges, adopt. To explain my rationale would probably require a separate thread. Let me just say that I didn't "go forth and populate" as soon as I was physically able to do so. In fact I've waited quite a few years. There is a small chance that sperm I donated became a child, but I think of that potential child as being on someone else's populating count.

There truly are some people for whom life becomes such a burden or from whom so much negativity emanates that we may qualify (in our minds) who should live long and who should die young. However, I would hope that human and humane systems would help all of us truly be wiser and happier if we are going to live longer.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

My sense for some months now is that I'd like to live to be ninety.
I'm assuming that I retain my clarity of mind and that I don't go too far downhill until very near the end ... as happens with most animals in the natural state.
And then I would have the conscious knowledge that I was passing through my final weeks or months, that the book was reaching conclusion. I wouldn't want to pass through that stage mired in confusion or disorientation ... I want to be fully 'awake' until the last few minutes or even seconds.

 

[dong20]

My sense for some months now is that I'd like to live to be ninety.

I'm not sure an 'arbitrary' number is useful, the thought that quantity cannot easily compensate for quality comes to mind. If one could choose a fixed span; guaranteed yet not extendable, that may be enough for some. Though human nature being what it is, I imagine the reality may appear somewhat 'Logan's Run' when applied to a happy, healthy and productive 89 year old Sr Rubirosa. :smile:

 

[D_Bob_Crotchitch]

I started noticing what mattered at a young age. I made huge changes in my life, and I've had a blast. I don't think it would be the same if I lived past 100. When I was little, I had two great-great aunts both past 105. They were in okay health, and sound mind. Both of them were tired, and ready to go.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

I'm not sure an 'arbitrary' number is useful, the thought that quantity cannot easily compensate for quality comes to mind. If one could choose a fixed span; guaranteed yet not extendable, that may be enough for some. Though human nature being what it is, I imagine the reality may appear somewhat 'Logan's Run' when applied to a happy, healthy and productive 89 year old Sr Rubirosa. :smile:

Not only of dubious use but of dubious likelihood. But the thread seems to ask for a number.
Yes, it would be a Logan's Run situation. I would hate to know that I was going to die by a certain date. It would be too easy to regret every passing day on the conveyor belt ... a guarantee that our extended years would be full of misery.
It reminds me of something a veteran of the Hungarian Revolution of 1957 recently told me. One young rebel, about 14 at the time of the trouble, if I remember, was sentenced to death, but in light of his youth, the court 'compassionately' ordained that the sentence be carried out only on his 18th birthday. The veteran cited this as proof of the barbarity of the system -- forcing that lad to live through all of those intervening days, knowing with each setting of the sun that his extinction was just that much closer.
(Actually, dong, until I looked up Logan's Run just now, I didn't know the premise of the novel. One of those odd omissions. Thank you for that.)

 

[whatireallywant]

For me it would depend on my health and also my financial situation. I would like a long life but have a great fear of being in poverty (and my job situation doesn't help matters any!)

There are so many things I want to do and experience. I would like to have the time (and financial resources for those things that require that) to do and experience those things.

And I've never wanted children, so I won't be contributing to the overpopulation if the lifespan is extended... :smile:

 

[Not_Punny]

I believe that in a hundred years or so, it will be illegal to die. Tax reasons.

 

[camper joe]

To borrow a line from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, ''A lady knows when to leave a room''. Hope the same can be said for the same for the more masculine sex.

 

[Not_Punny]

However, I would hope that human and humane systems would help all of us truly be wiser and happier if we are going to live longer.

Beautiful posting, male bonding.

I for one was (a) totally brain dead until I was 25 years old, and (b) a selfish idiot until I became a parent. (Thankfully, not everyone needs to be "cured" by age and parenthood!)

 

[Male Bonding etc]

I'm not sure an 'arbitrary' number is useful, the thought that quantity cannot easily compensate for quality comes to mind.

This is something of a literal "deadline," isn't it? But really, without deadlines many of us never get down to the tasks we need to do. I think it absolutely IS about the quality of life, and the "arbitrary" number is not so important as the way it focuses our attention on what we need to do and can do.

Beautiful posting, male bonding.

I for one was (a) totally brain dead until I was 25 years old, and (b) a selfish idiot until I became a parent. (Thankfully, not everyone needs to be "cured" by age and parenthood!)

Thanks, HotMilF. It is nice to know one is read and appreciated occasionally. Most of us do seem to THINK we're "grown up" in our teens, but really do need until our mid to late twenties to begin seeing beyond our own egocentric worlds. Becoming a parent or working with children does seem to help broaden our world view.