Recent holiday possibly made everyone think about death.
Whether we’re satisfied with our lives or not, whether we believe in
supernatural beings like God, we all consider it at some point. But why do we
do it? Because we all have to die at
some point, don’t we?
Well, I do not think so. I have been thinking about this
topic many times before and when I saw that two of my favorite Youtube channels
made videos about it I could not stop myself from watching it. Even though I
was at work. At a meeting.
The issue is important. Research on longevity is not funded
sufficiently because people strongly believe that they have to die, they grew to be friends with the reaper. But
it doesn’t have to be like that. We live in an era which
allows us to move thousands of kilometers within hours, we managed to
land on the moon and successfully keep people alive on the orbit, we can genetically
modify mosquitoes not to transfer
disease, and finally - we invented a tool that allows for gene modification in humans. We
have to use our knowledge and
resources to treat the most dangerous disease there is – ageing.
Share your thoughts. Why do you think people believe that
ageing is natural? Why do you think people accept it? What arguments can be
used for and against research on longevity?
Bonus:
Comments
Personally, I think that aging is not one of the worst ways to go for ourselves, but it causes pain to people who are close. It's really sad to watch how body and mind of our dearest ones fail over time and that we can't really do anything about it.
For now, there is no other way than just to accept it - it's just inevitable.
I'm all in when it comes to researching the subject, since it's just natural for the human race to evolve and get better in all kind of things, but we can read some sci-fi books about what may happen because of that knowledge. The one book I can really recommend about this topic is "Future" by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
There are probably many arguments for and against further work and research on longevity just like with any other invention. Knowing the ways of our civilisation only the handful 1% would enjoy the opportunity of living the long life, while others, well someone has to work and die to provide the means of amassing precious treasures of the few. I for one don't care whether I live forever or die tomorrow, to be honest I would prefer the latter, because death is a part of a adventure that life is and I wouldn't like to miss it.
Of course, there is a problem of overpopulation - if people won't die, population will grow much faster. Countries such as India, Uganda, Congo, etc. still have growing populations due to a higher number of children being born surviving through their younger more susceptible years.
I don't believe in the money perspective just because rich people would want to live forever as well and I haven't heard about any immortal billionaires.
Thanks for the comment
Generally, I agree that we should look for a way to stop ageing, diseases and death. The purpose of any life form on Earth is... living. That's why I think trying to lenghten the life of a human is a natural result of progress people made in the field of medicine.
Now a days, our bodies are programmed to work like... 70 - 120 ages. But earlier this time was shorter. Why? Because people don't care about their bodies because they don't know the technology (I mean medicine etc).
If we care about our bodies we live longer. If we don't smoke, our lungs will be healthier, if we will be fit, our heart will work longer. But we can care about our body whole life and we will be dead, but later (optimistic, huh?).
From the psychological point of view, long of life shouldn't be infinitive. Why? Because we would be tired of living. Being dead is natural. We just have to learn how to spend our time the best we can.
So far it hasn't been a problem we've had to tackle with, but one day we might have to. How long is too long? What if at some point a person grown weary of this whole living malarkey? Do we handle it as we do people with depression? Or do we consider such a person an euthanasia candidate? What if a person decides, that it's seen to much death, to much war, suffered to much trauma to process? None of these cases is new. We've seen this in the pass with war combatants unable to return to normal life. Back then we tried to help them since they were mostly 30 year old men, with most of their lives still ahead of them. But how will we treat a 300 year old person with the same condition?
*too much
*too much
*are new
*in the past
Great choice of channels, kurzgesagt and cgp grey are my fav.
But I wouldn't want to live forever. People's bodies become more and more worn down, weak, old. Even if mind still ok. Yes, I know some old people who can swim, run, who enjoy their lives. But their bodies are not young. And also people become tired with their lives, with a lot of stress, problems and so on. Maybe it's good that there's something like death.
Btw, the second video is so beautiful, I like the colors. Thank you for sharing.
On the other hand if we were able to do so sometimes woe would expand upon our projects, dreams or just simply thoughts.
Of course, it is not fine whan young person die because of any reason. It is not fine when somebody who is very important for us died. It is very hard to deal with such situation in our life but you now what? We have to. We can live 10-20 years longer because of humanity progress but we still can be killed by somebody or can died in car accident.
I think that opinion in this videos are a bit naive. Do you know who would have access to immoratality? Politicians or very rich people. I think that is nice that it is one aspect in our life which nobody can buy.
Another funny thing was a fact that author of first video was surprised why people try to understand death and they try to find some explanation of it e.g a faith or God.
>We live in an era which allows us to move thousands of kilometers within hours, we managed to land on the moon and successfully keep people alive on the orbit [...]
Yes, its all true, but consider the following:
-We remember having first phone with color screen
-Our parents remember having the first PC, or even some game console clone
-Our grandparents may remember the WW2, with glass syringes and propeller aircrafts.
In just as little as 70 years, we have managed to jump from wood, glass and steel, materials that were used for hundreds of years (plastic is quite new when you look at it from this point), to jet planes and space exploration.
In 1950-1955, life expectancy was about 65-67 years, now its about to hit 80. Now here is the real deal - We have hit the "natural barrier of life" and we can't extend it simply by raising life standard (i.e more healthcare, eradicating diseases etc.).
We have to come up with the solution made EXACTLY for the sake of extending human life, and that requires a lot more research than just "build more hospitals, give people healthy diets + some vaccines and don't send them to dig up coal with pickaxes", it requires some heavy genetic modifications, and that in turn requires public consent, both ethically and medically.
People don't want to talk about death because it was always a taboo- "How am i supposed to just close my eyes for the last time and never wake up? What's next? Is there anything else or what?". Death is something very abstract for every human being, as it constitutes the end of everything, of "us" and for the last thousands of years, we couldn't do anything to stop or avoid it, so we have nothing else to do, but accept it, that's why people consider it a natural process.