The Troubles with Age

      There are certain ideas in science fiction which strike a chord in the popular imagination, and I believe the promise of immortality and prolonged life  is one of the dominant themes in many science fiction books. I am thinking in particular of Pamela Sargent's The Golden Space and my more recently read book by John Wyndham, The Trouble with Lichens. Both books are interesting in that they explore the social implications  of prolonged  life. Wyndham's book chronicles the accidental discovery of an anti-aging element found in a certain rare species of lichen, and how the scientists involved try to cope with the implications of a scarce antidote to aging. While Sargent's book proposes a technology that can reverse aging altogether, Wyndham offers a way to merely prolong life to 200 years. According to one of the central characters, Diana, this would mean giving people more time to mature socially and free themselves from the pressure to do things quickly without wisdom and experience, such as marry or raise a family. I think an interesting implication which Wyndham hints at is how prolonging life would potentially free both sexes to marry for companionship rather than simply to conform to social and biological pressures to marry while still young.

     I am personally not so optimistic that merely prolonging human life is going to solve the problems of existence or create a more enlightened or liberated society. I am reminded, for instance, of Arthur Clarke's prediction that satellite television would be a great educational tool that would help people learn and connect globally by the 2000s.  While part of this is true, I also notice how television is used to 'fill emptiness' or simply to take up leisure time that could be used more creatively. In a sense, technology can sometimes create huge amounts of space and time (whether air time or real time), leaving people with a void which they might tend to fill. And I see the same sort of thing happening with greater longevity. It's not that greater longevity automatically grants people more freedom. Rather, it simply creates more leisure time for people to contrive new ways of existence. And this in itself is not a guarantee that people will use the time for their benefit or for others’. The idea that a particular technology or scientific discovery could cure all root ills would seem a bit like wishful thinking.

From another perspective, I have to wonder as well what role illness and death can play in spiritual life. Would people be ready to accept the notion that death is not imminent, and may even be reversible? It sounds strange to say it, but it would be quite an adjustment for people to realize that the end of their life is not so near as they  had imagined. I believe this is so because people often identify with the finitude of their life, and tend to see life as a story which completes in some way. What would happen if the life story were not so completed so quickly? To me, people would need to stretch their own sense of what it means to be someone, especially when a prolonged life would mean more potential changes in one’s career, education, and so on. Identity would be seen more as something that is vulnerable to change rather than fixed into a certain prescribed social role for 30 some years.

      From a Buddhist view, suffering is not rooted in death itself, but rather in attachment to existence.  When a person overcomes such an attachment, there is neither birth nor death. I think in that way, greater lifespan would not necessarily reduce suffering, but might even prolong suffering, depending on how people might choose to live or treat themselves.