We do not really want to live long
July 27th, 2006A decreasing life expectancy
Recent studies (although fortunately controversial) in the US and France show that life expectancy could soon be decreasing because of the obesity and diabetes ‘epidemic’, chemical poisoning and other lifestyle-induced effects. Hard to believe when everybody has always told us that we would live longer and longer. In a recent radio broadcast (see [1]), agricultural engineer and whistle blower Claude Aubert provides the following explanation. Life expectancy is an instant picture of the current rates of death at each age. The rate of death for a given age is the proportion of people who died at this age this year. It means that the people who make the death rates for older ages are today’s old people. As infant mortality is drastically low in western countries, older age death rates have a lot of influence on life expectancy.
What is special about today’s old people ? They were born at a time child mortality was still high: only stronger children grew into the little old people who die now at age 80. These people majoritarily lived in rural areas. They ate healthy food, with no pesticides and little chemical fertilizers, less fat and meat, way less sugar and sweets. They walked to school. They rode their bike to work. They had no TV to eat peanut butter in front of. Their jobs were tough but less stressful.
So in an ideal way, our grandparents led the perfect lives most eco-freaks currently advocate. And they benefited from the huge medical progress of the second half of the XXth century, exactly at the time they were growing old and weak. Our generation grew with a completely different lifestyle: urbanized, motorized, overfed, chemicalized. We are obese, diabetic, smoking, stressed out. It seems plausible that we may on average live shorter than our grandparents, and our health may degrade earlier.
I find it a rather distressing thought. I took it for granted that I could reasonably expect to be in good health up to 70, and to live until 80. Now I have to admit that my health will probably decline by the time I am 50, with probably a cancer or a heart attack before I am 60. I resent this, and I have the feeling that we all do. But why ?
Why do I want to live longer ?
Why does it bother me to know I have probably reached my half-life ? It still leaves me with twenty or thirty years to go. If I look back, twenty years ago was a very long time ago, so why do I care ? And how would I feel if I had only ten years left ? One year ? One month ? One day ?
I believe there are many excuses, but only one reason. The most frequent excuses are: fear of pain, hope of better moments ahead, or empathy for the loved ones left behind. All these excuses can be easily brushed aside:
- fear of pain: I still would not want do die even with painless means
- hope of better moments ahead: can I not be content with whatever good moments I have already had ? How can I be so sure that what lies ahead is better rather than worse ?
- empathy for the loved ones left behind: thoughtful, but I probably would not mind anymore once I am dead. Life must go on anyway.
The only real reason behind all these excuses is an immediate, archaic, animal fear of death, the survival instinct. Early humans would not have made it through tough times if this instinct had not been hardwired into our species. But is this instinct still useful ? Now that we are nearly seven billion people on the planet, I doubt mankind really needs me.
Once I have dismissed the false excuses for what they are, I have to fight the instinct. If I can do it and come to terms with the possibility of dying today, then all the rest of my life is a gift, not a due.
Proof that we do not really want to live long
I made up this interesting parable the other day: imagine you are on death row, awaiting your execution. You are thirty, married, with a 2-year-old kid. One morning, the executioner comes and says: ‘it is time’. As you lay your neck below the guillotine blade, and you shout that you are too young to die, a fairy appears.
She says she can grant you one last wish. You say ‘I am too young to die, I want to live until I am eighty.’ The fairy answers ‘I can grant you this wish, although I cannot stop the execution, otherwise I would violate federal law.’ And alakazam, with a swoosh of her magic wand, you are turned into an arthritic, white haired, half deaf elderly person, with fifty more years of memories (good and bad) … behind you. Then, just before the blade falls, you will say: ‘Thank you Fairy, my life has been long enough, I can die peacefully now’. Or more probably you will scream: ‘Wait! This is not what I m-” chook.
We do not really want to live long. We just never want to die now. Fight the instinct and savour the first day of the rest of your life - everyday.
[…] fact, this is probably the very same mechanism as in the survival instinct theorem: just as I do not really want to live long but I never want to die now, I do not really want to eat more - I just always want the next […]