It's A Circle Of Life (Death)?
Of the poll items chosen for the sake of revealing respondents' primary philosophical attitude toward death (items 1, 2, and 3), Item 1 was the second most frequently chosen. Figure 2 shows the distribution of how other poll items were selected among those respondents of the representative 116 who chose Item 1 ("Death is natural. Death is as much a part of life as being born is. Therefore, it is something to be respected and not necessarily fought.").
A somewhat intriguing finding was that the majority of persons who indicated that they saw death as a "natural" and possibly even desirable event were nonetheless cognizant of the prospect of effective longevity medicine being developed within the next few decades. 15 out of 25 respondents who chose Item 1 also chose Item 9 ("I do not consider it farfetched to imagine that someone alive today might live to be 200 years or older in reasonable health.").
At least in the context of respondents to this poll, it seems that a belief that death is "natural" (and not necessarily an outrage or even a particularly bad thing) does not necessarily preclude at least some degree of optimism regarding the progress of longevity medicine in coming decades. On the other hand, however, it could very well be that acknowledging the likelihood of expanding lifespans does not necessarily represent optimism at all, but simply a judgement regarding the apparent rate of medical progress into the near future.
Either way, it is well worth examining some of the potential reasons behind the popularity of Item 1. Must anything in the world be respected simply because it is "natural"? It seems that the only rational answer to this question must be a resounding "no" -- after all, very few humans would even think of declining to treat fatal cancer or AIDS on the basis of either of these conditions being "natural".
Nevertheless, it seems that plenty of people still see death (perhaps, in particular, age-related death) as a special part of some great cosmic cycle of emergence and renewal. The story of birth, growth, decline, and death is a powerful one, and one that (at least for all of human history up until now) has united every being ever to experience consciousness. Death as a "natural" event is not, then, romanticized merely because it is natural, but because it is perceived to be of some objective value -- for many, it serves as a poetic symbol of each person's place in the grand scheme of all life.
Among longevity advocates, some would suggest that the romanticization of death is simply a kind of rationalization, an existential palliative of sorts. That perhaps some of the power in the "story of death" is rooted primarily in a deep sense that nothing can be done about it -- after all, so far, nothing tangible has been done about it. To quote Dr. Aubrey de Grey,
At root, we all know aging is really horrible, whether for us or for our loved ones, but we have also grown up in the rather firm knowledge that it is immutable. And when one is faced with a fate that is both horrible and immutable, it makes abundant sense to find some way -- any way, however illogical -- to put it out of one's mind and make the best of what time one has left, rather than spend that time preoccupied with something one cannot affect.
The school of thought that seeks to define the "death is natural, we need to accept it" attitude as evidence of a "pro-aging trance" asserts that if only people could be "awakened" from this trance they would realize how horrible death was and would start making more active attempts to promote research into allowing people to escape it for as long as possible. The logic of this school of thought is quite straightforward: why should we be comfortable with death due to aging when we are loudly and emphatically uncomfortable with death due to war or famine or epidemic?
The fact that so many people are comfortable with age-related death as opposed to death through other means seems to indicate that there is something about age-related death that allows cognitive compartmentalization. This "something", as de Grey notes above, is probably the fact that age-related death has indeed been "horrible and immutable" all throughout human history so far. It makes psychological sense to come to terms with something and perhaps even weave it into one's default worldview as a net positive if there is truly nothing a person can do about it, but as biotechnology advances, humanity is going to be faced with more and more questions regarding whether a given phenomenon ought to be intervened in as our capacities increase.
Certainly, we ought not to assume that any particular thing ought to be changed simply because it can be changed. However, when it comes to matters of literal life and death, one would think that the ethically consistent position would be the one that seeks to promote and preserve the wanted, valued, individual lives of our fellow persons. It is one thing to assert that certain evolved properties of human existence ought not to be meddled with, however, it is quite another to assert that the "natural" -- the unconsciously evolved -- ought to be granted special privelege over the invented and chosen. In developing a coherent set of future ethics, it seems that an ever-improving ability to make reasonable judgements regarding the appropriateness of particular interventions into default states is critical.
Given the current (nascent) state of true longevity research, it remains to be seen whether tangible advances in life extension medicine will result in the depopularization of the "death is natural" argument. Either people will decide that their sense of identity requires the "aging into death" story lest they risk profound existential confusion, or they will concede that, now that we can actually "do something" about aging, they're not actually all that keen on undergoing senescence.
From the standpoint of longevity advocacy, the second outcome is certainly the preferred one -- for the same reason that most of us would consider it better for a friend contemplating suicide to determine that life is worth living after all and not go through with the act of killing himself. When a person has spent enough time in the healthy life extension community, it is quite likely that even poetic-sounding arguments like "death is natural, it's part of the circle of life" will start to sound indistinguishable from statements like, "I have a death wish for myself and everyone else in the world".
6 comments:
I think it's important not to get discouraged by negative attitudes. Every effort to solicit opinions about anti-aging technology reveals that the "anti-aging trance" -- the view that death by aging is "natural" and should not be resisted -- is very widespread. Yet very few people faced with the threat of imminent death, even death from an aging-related medical condition, actually refuse whatever medical treatment is available to extend their lives.
Past behavior is always a better predictor of future behavior than verbal statements are.
I think what we have here is a fundamental disconnect between the reflexive rhetoric of fatalism fostered by millennia of religious belief, and the biological reality of the animal instinct to survive.
It would be very interesting to do the same survey in a society where most people are not religious (such as many European countries) and see if the results differed.
As a recent posting on Fight Aging pointed out, whenever any particular aging-related disorder moves into the realm of the potentially curable, people start to refer to it as "not part of the 'natural' aging process" -- so that they can take advantage of the new treatments becoming available while still clinging to their rhetorical stance of not resisting aging itself.
Very likely many, even most, of those who chose option 1 on your survey will still be alive 200 years from now. They may even have contrived some way to convince themselves that the technology they took advantage of to reach that age did not constitute "resisting aging".
How do you reconcile that there are many simple things that people could do that would prolong their lives, stop smoking, lose weight, eat properly, moderate exercise, wear seatbelts, and many of them refuse?
I think it isn't so much an "anti-aging trance", but rather an estimate that the "solution" to aging is so difficult and so far in the future and so outside their understanding that they need to think about more important and immediate things, like who to vote for on Idol.
I recommend reading a science fiction story, "the youth monopoly". It was about a huminoid race that could supply real immortality a decade at a time, and it worked for essentially all humanoid races. They would travel around the galaxy, set up shop, sell their life extension a decade at a time to the richest individuals until they ran out of money. After a millenia or so, they would move on, having extracted everything of value that the civilization had.
Even if we had effective anti-aging treatments, we still would die eventually from accident or disease (and perhaps from war or murder, if we can't learn how to prevent those).
So I'd guess there are many people who don't differentiate between death from aging and death from other causes -- they just figure we're all going to die someday, so it doesn't really matter how. (The same mindset seems to be what's going on with the people who don't wear their seatbelts, etc.)
Personally, I'd rather live a healthy and happy life for 100,000 years than be decrepit at 100, but I imagine there are a lot of folks who don't quantify it like that.
infidel: I am not personally discouraged by negative attitudes -- except to the extent that I think they can contribute toward the shaping of policy and research efforts. While individuals may indeed not tend to refuse lifesaving treatments for themselves or family members, a case must be made for the necessity of those treatments in light of the fact that research grants, money, and lab resources and such are critical for developing them. I just think that if more people could come to recognize the imperative to develop longevity medicine, new breakthroughs would arrive in time to help more people.
daedalus said: I think it isn't so much an "anti-aging trance", but rather an estimate that the "solution" to aging is so difficult and so far in the future and so outside their understanding that they need to think about more important and immediate things, like who to vote for on Idol.
That's a good point, but what you're describing is actually a component of this "trance" -- it's not all just an attempt at extistential placation, but also a kind of "eternally distracted" state that makes people less prone to thinking over the long term. I don't know to what extent not thinking about the long term has to do with a desire to "experience the moment fully" versus, say, a desire to deliberately avoid the uncomfortable conclusions such thought might entail, though.
abfh said: So I'd guess there are many people who don't differentiate between death from aging and death from other causes -- they just figure we're all going to die someday, so it doesn't really matter how. (
That reminds me of a conversation I had with my SO's brother-in-law last weekend -- he likes to (teasingly) give me a hard time when I talk about cryonics and cyborg limbs and all that, but this time he was going on about how he didn't see any reason to avoid tasty but nutritionally-void beverages (for instance) because we're all going to die anyway.
Personally I don't know where people get this idea that wanting to extend lives by intervening in aging damage is somehow intended to confer invulnerabilityL -- aging is only one potential cause of death, and indeed, regardless of how old or young or healthy any one of us is, there's still the chance for us to walk outside and get hit by a bus or something along those lines.
If a person is going to bother getting medical treatment at all, for any reason, how can they assert that it's silly to take other life-extending measures? I agree totally with the assertion (which I think came from Aubrey de Grey) that there's really no difference between saving lives and extending lives; the example he gave at the ethics conference I attended last year was that of the ethics of saving an old woman from drowning versus saving her from age-related death.
There really shouldn't be any philosophical difference between doing either of those things, and in general, the entire point of medicine is technically to permit life and health where it might otherwise not exist.
Post a Comment