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On the evening of April 1, Barbara Walters hosted an ABC News Special called Live to 150, Can You Do It? The show included interviews of leading researchers looking for ways to prolong life. A couple of drug researchers from Boston stated they believe that resveratrol, a substance in red wine, can prevent common aging diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and diabetes. Coupling this with new technology for growing organs from stem cells like spare parts of a car, we might have found the modern day version of the “Fountain of Youth” that Juan Ponce de Leon was supposedly looking for.
While watching the special, my question was “Why would someone want to live to be 150?” In 2002, the average life expectancy for a newborn in the United States was 77 years. If these researchers are correct, that life span could double. The follow-up question is “Will more years be added on as one becomes elderly or will they be spread out over an entire life?” If they’re added as one becomes elderly that would imply that a person will get new spare parts as old ones wear out. People will become physically stuck in their earliest age of disintegration while continuing to age psychologically, spiritually, and mentally.
The other possibility is that the added 75 years are spread over a person’s life. Could adolescence last 20 years? With replacement parts, would a woman’s childbearing years last 70 years? Would menopause take twice as long? Do most people REALLY want to spend twice as long at each stage of their life as they do now? I doubt it.
Erik Erickson proposed that humans go through stages of development. The last one is late adulthood/elderly when psychological conflicts revolve around integrity vs. despair. Those who have integrity feel complete, content, and satisfied with their lives, and are more serene as they face the end. Their later years can be the best ever, as exemplified by the centenarians on the show. Those who have despair, however, feel they have made too many wrong decisions and have no remaining opportunities to change their lives. Bitterness, defeat, and hopelessness consume them, and they find it very hard to accept death.
Modern technology allows, and sometimes forces, people to live longer. Advances in medicine blur the line between living and dying. The addition of spare body parts and youth-maintaining miracle drugs blurs that line even more. How will someone worn out emotionally and spiritually, even if not physically, be able to look forward to when he/she can “let go” and leave this world?
In our search for immortality, there is little recognition that death has an important role: it is a part of life; life needs death. We cannot relieve our existential anxiety of death by living longer. The anxiety will only last longer. Death will still happen. Our quest should be to create more integrity in our lives so when we face our inevitable death, its sting is gone.
I’d like to know what you think about living to 150. Leave me a comment below.
