The human race has changed immensely over the years. As time as gone on we have moved out of our caves, begun building our own homes and creating tools to shape our lives and make it easier. As it is, now we can more or less shape our lives as we see fit.
One of the biggest changes that has happened to us is the increase of human longevity.
Back in ye olden times, the human life expectancy was only 40-50 years on average. As time went on, technology grew more advanced and medical knowledge grew. Now we’ve come to a point where a life expectancy of 80 – 90 is quite normal. In fact, some go well beyond that.
Because our longevity has changed, our behaviour compared to the past has changed as well. People are getting married later in life, people try to plan for the future, people try and think carefully about major decisions, some people are even having children much later in life then we did before. These are all changes that weren’t so commonplace back in ye olden days.
So what would happen if our longevity were to go further? We can live for 100 years. What happens if/when we can live to be 500 or 1000 years old?
I would imagine that our physiology would change; maybe we would have cybernetic implants, like how in Bicentennial Man they had artificial organs. Maybe we would have nano-bots in our bodies, which either replaced or helped our biological systems, as we got older. Or maybe by that time we will have reached a level of biological engineering so advanced that we would simply inject ourselves with a kind of anti-aging vaccine that rejuvenated our bodies and minds to the point of youth.
Or maybe we would go full Arthur C. Clarke mode, and just upload our minds to robot bodies when our real bodies started to fail us.
Then of course, there is the cultural aspects of it all. We’re already having children and getting married at a later age. Who knows, maybe getting married at 50 or 100 would become the norm. We might not be in such a rush to do things anymore and allocate more time to certain special things. We could also do a lot of stuff which would have previously have been impossible, like space travel. At our current level of technology, it would take years for astronauts to reach the edge of our solar system. That’s one of the many deterrents to traveling in space, time. But if we could live for 500 years, people would probably more open to the idea of just spending years, perhaps decades, in the void. ‘I’m only 50, I’ve got years ahead of me, let’s explore space. I’ll only be 220 when I get back to Earth.’
Of course, there is the worry of overpopulation. We already have too many humans on the Earth, what with more people living longer. If we can live to be 500, there would be too many people and not enough resources. But then again, since we are living for so long, we might not want to have as many children anymore. After all, the reason we reproduce is because we want to perpetuate the species. But if we’re living for so long that drive might die down too. Who knows?
Look, I’m no scientist, I’m not even a philosopher, I’m just someone who was thinking about this and decided to put their thoughts here in writing, because I thought it was interesting and wanted to share it.
Anyway. that’s it for this post. Hope you liked it and I hope you have a nice day ahead.
Alternative Yoga 