Life tugs at the heartstrings like an amateur cellist. Plucking away with impunity, utterly heedless of the resulting disjunction.

The scientific world is promoting the potential of humanity to live to the ripe old age of 1,000 years, or more. The details of exactly how this would be achieved aren't being divulged in any meaningful detail. Eradication of so-called 'free radicals' has long been dangled as the most likely option. I can't help wondering what the point would be of elongating human existence to this extent. We spend 20% of our lives reaching a physical peak, and roll slowly downhill everafter. Do we really want to extend the period of physical degradation over a number of centuries? Do we really want to work for hundreds of years just to build up sufficient retirement income? Do we really want to have to deal with the inevitable population control issues that would arise if we lived only 10 years longer than we already do?

I'm reading a book at the moment that takes a novel (no pun intended) approach to these matters. In Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, human beings are made almost immortal through a process of genetic 'rejuvenation', an ingenious medical process which winds your genetic structure back to that of a teenager. The potential issues of sinility are circumvented by cybernetic nano-technology. Chiefly the ability to back-up memories and store them outside your own mind. Unfortunately, the population issue is side-stepped altogether by the assumption that human beings are able to inhabit a number of suitable planets.

Assuming that all of the above is the stuff of sci-fi dreaming, we're left with the inevitable reality that we just cannot cope with the possibility of living for an extended or indefinite period of time. The fact that we are technologically and scientifically incapable of providing such a service anyway is most likely only a temporary boon. Sooner or later the hurdle will be overcome.

Of course, longer life is most likely going to be heavily caveated. You get one body, and at the moment, some people are so able to heedlessly abuse it that their primary functions are failing in their thirties. If you want to live forever, you've got to make some changes. No more drink, no more drugs, no more extreme sports or excessive stresses on your heart etc. Anything outside the box will reduce longevity. So people have to ask themselves what their life is worth. It's a fundamental question of how much you value your time. Are a few more years worth the price of leading a life like a listless automaton? What about a hundred? A thousand? Could you bear to live for millennium after monotonous millennium clinging to life as though life itself were the most precious commodity available?

Perhaps it can be argued that there is value in such a life. On the assumption that, eventually, physical restraints can be overcome by future medical or technological discoveries, then it might be worth hanging on for the possibility. But there is of course the chance that such advances would not be forthcoming.

And so I am convinced that life is better lived with every intensity one can sensibly afford. Cram your life with everything you can get from the world with the time you've reconciled yourself to having available. It's not worth, in my opinion, living life in the hope that you can stretch your existence long enough to see in an age where your personal physical responsibilities diminish. It might never happen. I certainly don't expect it to happen in my lifetime, however diligent I might endeavour to be.

Which is a shame. I would dearly love to live in an age some hundreds of years from now. I would kill for the chance to see what we've become, what we've discovered, and how we have learned to live. Not through some fanciful need to manifest imaginings of societal perfection, but through genuine curiosity.

I was born in the wrong century, I think. Stubby, untempered fingers twang at the cello strings. While somewhere in my mind I think I recognise the music the cellist is trying to play, something about the poignant, bassy notes just isn't right.

0 message(s) of denial

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