The Future of Aging

Change is the constant of sentience.

I'm staring down the barrel of another birthday and, although it's not one of the 'big ones', for some reason I find that I am acutely aware of aging. Perhaps it's because my hair started to go gray en masse this past year. Perhaps it's the unsolicited invitation to a fertility clinic that I received a week ago, based (I presume) on nothing other than my age.

Yet, though I am faced with physical reminders of age, I don't feel old. I feel like there is so much that I haven't done, therefore I can't be getting old. I haven't been married, born children, or owned property, therefore I can't be getting old, right? Right? I know; I'm confounding physical age with a more-ambiguous trait that is the product of experience. [Insert various platitudes on 'age is a state of mind'.] But physical aging creepeth up on me and perhaps this makes for good future-fodder for the blog...

A seemingly-unassailable position of many futurists/transhumanists is that aging is a bad thing, or, at least, that it is an obstacle to be overcome. Aging, you see, is the road to death. One transhumanist says this of aging and death...

"So we tell ourselves curing aging will cause too many problems and that aging has a lot of natural beauty to it and creates a lot of meaning and that all of that is good. But I think there is one other reason. Imagine we suddenly discover we can cure aging. It’s simple, cheap, universal, and we manage to quickly adapt society to deal with an undying population. All of the impacts described by bioconservatives don’t exist, anti-aging is a glorious and beautiful time and everyone lives for centuries.

The cost is the realization that every death was preventable. That billions of people have been, in effect, tortured for decades by nature and because we could not change it we described it as beautiful and honorable. The crisis in our collective psyche would be something of unparalleled magnitude. Our species is a master at making virtue of necessity, but what becomes of our virtue when that necessity ceases to be? Does it cease as well?"

When I pause to reflect on myself, I see a heavily-modified consciousness walking around in a comfortably-owned body. The heavily-modified consciousness is a topic for another day, but the comfortably-owned body is worth discussing. Certainly that body is not perfect. It's probably quite far from anyone's definition of perfect. Knowing this, I might ask myself - Why haven't I done more to change it? Why haven't I pushed harder to lose those extra pounds? Why have I accepted the damage that has accumulated over time?

Munkittrick's question was 'Why do we accept aging?', but I do not think that the answer is as 'We accept it because we have no choice.' Certainly there are people who fight it every step of the way, with diet and exercise and (sigh) surgery. The primary objection to aging seems to be to the deterioration of the physical body and the reduction of its capabilities, yet there is a large portion of our society that is all-too-willing to engage in activities that prematurely or unnecessarily damage the body, or who at least seem unwilling to take proper care of their bodies. (That whole diet and exercise thing?) It's like we're inviting aging, and challenging it to ravish us. Do we do this because we're faced with inevitable death, and happiness can only be found in embracing, nay hastening, that outcome? I don't think so.

Age also marks various degrees of status, and life seems to be a race to get to that pinnacle age/status, followed by a prolonged battle to stay there. Evolutionary biologists will tell you that our genes are programmed to seek prime reproductive material, and that we respond to signs of physical age accordingly. Presumably this is also the source of all our efforts to camouflage our physical age. So what happens as we become better and better at hiding those signs of age? And what happens as physical age becomes further-dissociated from one's ability to reproduce? What status/traits will replace physical age as the primary determinant of desirability, and how will they be signaled? [Here I pause for extensive thought on what and how I am/should be signaling with respect to reproduction and the fact that, while I have relationship aspirations, I don't have an overwhelming desire to bear children and would be perfectly happy not doing so. Should I quit coloring my hair and display the markings of age with pride, or continue to engage in the youth-is-beauty driven attempts to 'stay young'? My introspection is messy; this post has been heavily-edited to remove most traces of it.]

It may take quite a bit of time before we evolve past our (genetic?) reaction to the physical signs of aging. In the meantime, we'll continue to fight the physical process of aging with science and technology. As we do so, we must not ignore the pressing social issues of aging that we are currently faced with, such as care and quality of life, and the right to die. We can't ignore the fact that a great many people live lives that they wouldn't necessarily want to prolong. We should strive to have a firm handle on these ethical issues before we are gifted with greatly-extended lifespans. (Fodder for future posts.)

Having managed to find my soapbox again, it's probably time to stop writing, but after spending several hours thinking about how I felt about aging, I find that I am not so troubled by my gray hair. I believe in what I've done with my life so far, and I do believe in the platitudes that say that age is a state of mind.

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."