If you could live to be a 1000 years of age, would YOU if you were in

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   gmwilliamsposted 9 years ago

   
   overall excellent condition?  There are geneticists including Dr. Aubrey De Grey who are asserting that in the future, humankind will probably live to a 1000 years of age.  Life expectancy has risen significantly within the past couple of decades with healthy people living to the century mark and beyond.  What will be the ethical ramifications, if any, if people living to be a 1000?

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      Credence2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That is an interesting question. Could one ever get bored living being virtually immortal? What Dr. DeGray fails to mention is the speculation and our current medical technology is far to feeble to make life spans like that possible, It is akin to the our engineering challanges found in builiding a 'warp drive' It is an interesting thought though.
      
      See Twilight Zone episode "Long live Walter Jameson"
      
      You find it interesting to note that the two documented oldest people on earth are both Black American women. With so much going against them, it is a mystery how they beat the odds. They are both back to back and my study of this area reveals that it more than just a coincidence. Some inherent genetic strength?

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      wildernessposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Implications for the institution of marriage are enormous; how many people would like to be married to the same person for that long?  Few can even make it 50 years anymore - 1,000 would seem completely impossible.
      
      The accumulation of wealth would see some major changes as well, I think.  When one lives that long it would seem that a huge majority of the world's wealth would be accumulated by only a relative handful, far beyond anything we see today.  Perhaps inheritance laws would change to prevent such fortunes.

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      A Thousand Wordsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The idea repulses me a bit. If anyone cares to watch it, there's an anime that was definitely before its time in dealing with this very subject. It's called Galaxy Express 999, if anyone's interested.
      
      Anyway, I would NOT enjoy living 1,000 years. I would not like to watch us destroy ourselves and the world around us for that long. I love the Earth and its beauty, but there is also great sadness and there are atrocities that pain me enough now, I couldn't stand to see them over a millennium. If it was guaranteed that man would progress, maybe. But with our track record...

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   Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years ago

   I wouldn't mind being One Thousand as long as I am not an old lady wearing navy blue/white lace collar, stooped over saying, "My stars!" all the time.

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   Kathryn L Hillposted 9 years ago

   Of course, marriage would become obsolete.

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      wildernessposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      No.  It is too valuable a method of raising children and providing financial stability to disappear.  It WOULD become time-limited, though.  No longer would even the pretense of being life-long be made.

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   janesixposted 9 years ago

   I think it would be ok to live a thousand years. Too much longer would probably get rather boring though.
   
   We would also have to worry about overpopulation. That's a thousand years of baby making. How many babies could each person have in that time? Hundreds?
   
   We would have to somehow enforce a limit on children.

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      wildernessposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Soylent Green in reverse.

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      gmwilliamsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If such becomes possible, society would institute draconian methods of limiting having children.  In fact, there will be a drastic reduction in having children as there won't be much need for a large replacement population like there would be when human mortality was on the average 75-85 years. As life expectancy increases, there will be a corresponding reduction of the replacement population i.e. having children.

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   janesixposted 9 years ago

   I think a thousand years would be exciting for those who enjoy learning, and for those who enjoy skydiving/extreme life. Or really creative people. But for an average person, I think things would quickly become a drudgery, especially if you weren't overly intelligent,and your job prospects limited.

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      gmwilliamsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      +1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!!!!

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   Aime Fposted 9 years ago

   I would love to live for 1,000 years as long as my loved ones had the same lifespan. I wouldn't want to watch everyone I care about die and be left to start over.
   
   I also wonder what our bodies would look like - would we age slower? Or would we still be in the physical shape of a 90 year old at 90 and have to live 910 more years in a very old body?

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      gmwilliamsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If genetic and scientific research makes it possible to live to 1000, our bodies and minds will age much slower than at the present time.  I was reading a futuristic book about 3 decades ago, it stated that humankind will leave beyond 100 years but our bodies will not age as fast- we will still retain our physical and mental youthfulness.

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