Longevity

By Bruce Floyd | October 27, 2012

This article neglects to understand one of the basic tenets of Becker: increasing the longevity of life will do nothing to ameliorate the terror of the human predicament; in fact, it will exacerbate it, take anxiety to new heights, paralyze the will, make an early death even more “absurd” that one is now. This clamor, all this hue and cry, for the extension of life confirms Becker’s insights. The length of life means nothing to the self-conscious creature. All it knows it that he or she will die. What difference does it make whether it’s seventy years of one-hundred and fifty?

The problems that plague humanity, the existential ones, are not to be solved by insuring people they will live longer. No, what will console the mortal is some way of accepting the limitations of life, of coming to terms with life and its limitations. We must give in, even embrace, our fate. It’s hard to do. Of course it is, and that’s why we swim in an ocean of illusions.

The coming age of longevity will not change everything; it will just make the time-immemorial paradox more acute and baffling.