The good improve in human life expectancy throughout the twentieth century is commonly cited as proof that humanity’s lot is quickly bettering. On common, an toddler born in 1900 may count on to reside to about 32 years, whereas by 2000, life expectancy had reached 65 years. Against this, alarm bells sounded when American life expectancy declined within the first years of this decade by 2.5 years, primarily as a result of Covid and opioid overdoses. Some scientists and entrepreneurs recommend that the human lifespan is likely to be dramatically elevated past the present restrict of 120 years. However earlier than we place too lots of our eggs into this basket, we’d be well-advised to suppose extra deeply in regards to the attract of longevity.
Our attitudes towards size of life mirror profound assumptions about human nature and what makes for an excellent life. For instance, is life essentially improved by its lengthening? Are there different items in human existence that have to be balanced in opposition to period? Would possibly there be different options of life for which an excellent and clever individual would commerce some portion of longevity? To achieve perception into such questions, there are few higher mental sources than one of many nice explorations of human nature and human good, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which comprises maybe our most memorable literary depiction of deathless human life.
In components I, II, and IV of the ebook, Gulliver finds himself amongst little individuals over whom he towers as a large, then a homunculus amongst giants, and at last a humanoid yahoo amid a race of completely rational and virtuous equine creatures. E-book III represents a really totally different voyage, in that Gulliver ventures via quite a lot of totally different lands, all of which caricature the ambitions and pretensions of recent science. For instance, the Laputans are very good summary reasoners completely divorced from the sensible points of life, the Balnibarians are ruined by dwelling underneath scientific tyranny, and the royal academy’s denizens, the projectors, dedicate themselves to absurd ventures corresponding to extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.
It’s on this third voyage that for the primary time Gulliver encounters a imaginative and prescient that dissuades him from trying to return dwelling to his spouse and household. Particularly, he learns of individuals generally known as “struldbruggs,” who’re rumored to be immortal, a prospect that fills him with “inexpressible delight.” Particularly, he writes,
Joyful nation, the place each little one hath a least an opportunity for being immortal! Joyful individuals who get pleasure from so many dwelling examples of historic advantage, and have masters able to instruct them within the knowledge of all former ages. However happiest past all comparability are these glorious struldbruggs, who being born exempt from that common calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, with out the load and despair of spirits brought on by the continuous apprehension of loss of life.
Instantly relieved of all want to return to those that make him a husband and father, Gulliver resolves to spend the rest of his life in dialog with these immortal creatures, enraptured by ideas of what he would do if solely he may reside without end.
To repeat, it’s the prospect of immortality that seduces Gulliver from his homecoming. Like Odysseus within the Odyssey, he encounters many unusual locations and folks, many different accounts of what life would possibly quantity to, however ultimately, he at all times yearns for dwelling. This time, nonetheless, having realized of the struldbruggs, he’s ready to put aside his return, envisioning that he’ll move his remaining years amongst what he imagines should certainly be the happiest individuals in all of the world, even perhaps hoping that immortality would possibly one way or the other rub off on him. Gulliver, like many up to date titans of Silicone Valley, supposes that the answer to life’s issues lies in its indefinite prolongation.
In truth, nonetheless, the struldbruggs and their lives are nothing like what Gulliver imagines. First, they’re every born with a pink dot above their left eye, which identifies them as immortals. Second, they lead regular human lives, together with the decline and indignities of previous age corresponding to hair loss and diminished imaginative and prescient and listening to. Lastly, upon reaching their eightieth yr, they’re declared legally useless and forbidden to personal property.
Their heirs instantly succeed to their estates; solely a small pittance is reserved for his or her help; and the poor ones are maintained on the public cost. After that interval, they’re held incapable of any employment of belief of revenue; they can’t buy lands or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any trigger, both civil or legal or financial, not even for the choice of metes and bounds.
In different phrases, these immortal creatures are neither imbued with the “knowledge of all former ages” nor match to function “dwelling examples of historic advantage.” On the contrary, they’re wrenching, greedy, clutching, covetous previous sinners who have to be legally incapacitated to stop hurt to others.
In any other case, as avarice is the required consequence of previous age, these immortals would in time change into proprietors of the entire nation, and engross the civil energy, which, for need of talents to handle, should finish within the wreck of the general public.
Immortality, it seems, leads to not the perfection of the virtues, however to their most excessive corruption. Simply think about if a few of the nice tyrants of historical past—within the twentieth century, males corresponding to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—have been granted not one however many lifetimes to hold out their plans.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift points an essential warning to scientists, physicians, economists, and politicians who mistake the quantitative prolongation of life for its qualitative enchancment.
To this magnification of human satisfaction and greed, Swift juxtaposes Gulliver’s lofty desires of what he would accomplish if solely he may reside without end. First, he would procure riches “by all arts and strategies in any way” till he had change into the wealthiest of all males. Subsequent, he would commit himself to review till he excelled “all others in studying.” Then he would preserve a report of all occasions and customs, turning into “a dwelling treasury of information and knowledge, the oracle of the nation.” He would then educate the younger in regards to the “usefulness of advantage in private and non-private life.” In different phrases, Gulliver would make himself an awesome man, maybe the best ever to reside.
But there’s a drawback. He does not likely present a convincing account of how he would purchase advantage, nor does he seem to know what advantage actually is. He thinks solely of himself, failing to acknowledge that different struldbruggs would have lived far longer than he, and because of this, possess even larger wealth, information, and advantage. His account additionally makes it moderately tough to think about that he would dedicate himself to the service of others, his nation, and humankind, partially as a result of he appears to ascertain spending all his time completely with different immortals. In truth, he supposes he would shed nary a tear for any mere mortals, concerning their passing with no extra regret than a gardener of his seasonal tulips.
Why, then, does Gulliver select to return dwelling? Partly as a result of he realizes that the true struldbruggs are hidebound, egocentric human beings, main lives that may solely be characterised as each vacuous and a risk to the happiness and well-being of these round them. They aren’t the happiest of people however the saddest. These plotting the extension of the human lifespan via actions corresponding to transhumanism can be well-advised to suppose once more in regards to the welfare of humanity, and people supposing that the issues of the world may be properly addressed just by turning to individuals superior in years, the impulse of gerontocracy, ought to recall that extending one thing inherently faulty merely prolongs deficiency.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift points an essential warning to scientists, physicians, economists, and politicians who mistake the quantitative prolongation of life for its qualitative enchancment. Merely extending the period of a vapid and detached life does nothing to reinforce its excellence and will solely enlarge its deficiencies. To genuinely enhance human life, it’s essential to discern and improve what is sweet in it. All of the psychopharmacology and synthetic intelligence on this planet can’t add one iota of goodness, and till we’re able to do the laborious work of training minds and hearts and cultivating characters, we should always keep away from—just like the plague—the temptation to vest our hopes in life’s prolongation.
