From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Apr 02 2002 - 22:10:29 MST
At 06:22 AM 4/2/02 -0800, Robert wrote:
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/02/science/social/02END.html
>> Major increases in human longevity could also be disruptive, he fears,
because
>> "life extension will wreak havoc with most existing age-graded
hierarchies,"
>> postponing social change in countries with aging dictators and thwarting
>> innovation in others.
>
>Isn't he denying the strength of his own political arguments here?
>If the drive is towards liberal democracy, then presumably we should
>not have "aging dictators".
Well, yes. Among other weirdnesses. This is what I said in THE LAST MORTAL
GENERATION on that topic, when Dr Hayflick raised it some years ago:
===========
What of Hayflick's cost-benefit analysis based on the prevalence and
persistence of tyrants? Is it a strong argument for throttling the new
science in its cradle? Surely not. If ever I've heard a
cut-off-your-head-to-save-your-face pseudo-argument... this is it. Let us
all die, to save a few from the heinous attacks of murderers? Kill
everyone, by inattention, to spare us from the malevolence of dictators? In
1997, cryonics commentator Tim Freeman made the retort apposite:
"Suppose all reasonably free people got an aging prevention treatment
tomorrow. So we'd eliminate the meaningless deaths of millions of talented
and productive people in the US, Europe, places like that, but let's
suppose for the purposes of argument that Saddam Hussein and the like would
stay in power indefinitely, and the conditions of their subjects would be
unchanged forever. Would that be a net win? In my opinion, it would be,
even from a global utilitarian viewpoint instead of the obvious selfish
viewpoint of a US resident."
But is it even likely that the conditions of the oppressed could remain
unchanged forever? Dictators and other bullies are always with us, for new
monsters readily spring up to replace the old - who are often slain by the
new, in any case. The remedy for death by terror and war is not involuntary
`natural' death for everyone, however peaceful. It is not universal,
DNA-programmed mortality, but political awareness and action. Freeman
added, astutely, `Hayflick wasn't properly weighing the ordinary horror of
aging that strikes the large populations that are not affected by tyrants.
This is a common psychological error - people undervalue ordinary dangers,
and overvalue unusual dangers.'
We're stuck, at the moment, with death's pain, loss and grief, and must
make as decent a fist of it as we can. But in the longest term of the
history of intelligent life in the universe, it will surely be the case -
tragic, but blessedly brief in comparative duration - that the routine and
inevitable death of conscious beings was a temporary error, quickly corrected.
=====================
Damien Broderick
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