Happiness in a world that doesn’t age

 

Allowing people to radically enjoy more years of youthfulness seems like something that no one in their right mind would refuse. And yet one of the most common response that people give when they first hear of it is “Why would anyone wish to love forever?” The most common reason why people see it that way is that they imagine that longevity enhancement would mean experiencing the crippling frailty of aging for a longer period of time, perhaps even forever. This is obviously not what approaches like the SENS research are aiming for, since repairing the damage of aging would effectively mean keeping the youthful vigor well into old age. However, this view is relevant in an important issue about longevity: Without happiness, longevity enhancement is nothing but a condemnation to longer suffering in an unjust world.

For this reason, I believe that any transhumanist advocating for radical life extension should also be a strong voice for an equitable society that allows everyone to live a happy, satisfying life. This is where I believe that it becomes very important for the movement to become intersectional with pretty much every other social right movement, and to become a strong ally for the advancement of every marginalized group. This also needs to be done in a way that is truly empowering for the different communities, by allowing them to be the leaders of their own social movement.

However, I believe that even while advocating for more rights for everyone, some people simply won’t be happy. I have great hopes that the advances in psychology will allow people who struggle with mental disorders will see their pain and suffering go down, but in some chronic cases, whatever you do, there still is some level of helplessness from the caring community. The same could be said of people with chronic physical illness that cripple them and for which the science of aging and longevity might be powerless to help. In all these cases, I think it would be completely immoral to force longevity treatments on people whom only escape is the knowledge that death will put them out of their misery in the long run. The ethical concerns with this question are obviously very high, especially when it comes to people for whom the notion of consent and their ability to truly understand the consequences of refusing treatments would bring. Then there is everyone who is incapable of communicating. How can we know if they wish to go through the types of treatments that could give them more years of suffering?

In all these cases, we could hope that longevity enhancement would provide these people with the hope that, given enough time, the medical community might come up with a solution to whatever chronic illness they are facing. In the end, however, the decision should always be left in the hand of the person, when it’s possible.

Beside the people who might not want to live because of their lack of happiness, there is also the issue of all the people who might want to benefit from life extension therapy even as they might be crushing other people’s happiness. Disruptive tyrants, criminals and otherwise dangerous people might not have a problem with living forever, but is it beneficial to society to keep them around for so long? What about those who get a “life” sentence of prison? Would it be ethical to keep someone in prison for hundreds of years? Could we even understand someone who’s served 50 years in jail or more to be the same person who entered prison initially?

I personally believe that longevity technology should be available to anyone who expresses the desire to benefit from it. If we want to make our world safer from people who would give us harm, then I think it is our responsibility to work at the root of the problem and start working more into rehabilitation rather than punishment and to attack the social causes of crime. As for the “Toughened criminals” and tyrants, I honestly believe that it is impossible for someone who knows they are going to live forever to hold onto a vision of themselves for such a long time. In the long run, long sentences with a strong emphasis on rehabilitation might be the solution for such “hardened cases”.

In any case, I believe that longevity enhancement is going to radically alter the way society considers happiness.

To think further about it:

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/should-biotech-make-life-hellish-for-criminals/