Feb 21, 2006

Here’s an interesting Yahoo article that confirms something I’ve long suspected: that people my age can expect to live a lot longer than the current 80-year average. A Stanford University biologist gives information about anti-aging treatments that may come on the market within the next decade or two that will likely increase the average age of death to 100 years. Personally, I believe that by the time I die, it will be more like 120.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. First, along with running low on oil, this is going to cause major, unavoidable, permanent changes to our society—to our whole civilization. Will we still retire at 65? That would leave forty whole years to pursue hobbies. That’s almost like another whole lifetime. And if the retirement age gets pushed back, due to people being fit to work for longer, I think we will see a shift in the kinds of work people do. Plugging away at a career your heart isn’t into for 20-30 years is one thing; but 40-50 years? Half a century to delay your dreams until retirement? I don’t see people putting up with that.

People already change jobs, even careers, a lot more than they did when the Boomers were children (a period everyone seems to collectively agree is the “real America”). Living an extra 20-30 years will probably have the greatest effect on the work lives of Generation X and the generation after us, because we are old enough to have ingested the “work til you’re 65, then retire” meme, but young enough to where the therapies will be available while we’re still working. What will we do? With our solid grasp of technology, will there be an even bigger push towards workplace flexibility? Will we look at our longer lives, and choose to be more fluid in our priorities? Will things like gap years and extended parental leave become the norm? Or will we still rush to get to college, rush to graduate by 23, rush into a career, and just be good little cogs for even longer?

Another interesting aspect of this is how it may affect women. We already live longer than men, but in our society, we become more invisible as we age, especially past menopause. It’s true that Boomer women are changing how older women are seen, just like they’ve broadened the experience of everything they’ve already gone through. But massive problems have nevertheless been left in their wake. Young women are still seen by society as “past their peak” appearance-wise at 25, and automatically less worthwhile; and 30 is practically “old”. Will what is considered the most attractive age finally rise to more realistic numbers? And menopause—will it come later, vastly increasing the fertile years and the childbearing-age population? Or will it stay around 50, which will then become only the halfway point of a woman’s life, leaving five whole decades free for other things?

One hundred years is a long time to put up with being judged, dismissed, and legislated against. Will women face down a 100-year battle with sexism and finally demand to be treated as equal human beings for their whole lives? Or will they still be perceived to peak at twenty, and just have an 80-year decline, instead of a 60-year one?

We will inevitably see.

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