Our Generations

Pete Townshend of The Who was 20 years old when bandmate Roger Daltrey first shouted Townshend’s sentiment “Hope I die before I get old” in the song “My Generation.”

Two years later, in 1967, a 25-year-old Paul McCartney of The Beatles asked, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

So, here it is, 2012, and the results are in. Pete Townshend didn’t die before he got old. He’s 67. (In fact, he’ll be in DC in November and might play “My Generation” as an encore to The Who’s performance that night of Quadrophenia.) But in an interview a few years ago, Townshend clarified his youthful lyric. “I hope I die while I still feel this alive, this young, this healthy, this happy and this fulfilled,” he said. Meaning that while he’s grown chronologically old, he hasn’t yet reached dotage in the dreaded senses of infirmity, pain, and palpable and escalating decline. What Townshend was saying in a nutshell was, “I still want to die before I’m a drooling and possibly senile invalid.”

As for McCartney—who, like Townshend, is one of two surviving members of the quartet that made him famous—he’s now well past 64 (70, in fact), yet seems very much needed by his new-ish third wife, is well-fed in both diet and adulation by his monetary riches and continuing fame, and like Townshend, he appears to be in good physical shape (the obvious facelift and dye job notwithstanding).

The two rock survivors are hardly alone, of course, in having effectively and heartily Lived To Tell About It. We’ve all heard in recent years about how advances in science, medicine and general living conditions over the past century have combined not only to dramatically lengthen human life spans, but also to offer the promise of further advances in the coming decades. Two articles I read recently nicely encapsulated the scientific possibilities, potential scenarios, and promise and perils of very long life.

Both pieces were written by the same journalist—a science writer named David Ewing Duncan—and draw from research and survey results contained in his recent e-book, titled (wait for it) When I’m 164. I first read his article “How Long Do You Want to Live?” in the New York Times. It opened with the startling statistical nugget that the life expectancy of Americans has jumped since from 47 to 80 since 1900; further noted that the United Nations anticipates life expectancies over the next century will approach 100 in the developed world; suggested that recent discoveries in genetics and regenerative medicine may add many years of life to the UN’s figure; yet noted that surveys conducted by the author show little enthusiasm among the currently-living for the chance, 50 years from now, to open a birthday card that gently teases, “Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s 140!”

That article led me to a companion piece of sorts that Duncan wrote for The Atlantic, titled “When I’m 164: The Societal Implications of Radically Prolonged Lives.” In that article, the author detailed the primary arguments for and against “radical” elongation of our earthly existence, as expressed by thousands of respondents to surveys he’d distributed to lecture audiences and had offered online. Duncan first had asked people how long they wanted to live—giving them choices of 80, 120,  150 years and forever—then asked a subset of respondents what they would find attractive and, conversely, negative about a lifespan of 150 years (close to the 164 in the headline).

About 30,000 people told Duncan how long they wanted to live, and “several thousand” shared their perceived upsides and downsides to life as a 150-year-old man or woman.

Interestingly, 60% of the respondents opted for the current Western lifespan of about 80 years. Less than 10% chose 150 and fewer than 1% embraced immortality. On the follow-up question—"What do you think would be awesome, or not, about living half a century beyond getting a birthday greeting on TV from  Willard Scott?" (my wording)—the following pluses and minuses most often were cited:

One-fifty or bust: You’d have more time with friends and loved ones. Geniuses would still be alive. You’d get the chance to see the future. There’d be more time to accomplish your goals. Science might develop ways to delay or even prevent the pain and suffering of old age—your old age.

One-fifty?! Just kill me now: That long a life might simply mean prolonged frailty. There’d be a huge financial burden—familially and societally—to bankrolling extended lives. You’d experience more of the depressing vicissitudes of life (job loss, depression, illness, violence, divorce, etc). You’d be around for more wars and disasters. You’d witness and be affected by the environmental devastation wreaked by people like you who just won’t die. It might mean extra decades of shear boredom. There might be unequal societal access to new anti-aging “cures.”

Underlying all this, of course, is the fact that—as tends to be the case with pesky things like the future—more is unknown at this point than is known. We know what’s possible, but not where that will take us.  Duncan writes, for example, of one drug under development to treat inflammation and diseases that may prove to slow the human aging process—or not. Then there’s ongoing stem cell research that might produce solutions to complex problems in the brain and nervous system—eventually. Might there one day be a pill or a drug cocktail that can help give senior citizens the bodies of 30-somethings? That’s possible, too. Might that happen in your lifespan or mine? That’s far less likely. But who knows?

My personal feelings on extended life are shaped primarily by two things: 1) My conviction that the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, and 2) my long and rather close acquaintance with very old senior citizens through years of volunteer work.

With nobody doing anything terribly meaningful about global warming and its devastating environmental and societal impacts; with nuclear terrorism seemingly inevitable given the vast stores of scarcely policed or catalogued materials strewn about all over the world; with the mounting threat of cyber warfare that would turn our lights off and throw the world into economic chaos, with … well, you know where I’m going with this. Do I want to be around when the fecal material hits the breeze-producing device? I think not.

And then there’s the whole matter of the quality of those additional years. Maybe 80 will be the new 60 by the time I reach it, assuming I do. But, will 100 be the new 80? Because I’ve seen 80, and it’s often ugly. Ninety? Even more so. I’ve gotten to know many wonderful seniors in the past 20 years. We’ve had  great conversations and a goodly amount of laughs, and I’ve enjoyed helping in minor ways to make their lives a little easier or simply less tedious. Still boredom prevails, as do all manner of age-related infirmities and indignities. These are not, by and large, happy people. They don’t feel well, they’ve outlived family and friends, they’re lonely. Often they’re addled and confused. They don’t understand what the hell has happened to them, and why they must relive that frightening displacement every waking day.

So, tell me: Where’s the pill that preserves dignity as well as bodily organs, that evokes well-being in addition to easing arthritis?

Until that pharmaceutical is on the market at a reasonable price—and until reason and sanity prevail in the world, in stark contrast to current trends—I’ll keep my natural lifespan, thank you very much.

I liked the quote with which David Ewing Duncan ended his New York Times piece, so I’ll share it here. Albert Einstein had refused surgery as he lay dying of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 1955. Far from seeking the “genius grant” on longer life that some futurists envision, what Einstein said was this: “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share. It is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

How might 150 ever look and feel? Fantastic, for all I know, thanks to the wondrous science the future. But count me as skeptical. “Elegant” isn’t the word for it that springs to mind.