Q&@
IN TRUTH
THEY WILL ACTUALLY BE A-MORTAL,
RATHER THAN IMMORTAL? UNLIKE "G D", FUTURE 'superhumans' could still did in some war or accident,
and nothing could bring them back from the netherworld! However, unlike us mortals, their life would have
no expiry date. So long as no bomb threads them to pieces or no truck runs them over, they could go on living
indefinitely. Which will probably make them the most anxious in history. We mortals daily take chances with our
lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and
do many other dangerous things like crossing the street or eating out. But if we believe you can live for ever, you
would be crazy to gamble on infinity like that. Perhaps, then, we had better start with more modest aims, such as
doubling life expectancy?! In the 20th century we have almost doubled life expectancy from forty to seventy, so
in the 21st century we should at least be able to double it again to 150!? Though falling far short of immortality,
this would still revolutionize human society. For starters, family structure, marriages and child-parent relation-
ships would be transformed. Today, people still expect to be married 'till death us do part', and much of life re-
volves around having and raising children. Now try to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting
married at 40, she still has 110 years to go! Will it be realistic to expect her marriage to last 110 years?
Even Catholic fundamentalists might baulk at that! So the current trend of serial marriages is likely to
intensify. Bearing 2 children in her forties, she will, by the time she is 120, have only a distant
memory of the years she spent raising them - a rather minor episode in her long life. It's hard
to tell what kind of new parent-child relationship might develop under such circumstances....
MòrChaiAsih is married since '69, my father was shot at 30 after ONE year marriage & six
months before I was born, my mother lived from 1911 till 1992 & they live on in me &
my children. Strange to 'remember more than 120 years
of changes in these nether-lands', Italy, Greece,
Israel, Turkey, Iran, India, Japan &
the 'old' USSR and
so on up
till now
...