Insufficiently Terrified of Aging or Too Terrified of Aging?
It is my hope that, if asked, most people would agree that degenerative aging is not a pleasant, beneficial thing to look forward to. It is a looming years-long tunnel of varying forms of increasing suffering, expense, loss of dignity, and disability. You wouldn't volunteer for the consequences of aging if they were optional. Everyone knows what's coming. Everyone gets a close-up preview of what will happen, in all its painful details via family, media, stories, the common currencies of education. No adult is truly ignorant of where aging leads and what its costs are.
Any yet, and yet. The masses carry on and for the most part put all thoughts of future suffering to one side - even as the young interact with old people day in and day out, and even as those old people live out their lives. The folk who look at degenerative aging and suggest, seriously, with reference to sound science, that perhaps we can and should do something about it are in a tiny minority. Further, they are often castigated for that view, as if it is something that shouldn't be brought out in polite company.
Living in fear of being dead is of debatable rationality, but living in fear of chronic pain and suffering seems eminently rational to me. You'd be terrified if a random thug could credibly threaten you with half the physical harm that aging is capable of. Fear is a great motivator, but unfortunately far from reliable in what it motivates people to do: the various shadings of fear are well characterized by a loss of analysis and control.
So people blithely walk towards degenerative aging and its suffering, and the vast majority choose to do nothing to try to fight against that future. Is that because they have too little fear of what lies ahead, or because they are too terrified to even bring out the topic for introspection, debate, and planning?
I have become perhaps one of the least qualified people to answer that sort of question. I am so far removed from the years in which I didn't think much on the topic, or had only ordinary thoughts about aging, that I have no insight left into what it was like or why I thought that way. The more I learn about rejuvenation biotechnology and the longer I spend observing the world while favoring the defeat of aging, the less I understand prevalent attitudes, and the more of a mystery it all becomes: the concurrent acknowledgement and aversion of degenerative aging; the existence of a vibrant "anti-aging" marketplace next to a lack of support for real longevity science; the signs of fear next to the signs of complacency.
I used to have a variety of front runners in my mind as to why many people are largely indifferent to aging these days, but it now seems to me that much of it may come from people who have already had family and even pets die as adults. My only close family members died when I was in my early teens so I dont think I really contemplated and felt the full impact of that. Just the thought of more of them dying is almost debilitating now, to the point where its traumatizing, mentally paralyzing, and something that numbs the brain to the point where the brain tries to push it out and puts up a sort of unspoken barrier to even thinking about it. It seems it can be so traumatizing that it can cause us to kind of not really care about life anymore, and subconsciously become a sort of long term suicidal. That concept is a part of the reason why I think its important to promote notions like using anger disappointment and those kinds of things as a fuel to drive change rather than submitting to it and letting it crush a part of your soul and that kind of thing. Or, to sum that up, it seems that we need to help more people have the courage to fight instead of flee when they have the grim reaper staring them down.
I get a lot of opportunity to interact with and talk with fairly normal segments of society, and I see a lot of "none of the above". The basic thought process is roughly:
- it's impossible, why even think about it
- nobody has ever done it before, why even think about it
- we (humans) certainly can't fix it, why even think about it
- it's all so complicated and hard to understand, why even think about it
I don't think they even get to the 'fear' stage. The topic is off the table because it's ridiculous. Of course everyone grows old and dies, that's just how it is. No point in fearing it.
Myself, I'm painfully aware of how my hardware could crash at a moment's notice and permanently destroy the data archive I've collected over the last four decades.
Clearly, if we did have a greater "fear of aging" or fear of death for that matter, we would see more people focus on the core principles that sustain or enhance life. Diet, Exercise and Enlightenment. But we don't for the most part. Maybe we are just too tired from aging. I just read that diet can significantly reduce the risks from dying by the top 15 causes of death in the U.S., but society moves very slowly to change. Many of us are TV coach potatoes, and more an more of Americans are not focused on life-time learning and faith. Change for the better seem more difficult that decline. In fact, positive change only occurs when their dissatisfaction with their current status is greater than their normal resistance to change. [Change = D>R] So we push the problem on others like government, doctors, big Pharma, big Insurance, when we need to take personal responsibility to get back to basics. Just my two cents.
When I first got into thinking about potential solutions to the problem of aging, I was very excited about the possibility. I talked to all my friends and family and some co-workers. I was extremely disappointed that no one took any action, and most dismissed the notion of anti-aging as BS. I couldn't believe it.
The way I have come to think about the problem of few people caring is that very, very few people have a high level of knowledge or motivation in much of anything. The vast majority of us are couch potatoes who only wish to be entertained. They don't want to bother thinking about global warming, the tax policy of the US, and certainly not the possible solution to aging. Even those that are open to listening don't do anything.
Its almost like a reverse Drakes equation - the equation that attempted to estimate the number of earth like planets in the galaxy.
Proportion of people who will listen X portion that will do anything X portion that have the ability to really contribute anything to the cause. These proportions are tiny, my friend.
I can say wholeheartedly that you and others are in that small proportion that listen, learn, are motivated and actually do something. I'd like to think I'm there too.
Do not despair. I wish things were different. All you can do is continue the fight.