However, I have to confess that to whenever I hear that someone aged 90+ (80+, even) died, I don't really feel sad. Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements, as I'm aware we are all mortals, and death is unavoidable.
I prefer to rejoice in how much this person has witnessed throughout her life, how she had enough health to keep her wits until the end, how she could raise children, grandchildren, and even know her great-grandchildren.
What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die. So it's a pretty good life to be able to reach a good age, knowing that all our dear ones are set for life, raising families of their own, and living their lives the way that is best suited for them.
This is not just theory. I felt this when my grandfather died, aged 95, when my grandmother died aged 96, and when other people I knew died old enough for their deaths not really come as a surprise.
I don't know, living to anywhere between 1'000 to 1'000'000 years of age would surely be quite the interesting experience, lots of things to learn, lots of things to experience. Such numbers might seem humorous but in the grand scheme of things that's still nothing, given the age of Earth and all that.
I get the feeling that if humans approached aging and death as an engineering problem, in a few centuries to a few thousands of years a viable solution might just spring up.
If nothing else, then fighting aging and everything that comes with it is definitely worth it, so the last decades of your life don't consist of being trapped in a degrading flesh prison and possibly suffering from ailments that will take away your ability to be a person (e.g. Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative conditions, or serious health conditions due to aging).
Of course, most people don't like to think about their own mortality or consider it (or diseases that may affect them later in life) a serious problem, much less a solvable one. For some religion is enough, for others ignorance does nicely. It feels like we might benefit from more focus on this and research in this direction.
Realistically, one just has to take care of themselves as best as they can and spend their time well.
> Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements...
Regardless, this is admirable. A life well lived is one worth celebrating, with its many achievements and its impact on the people around them.
Dying in your thirties or forties? “Tragic.” Fifties? “Such a shame.” Sixties? “Too soon.” Seventies? “A good run.” Eighties? “A life well lived.” Nineties? “Hell of a ride.”
Would our minds scale to timescales that vast? Would we just start forgetting things as time went on?
I suspect there’s a strong biological reason we age and die. We compete against our children for the limited resources of our planet. Our genes need to recombine or else evolution stalls.
For now the only true path to immortality is through having children.
I think what's "shocking" (not necessarily sad) thing about this is that she's been a presence for such a long time. Who here can remember a time from before Elizabeth II was the queen? She's been queen from before most people here were born and has always been present.
I mean, that happens even in the short 70 years most people get.
So does culture, for that matter.
I wonder what impact it will have if/when people do start living for 300 years or more (which some people claim we could see within our lifetime). What happens when racist, openly homophobic grandpa isn't just someone you uncomfortably bear and forgive, but someone with a lot of power and money because they've been around the longest? Investments, compound interests, connections, so many things that would mean that the younger generation would have less and less power and hope as time goes by.
That's not immortality, though, that's heritage.
In my eyes, immortality (if such a thing could even exist, entropy and unforeseen circumstances aside) would imply the continued existence of one's consciousness/mind.
Being "remembered", or other platitudes about "immortality" does nothing for you, when you no longer exist.
The pursuit of extended life might be seen as an expression of greed in fiction a lot of the time, but surely eating healthily is a good thing to do, right? What about exercise? What about having a good sleep schedule and not using harmful substances? Why would medicine be any different? Why would fixing one's faulty organs or other biological mechanisms be any different? In my eyes, it's just a scale of things you can do to have a better life, however long it might be.
As for the biological aspects, sure, nature didn't make us to live a thousand years. Then again, it didn't make us to fly through the sky in metal boxes close to the speed of sound.
I feel like people would be more environmentally and politically conscious if they knew that they'd need to live in the world that they create for the following millennia, instead of being able to ruin things for everyone with their greedy and megalomaniacal goals and then die.