longer life expectancy: good or bad?

Life expectancy for Americans reached an all-time high of 77.2 years in 2001, federal officials said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that life expectancy increased by two-tenths of a year from 2000. A drop in major causes of deaths, such as heart disease, cancer and stroke contributed to the increase.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/885239.asp?vts=31420031331

we're fighting more sickness and disease to live longer and healthier. is the earth suffering because of it? what sort of world does it create for our great-great grandkids to inherit?

personally, i intend to live to be at least 100 years old. and there's no way i'm going to work a day longer than i have to. well, not for money anyways. : )

and now i would like to share with you an interesting thing i learned on TV the other week. (yes, learned! on TV!)

everyone knows that as they get older it feels like time goes by faster, right? well, apparently a scientist set out to apply a mathematical formula to the subjective "time speeding up" process. what he came up with (and verified across numerous test groups) was the following:

- when you are 40, time goes 1.4x as fast as when you were 20 and 2x as fast as when you were 10.

- if you were to live to be 80, 40 would mathematically be the middle of your life.

- however, subjectively at 40 years old, 71% of your life has already passed by.

- thus, the middle of your life is actually 20.

weird (and mildly depressing), huh?

i would open this up further to ask why this phenomenon happens. does time go by faster for people who are in a routine? someone said once that "we don't remember days, we remember moments" - are there less moments for old people?

if so, would a 60 year old person that had lived in midwest USA their whole life have time "slow down" again for them if they were moved to a desert in Africa?

About the negative consequences of long lifespans, I don't think they'll be a problem for the Earth. Before they become a serious issue nutters will be killing civilians on a decent scale in the name of the environment, and more importantly, there will be restrictions on who's allowed to prolong their life. I think the technology for even immortality will be available before most of us die, but it won't be available to the general public, unless there's a need to populate the moon or something. This sucks.. I think I'll need to get into research in these fields in order to get unfair access to some of this stuff

The other thing you said is really interesting. I think it has to do with 'moments'. When you're younger you're surprised by more things, you're learning more, so when you're old time flies as if you're constantly sitting on your a$$ (<-- and your moola ). I would agree that living wild and exploring in your old age would remedy this problem, so it's good to exercise while you're young so you stay young and capable of doing all these things when you're older.

well I just wanted to see what you all might think about what i have to say about time and life as it speeds up


i belive that life is speeding up at a much earlier in life throught the rapid advancements of technology

what is occuring is technology and the comunication that can be accomplished

i mean we know so much more about the world than my parents ever did at my age

i think it is our understanding of the world and our knowledge of what is occuring and has occured awareness speeds up time

50 years seams so short all we can do is to create

so helpless from the enevitablity of death

i lie in bed at night wondering

wandering the depth of my mind in thought

i have noticed, since i graduated from high school, that time has suddenly kicked in to flowing just about twice as fast as it did.
i think one of the reasons was that in grade school and high school i was always waiting for the summer, literally counting the days toward the end of the school year.
now i am not really waiting anxiously for anything, so i don't want time to speed up as much as i did. maybe when you want time to speed up it seems to go slower and when you want it to slow down it goes faster. thats my experience, anyway--like when i was going to quit my crappy dishwashing job for a better one and had to wait until my last two weeks were up, time seemed to drag on, like i was actually waiting two months.

"Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"Old."

"I'm not old."

"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"

"I do," Dunbar told him.

"Why?" Clevinger asked.

"What else is there?"

--from Catch-22

I'll let this quote speak for me...

I have seen some old folks who are mentally not there at all and I would hate to grow old like that- but others seem to be with it completely and that is great. Certainly the care of the elderly is burdensome so maybe there should be a mandatory 'retirment' age. Anyone ever seen the movie Logan's Run?

Well you know that when you think about it, it ends up being something that we shouldn't be thinking about in the first place ! Why do you guys have to be so analytical??? Please just live and stop counting the seconds. Even though that was an interesting study, I personally believe time doesnt seem to be going any faster so far in my lifetime. It's all in your overworked brains <3

They guy we bought our house from was 93. I offered him a chair so that he could sit and read the contract. He said, "no, I'm fine." He did have to put on a pair of glasses, as he stood and read the contract and was completely coherent about what was going on.

If I could be like him when I get old, I wouldn't mind it a bit. But if I'm riddled with cancer or something else, I'll probebly end my own life like a lot of seniors do so that I won't be a burdon to anyone else.