CERTAIN SINGULAR EVENTS engender the need for reflection. The recent passing of my mother, particularly her final years, leads to this letter.
The fantasy of immortality is an ancient one, but modern medical science is breathing new life into this dream.
About three years ago, Google began funding a major search for ways to slow the ageing process, and a host of scientists are exploring gene therapy, organ cloning and nanotechnology as means to extend the human life span to 120 years or beyond. But is it wise to start down this road?
Medicine has proved very capable at keeping elderly people with chronic diseases expensively alive – but not at keeping them young. Nature did not design our bodies to operate forever, and our world depends on each generation making way for the next. But the rallying cry recently seems to be to never go gently into that long night. Quantity over quality.
Doubtless, death is a loss. But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining.
It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most importantly, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic. Gently entering that long night that awaits us all should be a philosophy we embrace.
– CHARLES KNIGHTON
