Speeding Up The Human Race In Order To Slow Down
Let's dive straight into a thought experiment. Imagine for a second that your entire life, and the lives of everyone you knew lasted just 24 hours.
8:00 a.m.
You are born on the top floor of a three storey house. At first you are helpless like any other newborn, after fifteen minutes though, you become a toddler and are able to crawl out of the room of your birth and start to make your way downstairs (there's no baby gate).
8:30 a.m.
You are down in a large circular play room, there are plenty of other toddlers there. You are all playing with alphabet blocks and other baby toys placed along the walls. It takes you four hours to play with every toy in the room, by which time you have the appearance of a ten year old child, and you walk down stairs.
12:30 p.m.
You're in the kitchen now and you're starving, you can't stop eating. You raid the fridge and cupboards, you eat anything and everything you can find. By the time you've stopped eating, you have matured to the equivalent of a twenty five year old adult.
4:00 p.m.
You've left the house, but you're still in the back yard, there are other adults there playing some kind of ball game. It looks fun so you join in. Turns out it is fun! You play for ages, until your body can't take any more, so you leave the yard.
6:00 p.m.
You have an uncontrollable urge to mate. Luckily for you there is a happening bar situated right across the street from the house you were born in. You head over, open the door and in you go.
7:55 p.m.
You found a mate, you had sex, she is already pregnant and ready to pop. The two of you return to the house you were born in. You watch your child being born, and then you die.
Time Sensitive Behaviour
OK, thought experiment over, but imagine if the human race had such an agonisingly short lifespan. Our achievements as a species would not be anywhere near what they are now. We simply wouldn't have time to do anything other than eat and procreate.
In other words, time, would dictate our actions. If we jump back into our strange universe for a second and we tweak the rules and say that humans now live for a month instead of a day. It would not be unreasonable to expect human progress to get a little further along the line.
If we keep tweaking the rules until the average human lived about 75 years, we can see the world around us today. However let's keep going, let us tweak away until the average lifespan has doubled. What then?
What about tripled? What if the average human lifespan was now 225 years; what would that be like?
Living Fast And Slow
In Iain M. Bank's 2004 novel The Algebraist, Banks creates a universe whereby the Dwellers are a species that live on a completely different time scale to humans, and thus experience the passage of time in a unique way.
The Dwellers live for millions of years and don't bother talking to quick cultures such as our own. In fact in order to speak to them, a human would need to slow down their metabolism by several orders of magnitude.
The point is that the Dwellers' decisions are based within realities that a quick species just simply can't comprehend.
To create an example let's jump back quickly into our artificial universe whereby humans only live for 24 hours.
We meet on the street and both have around four hours to live. However instead of coming with you to find someone to mate with. I tell you that I'm going to spend the last few hours of my life digging a garden and planting trees that will take many years to grow.
You look at me like I'm mad, as I try in vain to explain to someone whose whole life can be summed up in one day, about the benefits of planting a tree that will take several decades to grow to maturity.
However if we are pinged back to the real world, it is very easy to explain why planting a tree today is a good idea. As we will both live long enough to see the benefits.
The same goes the other way of course, if I'm only going to live a day, and so are my offspring, and my offspring's offspring. Then hey, why not just dump a load of that nondescript yellow chemical into the local river? Who cares? The effects will take years before anyone notices, and I find it difficult to think in years if I only live a day.
Labour Of Love
Of course in the real world we are not all so nihilistic. History is littered with examples of people starting things where they knew they would never see the end of.
Whether that project has been a cathedral or pyramid, or even a community program, we are no strangers to starting projects that will end after we die.
However that is the exception rather than the rule. On and individual basis we tend to only involve ourselves in things that we can start and finish within our lifetimes. And of course we want to do other things with our lives than just one single project. So the scope of our behaviour, and therefore our advancement, is directly linked to how much time we have and how we perceive it.
Speeding Up To Slow Down
In many ways technology is speeding us up, from communications to travel, from banking to education we are reaping the benefits of faster computers and better technology.
When it comes to life extending tech we are still in our infancy. However if we do ever get to the point whereby we are living longer, be that because of tech we put in our bodies. Or technology that allows us to upload our consciousness. Then my guess is that we will be able to take things a little slower and consider the consequences of our actions with a tad more deliberation than we currently do.
Whether it's being a bit more grown up about polluting the environment. Or creating programs that take a long time to come into effect. Our new found understanding of time will help us make better decisions as we ascend to the level of slow species.
WHAT THINGS WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY IF YOUR LIFESPAN WAS TWICE AS LONG AS IT IS NOW? OR MAYBE YOU WOULD BE DOING THE SAME THINGS IN THE SAME WAY? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title image: Sandy Millar on Unsplash
I wonder if a longer life span would allow you to recover from more mistakes? Everyone has heard and likely found themselves saying - 'if only I knew when I was younger what I know now!'. I know I've made some, unrecoverable mistakes. Things, that by the time you realize are too late in your life span to fix. What ever it may be... relationships, investments, education, where to live or what ever it may be.
I guess to answer your question, I'd have time to try a different approach on a few things. Worry less and effort more! (and on the RIGHT things!)
I think some people are open to learning from their mistakes, others aren't. Whilst the ratios might change, it would still be down to the individual to actually want to learn.
The only way you can learn from mistakes is by examining them in detail, that's just too much for some people.
Whilst it might be too late to rectify certain mistakes, it's never too late to learn from them. 😁
Cg
I read a story some time ago, can't remember the title, but it posited the opposite effect to longevity.
As people became able to live 1, 2 or 3 hundred years, there was
No longer any urgency to get anything done; after all,
you have time, Right?
No decisions get made, no changes come about and stagnation
Was the result. Methinks there is a reason for our limited lifespan.
Just some thoughts.
100% upvote
Funnily enough I've been pondering that very position. I haven't quite finished articulating it in my head yet, but I think there is an answer for the urgency thing... Hmm, coming soon I reckon :-)
Cg
Hmmm... I'd say it depends on how the rest of the conditions evolve.
If I'm still going to need to earn money to fulfill basic survival requirements like shelter and food, and need to spend the same amount of time working towards those, I'll just keep doing what i'm doing now: working my first job to put funds to the side while thinking of ways to automate earning more money and reduce the amount of time spend getting it.
If, on the other hand, I can suddenly have much more time with no outright obligations, then probably divide it between helping my local community / family / environment, testing out new hobbies and getting expertise in areas that interest Me, and just taking the time to breathe, think, and otherwise relax with friends and family.
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Even in the first circumstance you would probably behave differently. Because you knew you had more time, you might save more money, or even take a completely different job. However the second scenario is definitely the more favourable!
Cg
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Great write up @cryptogee. Happy I found you through your comment and Luke Stoke's article. My piece of insight: almost every human action in incarnated body has a trace of the primary fear in it: fear of death. That comes with the incarnation package, same as 3D comes with the construct of linear time (which ultimately exists only relatively, and not absolutely, and as such can definitely be transcended...after all yes we are eternal beings). If our lifespan tripled, as you suggest, the greatest change would come from the underlying change in human psychology as the survival instinct of egoic mind would become less time-pressed. Evolved beings would have much greater impact in their lifetime, but the mind slaves would also have much longer time to destroy/pollute this planet. So as with anything in life, the key to freedom and real help to others is to heal first, go within, meditate, transcend the mind. On a sidenote: I'm full on C60 for about half a year now, and I recommend it to everyone just as I recommend meditation/yoga/contemplative mind and vulnerable approach to ego. I don't know about others, but I will live well over 100 years before I exit to next stop on this endless journey :) Thanks again