I’m currently reading Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Future, which examines the possibility that average life expectancy could reach 150 within the next 100 years. I have mixed feelings about this.

If we could keep our mental and physical health as we got older, there would of course be some upsides to extending our life expectancy. Michio Kaku’s book makes the point that this will happen  – and just imagine all the things we could achieve.

As a writer, my output could be truly prodigious. I’m about to turn 47 so I’d have another 103 years to go. At my current completion rate, I could produce at least 50 more novels. With more practice, perhaps I could hit John Grisham’s enviable output of one book per year.  Putting aside the thought that I would clutter up libraries and digital bookshelves with 103 more books containing 40,000 more pages and 12 million more words, it is quite an exciting thought. From a writer’s perspective, living longer would be great.

But what would the repercussions be for the human race if everyone’s life expectancy almost doubled? It would raise some interesting social, economic, personal and environmental challenges.

1. Social challenges of increased life expectancy:

If everyone began living longer all of a sudden, the concept of retirement would have to be radically overhauled. Would it be moved to 120 working years with a 30-year retirement? If so, what would people do? I can’t imagine that they would want to work at the same company or do the same job for 100 years, whether they were screwing wing mirrors to Honda Civics or being accountants. They would get bored and so retraining would have to be part of life.

However most people aren’t great at change, particularly when it comes to work and especially if they have been doing the same thing for many years. They get comfortable, relax and it becomes harder to evolve. The problem is that they would have no choice. Over a century things change very quickly in all industries and are likely to change even faster in the future.

Just take the airline industry, as featured in The Human Race. The Wright Brothers cracked flight in 1903, and the next 100 years saw the most incredible evolution of flight, from a plane that could barely manage a few hundred feet at five miles per hour, to man being blasted into space at supersonic speeds. Can you imagine if you had been involved in that industry for those ten decades, because your life expectancy dictated that you had to work that long? You would have had to retrain and evolve constantly to keep up.

Of course, this process of changing is becoming the norm for the younger generation. Take me. I have been or am:

• A lawyer
• A DTP reseller
• A management consultant
• A writer
• A software developer

And I’m not even 50! My children will have to be even more flexible and will have to get used to re-qualifying and trying new things. Perhaps that would mean taking five years out when they’re 50 and then going back to work for another 25-year stint? With a life expectancy of 150, however, that would still only take them to 80!

2. Economic challenges of increased life expectancy:

Imagine starting to save for a pension at 20. It would be a financial planner’s dream to have a full century in which to increase your investments. Equally so, would mortgages be re-structured to 100 years with a break clause built in for your extended breaks? Imagine how much houses would be worth!

3. Personal challenges of increased life expectancy:

Are we really meant to live to 150? I don’t mean physically, as improvements in medicine, hygiene and living standards mean that we have been living longer for many years. It wasn’t that long ago that the average life expectancy was just 40 and now, in First World countries, that life expectancy has comfortably doubled.

But do we desire to live that long? Do we have enough interests, incentives, distractions and reasons to keep us going into our mid-100s? It is said that retirement is often cut short when people have nothing to live for. They atrophy, give up and keel over.

As for me: while the possibility of writing 100 novels is very exciting, I also shudder at the thought. Do I have that much to say? Would I get bored eventually and give up? Probably.

With an average life expectancy of 150, perhaps assisted suicide clinics like Dignitas in Switzerland would become increasingly popular as people would simply give up and choose to end it. How would governments even begin to address this?

4. Environmental challenges of increased life expectancy:

I have previously blogged about how the combined ecological footprint of humanity is estimated at 1.4 Planet Earths. In other words, the human race uses ecological services 1.4 times as fast as the Earth can renew them.

If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American, we would need five planets to sustain it. And that’s with Americans living to an average age of 86. Can you imagine successive generations with a longer and longer life expectancy consuming more and more? The human race’s carbon footprint would be astronomical and extremely difficult to cut down.

A final thought

One consequence of modern life is that we live it faster. We live fast because technology allows us to. The pace of modern life seems to quicken with every passing year. If you stop and think about it, it seems almost counterproductive to have the capacity to do things so much more quickly when the one resource that seems to be increasing exponentially for us is ‘time’. Each year we have more of it but our lives are hard wired to cram in more and more, and to what end?

Perhaps we need to slow it down.  Children grow up so fast these days. It has been said that today’s 10-year-olds are my generation’s 15-year-olds. I see this in my own children. They are more streetwise, fashion-conscious and mature than I ever was.

My children may soon have more than 100 years of adulthood, so perhaps they should slow down and enjoy the mystery and excitement of childhood. Very soon it is all over and suddenly your life is spread out before you for decades.

Slow down. You’ve got all the time in the world!

This post was selected for The Mad Editor’s Round-Up #30, hosted by Diary of a Mad Editor and Everything Home Blog Carnival Meets Again, hosted by My DIY Home Tips.

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