I’ve been keeping up with the latest health research over the years and began entertaining thoughts lately on the meaning of extending lifespans indefinitely. One researcher says that human trials on telomere extension could start in the next 10 years. Another guesses that gene therapy treatments could begin to appear in 25. For those of us on the younger side of the age spectrum we could begin to see a change in values in our lifetimes.
Here are my first notions of what could happen. Firstly, due to people being around much longer education will shrink as a proportion of labour and average competence will rise. Along with this is the “threat” of a new less gullible older stratum and reduced eargerness among the young to die for “king and country”. I would expect that to counter this the academic daycare system would be extended to soak up as many of the extra years as possible, a continuation of the existing trend to stall “adulthood”, to keep everyone as childlike as possible for as long as possible.
Secondly, the value of a “life” would change, in some ways up and some ways down, mostly up. Up for at least the reasons above. Up because it will seem that much less like people are expendable and everyone is going to die sometime anyway. Down because family size will probably increase, making each child less valuable on the margin.
Thirdly, radical groups believing that such things trample God’s garden may embark on “holy wars” to put an end to this “blasphemy”, further exacerbating the chronic tensions that we already have between organized religion and secular society.