What would happen to our society, if we live for a millenia?

[dimreepr]

Discuss...

[swansont]

Why is this a matter of philosophy?

What changes with respect to our aging process?

[dimreepr]

23 hours ago, swansont said:

Why is this a matter of philosophy?

What changes with respect to our aging process?

It was something explored by Isaac Asimov in his foundation series. 

As we get older we tend to get more conservative in our outlook, I think it's clear that an aging demographic has an effect on our society, and that's just a 50 year average age increase.

Isaac was suggesting that an increased average age (300 year's in his world) would slow down the progress of society to the point of stagnation.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

It was something explored by Isaac Asimov in his foundation series. 

As we get older we tend to get more conservative in our outlook, I think it's clear that an aging demographic has an effect on our society, and that's just a 50 year average age increase.

Isaac was suggesting that an increased average age (300 year's in his world) would slow down the progress of society to the point of stagnation.

You haven't answered the question.

If we age the same but just don't die of old age for another ~900 years, all of our young people are going to be working in the nursing homes of people who are old and can't care for themselves. They would also have to be fed, putting a strain on food supply as the population grew because people weren't dying.

So yeah, we'd stagnate. 

Things might be different if this were the case all along, but then it wouldn't be our society, it would be the society of the people that lived for 1000 years. And this all changes if puberty didn't hit until we were ~120, our fertility were different, and we didn't start suffering the ravages of old age until we were ~600 or 700 or even later, and many other things to consider.  Lots to unpack, and impossible to do so with so many variables that have not been defined.

 

[TheVat]

If the population is stable, then only 1/1000 of the population needs to be replaced in any given year.  If maturation happens at the same rate as now (IOW, a greatly extended adulthood), then it would be a society with very few children and teens.  This would definitely change the menu of choices at the multiplex.  Concepts like "family friendly" would be less important to most people.   And I can see some stratification, as we find that centuries long spans of time change people's perspective, so that there might be special cultural offerings that cater to the tastes of near-millenarians, and not so much to mere centenarians.  People would be likely to have several careers.  Someone who started out as a doctor, and practiced for a century, might go back to school and become a flamenco guitarist or interplanetary food critic.  Then, after another century, perhaps off in another direction.  It would be rare, I think to self identify by one particular line of work, though there could be exceptions where a particular level of interest and talent converged.  

People might finally tire of The Simpsons.  Its 14,000th season would be the final one.  "Jeopardy" however would continue and offer contests with specific age categories.  The near-millenarians, if they retained their mental acuity, could have (to us) staggering levels of knowledge going deep into earlier historical eras.  (though historical eras, as we know them, might be greatly elongated as society grew more conservative and slower to change)

 

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

As we get older we tend to get more conservative in our outlook,

When was this decided? I mean, over what period of time, how many generations, in how many countries was the study conducted? Or this this just one of those 'truisms' that 'everybody knows' simply through the power of repetition?

It would certainly make Bernie Sanders, Jaque Fresco, Noam Chomski, Michael Moore,  Saul of Tarsus, Jane Fonda, Socrates, ML King, John Dewy and me anomalies of our age-group. I suspect that where that notion comes from is the voting patterns of Americans between 1970 and 2004. And even then, it leaves out vast uncounted numbers who don't participate in polls, for one reason (they're not asked) or another (they don't respond) and/or don't vote for one reason (they're blocked by legislation) or another (they're disillusioned with the system). You might find that those same people have voted the same way all through their adult lives - they haven't changed; the parties they support have. The only person I've ever known who switched from left to right (by his own narrative) was P. J. O'Rourke. And he's an... never mind.

Maybe you mean more conservative in our own actions - more responsible, thoughtful and careful in our decisions; not so reckless in our actions. In that sense, many people do change in that way when they become breadwinners and parents.... but then, a great many middle-aged people who can finally afford it, do make bad investments and take risky holidays and dump old reliable partners for exciting new ones. 

Would society stagnate? In what way(s)? Or grow more stable? In what way(s)? How do you measure the difference?

An-y-way, if we assume the tenfold increase in lifespan corresponds to the same pattern of aging, we'd be looking at 3-400 years of being old. No, I don't think we'd grow less tolerant in the five centuries of effective adulthood. It's more likely that we'd institute a far more robust social safety net, universal health insurance, excellent retirement communities. We'd be very much more careful what poisons we put in our environment and what resources we waste, because we'd still be here when the piper submitted his bill. We might have long-slow wars of strategy instead of fast explosive ones.

And nobody would get a gerbil or goldfish as a pet. Tortoises, maybe.  

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Peterkin
afterthought

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

We might have long-slow wars of strategy instead of fast explosive ones.

I suspect the young folks would balk at going to war for the old folks much more than they currently do.

There would be a shift in other motivations, too, since you aren't likely to get an inheritance if you are only ~30 years younger than your parents. As far as a social safety net goes, who pays for it? How would an economy sustain itself if you only worked until you are ~70 and then spent 900+ years trying to not go broke?

[MigL]

"What would happen to our society, if we live for a millenia?"

We'd get bored ...

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

I suspect the young folks would balk at going to war for the old folks much more than they currently do.

Why haven't they always?

If, as I stipulated, the proportions of life-cycle are the same as now, the relationship of young to middle aged to old don't change. The sad and awful truth is, they want to go to war - in fact the 15-25's (in the new math,  that would be 150-250) are about the only ones who do - and they're never doing it for the old folks. They're doing it for patriotic or religious fervour, for glory, adventure, for the gang ('part of something greater than myself') and for the peer status.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

There would be a shift in other motivations, too, since you aren't likely to get an inheritance if you are only ~30 years younger than your parents.

6-800 years younger. And there won't be much to inherit, because long-lived people have a lot more time to make mature decisions about their economy. They might even establish a stable one, with no policy changes every four to eight years.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

How would an economy sustain itself if you only worked until you are ~70 and then spent 900+ years trying to not go broke?

It wouldn't. At 70, they would be in Grade 1. They wouldn't start working until 180-260, and not retire until 700+ because with universal health-care - and all the extra time researchers would have to perfect new drugs and treatments - they would be strong and healthy much longer.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Peterkin

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

6-800 years younger. And there won't be much to inherit, because long-lived people have a lot more time to make mature decisions about their economy. They might even establish a stable one, with no policy changes every four to eight years.

This is why dimreepr needs to specify what the conditions of the thought experiment are; discussing different scenarios gets confusing.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

This is why dimreepr needs to specify what the conditions of the thought experiment are; discussing different scenarios gets confusing.

I guess. I couldn't see a world where people mature in 25, years grow old in 70, and then just keep on being old. If that were the case, every healthy person would be looking for excuses to euthanize their over-50 relatives - even if they just caught a cold.

So I just made up my own framework for longevity.

[dimreepr]

13 hours ago, swansont said:

This is why dimreepr needs to specify what the conditions of the thought experiment are; discussing different scenarios gets confusing.

I was wondering how much older we'd need to get for the stagnation of 'our' society to occur/be assured? I just needed the help of all the poster's here to focus my question (because I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, hence the simple start).

[Peterkin]

21 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

was wondering how much older we'd need to get for the stagnation of 'our' society to occur/be assured?

Can you define stagnation in a society?

[swansont]

34 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I was wondering how much older we'd need to get for the stagnation of 'our' society to occur/be assured? I just needed the help of all the poster's here to focus my question (because I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, hence the simple start).

How many people are in the healthcare industry, working in retirement communities and nursing homes?

Estimate how many people would be in these retirement communities if you increased the lifespan by X amount, and how many people would have to work to support this effect. These people would have to be culled from the unemployed and other aspects of society. I suspect you would have an almost immediate impact if you were able to extend life an additional 10 years, and then another 10, and so on. You would have to pay them more to pry them away from other jobs. There would be a push to automate some jobs to free up additional workers, but the economic strain would be quite stark - a lot more people would be outliving their retirement savings. If this happened gradually, as it already has to some extent, you'd see older people delaying retirement because they can't afford it. 

With more people, you need more food, and workers to do this. More of a lot of things, too. Pretty much all of our consumables get a higher demand.

At some point the burden of care would threaten other jobs necessary for the economy to thrive. You would stop using taxes to pay for certain things, like R&D, because it's needed for the social safety net. 

There's a flip side to this: in order for the longevity to increase, something must have happened, health-wise, to permit it. So maybe a little bit of the healthcare burden is relieved because you've e.g. cured cancer, and some of the the doctors, nurses and attendants can be shifted to geriatric care instead. But the millions of them that would be needed have to come from somewhere.

[Sensei]

On 6/13/2022 at 4:26 PM, dimreepr said:

would slow down the progress of society

...what do you mean by "progress of society".. ?
 

...when you're at the top, the decline is swift and inevitable....

 

Quite innocent average Russian mans in just a few weeks were turned into mass murderers, war criminals, torturing people before killing them, raping women, children, elders...

Were they pedophiles under the skin, dreaming of total freedom without inhibition or punishment, or was it their "leader" V.P. who set them up that way... ?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571

"The survivors had extremely little food"

"Knowing that rescue efforts had been called off and faced with starvation and death, those still alive agreed that, should they die, the others might consume their bodies to live. With no choice, the survivors ate the bodies of their dead friends."

"The group survived by collectively deciding to eat flesh from the bodies of their dead comrades. This decision was not taken lightly, as most of the dead were classmates, close friends, or relatives."

"They dried the meat in the sun, which made it more palatable. They were initially so revolted by the experience that they could eat only skin, muscle and fat. When the supply of flesh was diminished, they also ate hearts, lungs and even brains^."