The readings that will be analyzed here raise some important philosophical questions regarding the prospects of increased longevity and its compliance with different concepts of time. The central dilemma, in this context, relates to defining whether an artificially extended longevity should be regarded as an unconditional virtue or whether it is a phenomenon that brings more concerns than solutions. In his article, Helman (2005) argues that “cultural concepts of aging are closely related to cultural concepts of time” and points at the critical discrepancy between Asian and Western perception of time (p. 54). It follows, then, that an attempt to understand the implications of increased longevity irrelatively to the cultural context is a misleading one because such an approach fails to reckon with some important cultural underpinning.
For example, if we try to approach increased longevity from the perspective of the traditional Asian culture, we need to take into account that this culture perceives time to be cyclical (Helman, 2005). In this regard, both practical and spiritual value of prolonging life seems to be unclear for life is believed to be endless due to the existence of such phenomenon as reincarnation. Therefore, the mere idea of increasing longevity is incompliant with the Asian worldview. On the contrary, if we approach increased longevity from the standpoint of the classic Western culture, the idea of prolonging human life seems to be justified. Thus, Helman (2005) explains that Western culture suggests that time is linear what means that life is identified with a “drama enacted on a single stage, with no repeat performances” (p. 54). In this regard, an attempt to increase longevity is, in fact, an attempt to provide people with more time to work on their “performances”.
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Another question that arises after studying the given readings relates to the potential consequences of increased longevity. In his article, Helman (2005) mainly focuses on the physical or objective consequences such as the proportional development of chronic diseases, increasing contradictions between generations, etc. While these consequences are of great importance, it seems to be equally meaningful to understand the individual or subjective consequences of prolonged longevity. Otherwise stated, it seems to be critical to determine whether all the existing attempts to prolong human lifespan are only focused on the physical aspects (helping people to live longer) or are likewise concerned about the ethical side (ensuring that this prolonged life is good). In his video, Burns (2015) suggests differentiating between those things that bring joy and those that bring depth to our lives arguing that these are the latter that constitute the basis of a truly good life. This idea seems to be particularly important to me – if we apply Burn’s thesis to the analyzed readings, it turns out that the focus of the further discussion on increased longevity should be shifted from trying to predict the physical outcomes to trying to understand how to establish the balance between the life’s length and its quality.
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