Look at all the ailments old age brings with it, from physical frailness to dementia, and the fact that people may have to spend decades in nursery homes when they’d rather be living independent lives.
I spent a year working at a service home. This was a private institution with motivated staff, a good staff-to-customer ratio and customers who were all relatively physically fit. Yet few of them really seemed happy with their circumstances. I’m pretty sure they would all have preferred to be in a better shape.
According to The Happiness Hypothesis, the five external circumstances affecting your happiness are noise, commuting, lack of control, shame and relationships. A declining physical condition reduces your control and may cause you to experience feelings of shame due to your helplessness. It also erodes your relationships as the people you know die and it gets harder to go meet the living ones, and you have less energy to make new friends.
Age-related decline is one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in our age.
Perhaps I should rephrase it. It’s quite likely that death cuts our total productivity in half, if not worse. Its cost dwarfs that of every government put together. It’s just not the end of the world.
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but death has indeed been the subjective end of the world for everyone not currently alive. If someone wants to save the world for the sake of its people (not just for its own sake), then it is needed that they don’t die.
Look at all the ailments old age brings with it, from physical frailness to dementia, and the fact that people may have to spend decades in nursery homes when they’d rather be living independent lives.
I spent a year working at a service home. This was a private institution with motivated staff, a good staff-to-customer ratio and customers who were all relatively physically fit. Yet few of them really seemed happy with their circumstances. I’m pretty sure they would all have preferred to be in a better shape.
According to The Happiness Hypothesis, the five external circumstances affecting your happiness are noise, commuting, lack of control, shame and relationships. A declining physical condition reduces your control and may cause you to experience feelings of shame due to your helplessness. It also erodes your relationships as the people you know die and it gets harder to go meet the living ones, and you have less energy to make new friends.
Age-related decline is one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in our age.
What goes before the comma?
Fixed, thanks.
That’s what I meant about it being expensive.
Perhaps I should rephrase it. It’s quite likely that death cuts our total productivity in half, if not worse. Its cost dwarfs that of every government put together. It’s just not the end of the world.
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but death has indeed been the subjective end of the world for everyone not currently alive. If someone wants to save the world for the sake of its people (not just for its own sake), then it is needed that they don’t die.