My immediate response is that it would be amazing to live a very long life, but then the quantifiers come in. Would it be a long, healthy life? Or are we theorizing about life as it is currently, since becoming a centenarian isn’t such an uncommon or out-of-reach prospect anymore?

Centenarian Expectations

If we’re imagining the latter – long life, but maybe about a third of it in a state of protracted minimized energy and ability, it would still be a wonderful prospect, but the benefits are different than if we’re talking about humanity becoming much more long-lived, such as becoming multi-centenarians.

Should I live to be 100+ years old, I hope to be in a healthy, capable state until close to 90 years old. I could maintain a beautiful garden, maybe continue to teach or contribute at a community center, hold babies, read and write. It would be so fun to travel the world too, something I always imagine doing but haven’t prioritized time or money toward. I could meet and nurture any potential great-grandchildren, or find some programs to volunteer with that help children. I’d still want to be out in nature as much as possible, and maybe with my time I could also contribute more to society or lobbying for positive changes in government and our laws.

I can’t really imagine any downsides of living to be 100-120. I’m sure as one ages the body becomes less able, more frail, but it seems like it might also be a more peaceful way of living. Maybe I’m idealizing based on my post-op experience, but I think as people age, experience makes them wiser and affords them more patience. If the mind is still lively, the slower body isn’t necessarily limiting, it only redirects where effort is applied. I have this idea in mind from time spent with my grandparents, as well as my in-laws. My grandparents were very intellectual, still read tons in their more advanced years and were very philosophical. My in-laws have used their retirement to affect societal change; they petitioned to have the death penalty removed from Washington state and still regularly participate in conferences for non-violent peace efforts, traveling to train communities about peaceful resistance.

Possibilities of Multi-Centenarian Status

It’s a bit of a challenge to imagine living until two or three hundred, because that is so far from the current expectations. Living that long, I’d hope it meant that the first hundred years encapsulated our youth, so that turning 100 would be the equivalent of turning 25. There are so many implications to a life expanded thus; for starters, I wonder with some distaste whether that would means the years in diapers are extended, although it wouldn’t be terribly much longer, given that it’s at most 4 years people spend in diapers with our real life span. Then I consider how long the awful awkwardness, uncertainty and lack of kindness endemic to middle school would last, and would it affect people’s abilities to make it through those years? Many people I know don’t have fond memories of high school; I would say for me it had its ups and downs and its dramas, but overall I liked high school. If I had to do it again, I would.

The real meat & potatoes of a longer life would start in the second centennial, when a person spends the majority of their time as a full-fledged, capable adult. With such longer life spans, socioeconomic structures would have to change as well! I’m sure social security couldn’t exist the way it does currently; perhaps we’d have some systems in place to develop a person’s individual means, so that they are able to have sufficient income for their later years. Could we maintain current systems, but just set them up to endure for longer amounts of time? This is a huge question that necessitates its own exploration.

Age 100-200 is when I imagine people would be able to adventure and explore. How amazing would it be, if one could not only choose to go to another country or biome, but another planet or part of the ecosystem?! What if there were oceanic colonies, documenting life undersea? I bet biological modification would be a whole vein of health/wellness options, for those who wanted gills to deep dive or pressurized suits to pass the stratosphere.

One of the biggest benefits of longer lives, it seems to me, would be the ability to retain and pass on greater amounts of knowledge. Humankind as a race could think much more long-term and big-picture, and be able to develop ideas for so much longer than currently, I think progress would happen in larger steps than nowadays. I would hope that with such a radically different perspective, humans would also develop ways of living that carry greater social and environmental considerations. It’s one of the saddest mistakes we continue making throughout history, that humans want to make more money, faster, but there is still a lack of consideration for the possible ramifications, both in the future as consequences and as immediate effects on our natural world and other peoples.

A Bit of Both

I actually think that people have a chance at getting to multi-centenarian life expectancies, IF we as a race manage to attain a stronger balance throughout every area of our lives right now. I don’t believe there have to be class systems, haves and have-nots, in order for societies to grow. I think, if anything, our brains need to be expanded somehow, so that we can better grasp how our individual actions will affect others, and we can appreciate that some jobs may be gross or undesirable, but everyone has to do them for the greater good. We could rotate jobs in society, so that again, everyone appreciates the value of all types of work. There wouldn’t necessarily have to be rotations through all fields of work – for example, I’d likely be a terrible accountant, but if I’m growing food for a few years, processing it a few others, making sure farmers get paid as another job – I’d have a much stronger understanding of everything that goes into people simply being fed.

Experience wouldn’t be the only factor toward a more egalitarian society, though. Somehow, the results would also need to be more immediate for the value to be appreciated, I believe. Perhaps there’s an inherent balance into shared work and longer lives; with those two elements, technology could develop faster, and be more helpful to completing tasks. Maybe we could vertically stack crops and apply robots to help with some of the maintenance jobs.

I realize that society is complex, as are people, and there may never well be something close to utopia. I’m sure there are pieces I didn’t touch upon here, but it sure is fun to imagine!