Wednesday 5 December 2007

Pic of the day: If this picture looks familiar, it is because I used the full-color version on November 26. But I did not find it relevant to mention, back then, one disturbing detail: The young man is her great-grandson. Yes, those hearts are a sign of romantic attraction. For now, it's just a game. But for how long?

Longevity and incest

Last I read (some weeks ago) the average life expectancy was still increasing with 5 hours a day even in the civilized world. Admittedly many people spend the last of those years in pain, humiliation and severe mental dysfunction. But the active, healthy years are also expanding. And they seem set to expand again if recent experiments on Alzheimer's' patients can be replicated. It is a race against time, but a cure for senile dementia may be at hand before I need it, or more likely before most of my friends do. Being fully alert means you are able to take care of yourself in various other ways as well, taking your medication on time, avoiding risky behavior (like trying to feed the chickens on the superhighway) and generally keeping in shape.

The land is already swarming with sexy 60-year-olds. By the time some of you are 80, you may still be pretty attractive. You may not mind a 20- year-old getting more than a little distracted, I bet. Except if it's a direct descendant.

Fantasy and science fiction novels should have covered this topic already, but for some reason I can't remember any of them doing so. It is not unusual for wizards to live a few centuries, but most of them seem to not have descendants at all, or indeed any interest in the opposite sex. Besides, they look old unless they cast a spell of glamor, so the problem is neatly evaded. (I also take this approach in my Lightwielder stories. The effect that slows down aging increases exponentially with Affinity, so it is barely noticeable until you have channeled a lot, and it never actually reverses aging.

Science fiction often is set in a future where the technology should be able to extend life, but the stories tend to concentrate on young people. (With a few exceptions, Louis Wu coming to mind. Larry Niven specifically brings up extreme life extension due to a chemical related to Tree of Life, but I don't remember him bringing up any of the ethical challenges. I may need to read more Niven to say for sure, though. Or you could just tell me.)

It is generally assumed, I think, that if humans stay young for a longer time, they will wait longer to reproduce. This is largely true for our own civilization. The average age for first childbirth has kept creeping upward. But there are, as you know, exceptions, and there is no law neither of nature nor of government to stop people from having kids at 20, grandkids at 40, great-grandkids at 60 and great-great-grandkids at 80. If, as seems like, the 80-year-olds of the Near Future are still healthy, and if the families continue to drift apart, they could well meet a 20 year old great-grandchild during travel without recognizing them on sight. Or even if they did recognize them, there may be no instinctive feeling of family. After all, these people only share 12.5% of your genes. They could look like they belonged to a different ethnic group entirely.

So... would it be Just Plain Wrong to pursue a romantic relationship?

For those who think kissing cousins is a bad thing, the answer will surely be yes. The rest may have a hard time defending it, but probably will also feel deep down that it is Just Plain Wrong to dally with descendants. Or ascendants. (Progenitors, actually, but I am amused by the vagaries of the English language.)

But what if we were to actually achieve negligible senescence? If you meet your great-great-great-great-grandchild and haven't seen them in 120 years? Obviously I am attempting a reduction ad absurdum here. But in the unlikely case that it happens (I don't think so myself) you will have to live with it.

Of course, this is a pretty small ethical problem compared to some others that follow from negligible senescence. Most notably, will we allow certain families to breed freely, eventually making up a significant portion of the world populace, simply because their religion requires it or because they consider themselves superior? If we do, what effects will this have on democracy?

There are a lot of things we haven't even begun to think about. Which may be just as well, because I don't believe that extreme longevity will happen at our current mostly ape-like stage of development. It would not even necessarily be a good thing. It is important for us to move on to our next phase in cultural development, where each of us no longer identifies intensely with this particular body and its genome. This spells the end for Eros and the rise of Agape... which solves the whole great-grandchild dilemma. And many others as well.