the perils of longevity

       Few would object to the last century’s extensions in life expectancy or significant gains in healthspan, but hesitations creep in when the numbers grow well beyond previous natural limits.

      Jorge Luis Borges, the brilliant author, penned a short story called “The Immortal,” in which a Roman soldier obtains immortality, realizes its horror, then toils for centuries in agony, searching for a mechanism to restore his finiteness. He finally returns to mortality, evidenced by a drop of blood pooling on his hand after scratching a thorny tree. “Incredulous, speechless, and in joy,” he celebrates the renewed prospect of death.

      Perhaps the greatest fictional immortal being is Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, from the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide series. After being made immortal by “an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands,” Wowbagger eventually soured on life. 

      “To begin with it was fun; he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
      “In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”

      This is an excerpt from the Substack of Brian Klaas, an associate professor of global politics at University College London. An earlier, related excerpt explained why the increase in life expectancy is slowing.