The meaning of a really long life

You know the three topics that should never come up in polite conversation: sex, politics, and religion.

Fortunately (or not), a blog is a very one-way sort of conversation. This blog, in particular, is definitely going to do some talking about religion. This entire area is incredibly fraught with peril, since there is so much room for offense... but that's a risk I'll have to take, and that's what the comments section is for. Don't like something here? Say so, please!

Most of the religion posts here will be about the uneasy interaction between religion as we know it and the world as it is becoming. Technology is rapidly changing a lot of fundamental human assumptions, and religion / spirituality is so tightly interwoven with humanity's history that there's a lot of tension between tradition and the coming changes. Yet, optimist that I am, it seems to me there's still room for more harmony than we often see. That's the space that interests me, and the space that I'll be blogging about here. (I'll say more in future posts about why that space interests me so.)

First topic: life extension.

There's no doubt that human life is getting longer. Exactly how much longer is still quite unclear. There are certainly no shortage of radical life extension researchers who are quite convinced that within the next forty or so years, medical science may extend human life by, say, an average of twenty to thirty years. And within the next twenty or thirty years after that, medical science could make even further leaps, extending human life by another twenty to thirty years. And, potentially, so on.

In other words, these researchers believe that if you are of an age to live another forty or so years in reasonably good health, then there's a chance that medical science could keep you living for a very long time indeed -- easily over a hundred years, and possibly quite a bit more.

I don't want to debate whether that possibility is realistic. I want to assume it is realistic, and talk about the consequences. Specifically, the spiritual implications. (Even if you don't think it'll happen that soon, it's certainly plausible given another few centuries of scientific development.)

One classic and frequently cited statement about religion is that it is one means of coming to terms with the inevitability of death. Personally I am a Unitarian Universalist, which means that I'm a member of a religion with no central creed or defining statement of belief. (I'll be blogging more about Unitarian Universalism, and about postmodern religion generally, later.) But even such an open-minded religion as this -- a religion with open-mindedness as practically its defining characteristic -- says straight up front, in The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, that confronting the reality of death is one of the key reasons the religion exists. Death, the statement is, gives meaning to life.

That's the central claim that I question here.

The historical inevitability of death has indeed been the source of many of the world's beliefs about what happens after death. These beliefs about the nature of post-death existence are always religious in nature, since they are necessarily matters of pure faith.

But there is another, and much more relevant to the living, component of religion. Religions are also guides to how we should live now. What is the best way to live? What gives meaning to life? I contend that many of the world's great religions -- those that teach compassion, charity, service, gratitude, and love -- are essentially teaching lessons that are not rooted in the inevitability of death.

Quite the contrary. If a religious perspective, or any perspective, gives meaning to life and helps enrich life, then that religious perspective could -- and should -- become even more meaningful the longer we live.

In other words, I don't see that a deeply meaningful life, one which is based on clear principles and a deep reverence for life, is necessarily rendered any lesser for being longer. I do not see that death gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life.

What death can do is force us to consider how we spend our life. If an unconsidered life is not worth living, and if death forces us to look at how we live and consider it, then the prospect of death can make life more worth living. But Lord knows there are countless people who live heedlessly and without consideration now, despite their impending deaths, and who may or may not ever reach a point of deeper harmony and peace with themselves and the world. For those people, death doesn't serve that purpose... or at least not until far too late.

Two other points: First, there are certainly a number of religions, especially fundamentalist ones, that believe that a better world lies beyond death. Suicidal zealots derive much of their motivation from an expectation that their sacrifice will be rewarded in heaven. So in those cases, arguably death makes life less meaningful.

Second, death confronts us with our limitations. But even in a world with hugely extended lifespan, our limitations remain. We will never know all there is to know; there will always (hopefully!) be billions of lives we will not live; we cannot see everything there is in the universe. Humility and awe -- reverence, as our minister named it in a recent sermon -- are emotions that any thoughtful being must feel, regardless of their lifespan.

So it seems to me that a religious foundation for life -- or perhaps I should say a compassionate and grateful foundation for life -- does not have to be grounded in the finitude of life. What gives meaning to life is how we live each day, not just how many days we live.

There are myriad other issues with indefinitely extended life, among them social justice (who gets to live longer? only the rich?), societal sustainability (what does it do to population pressure when people live much longer?), impact on the young (will young people become less common, less powerful, or both, in a world skewed towards the old?), and many more. Those are topics for future posts. I'm not saying that living longer is universally good; I'm just saying that it isn't inherently and intrinsically at odds with having a deeply fulfilling and meaningful life.