The sun shone brightly over Arthur’s modest suburban bungalow located in a quiet cul-de-sac on the outskirts of the city. “How fitting!” he thought to himself, that the weather had turned out so beautifully on this, the biggest day of his life since the day of his birth 99 years, 364 days earlier, on June 7, 2244. He put on his Sunday best just in time to greet his guests as they began to arrive in the early after noon. The guests included Arthur’s younger sister and his three children, along with an assortment of grandchildren, nieces, nephews and close friends, some of whom had made the trip from overseas to be with Arthur on his big day. The one conspicuous absence was that of Arthur’s wife, who tragically died in a boating accident 3 years earlier. Otherwise, the couple would surely have chosen to undertake this evening’s journey together.
Over dinner, the family shared their best memories of Arthur. As they recounted their own, and listened to others’ stories, some laughed, others just smiled pensively, and a few even cried. Each person made sure to emphasize what a positive impact he’d had on them. One of the more studious grandchildren took it upon himself to make a slideshow of family photos, which he presented on the computer his parents had bought for him that Christmas.
Through it all, Arthur remained somber without showing too much emotion. It was clear that while he was prepared for what awaited him, the gravity of the situation prevented him from being his normal cheerful self.
As the afternoon drew to a close, all the guests filed out and one by one they all shared an emotional good-bye embrace with the old man. Only minutes after the last guest drove off, there was a knock at the door. Arthur knew who it was. He calmly put on his shoes and opened to door to greet the government agent who had come to take him to his scheduled execution. Just as planned, this was the day that Arthur, and thousands like him across the country would have their lives ended in order to make way for future generations.
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The above allegory is a fictional scenario based on a future world in which human beings, absent some catastrophic accident or deliberate intervention, live forever. Medical science has advanced to the stage where even severe gunshot wounds can be repaired, and diseases that currently equal a death sentence, can be completely cured or vaccinated against at birth. Stem cell technology has drastically transformed the way we age and the physical deterioration associated with old age has become a thing of the past.
As it stands today, individuals, corporations and governments spend billions (if not trillions) of dollars trying to find cures and solutions to any and everything that threatens to bring about the end of life. One need only look at how far medical science and technology have progressed in the past few generations to see that these efforts are bearing fruit. Diseases like polio that once caused millions of North American children to be bed-ridden for moths at a time, have now been virtually eradicated in the Western world. More recently, chicken pox, which was a rite of passage when I was a child, has become a relic that is basically unheard of in today’s elementary schools. It all makes me wonder, is it possible that the hypothetical scenario I’ve just described could one day become a reality?
If humans were able to live forever, there would have to be a major paradigm shift in the way we view life and death. Those who subscribe to Malthusian economic theory would probably advocate for a system of voluntary (or mandatory) executions in order to avoid overpopulation and make sure that we don’t completely exhaust the resources of the only inhabitable planet that is accessible to us.
However, for better or for worse, that day is a long way away. But in the mean time, it does kind of make you think.
