Mysterious

Due to Humans short life spans, its relatively easy for change to come in society once the older, traditional, conservative genrations die off. But what if humans lived far longer, would society, culture, way of living, values, ethics, morals, etc. be fixed, harder to break, change? Would a extremely long life expectancy be beneficial or harmful to society?

We believe mankind Sin is why our lifespans are so short. in order to create constant change, progress, and liberal thinking in society, there has to be constant dying of older generations and replacing them with new.

In other words, if humans lived far longer, society today may still have school and racial segregation, young children working in hazardous factories for long hours, women inequality, abuse, discrimination, and mistreatment, extreme environmental pollution, no job or living wages, rights, freedom, or say so thus extremely polorized society, weak government and legal system, or other major problems...?

Mysterious

Can anybody please explain how life expectancy, death/birth impact society eg socially, economically, philosophically, culurally, etc. Does a longer life expectancy always imply that society's current REALITY will remain intact longer due to the fact that older people tend to be more conservative, resistant to change?

S.C.Carlson

Sounds like a good topic for science/speculative fiction. Maybe it's been done before.

Toto

Older people are not necessarily more conservative, and sometimes it appears that the younger generation is just intent on repeating the same mistakes all over again, ignoring the hard lessons of experience of previous generations. So a longer lived population might make more progress. Progress might come from people living past the time when they have devote their energies to courtship, childrearing, and other basics, and have the leisure to evaluate life.

I don't see a Biblical Criticism angle here, although it appears to have been inspired by the thread on Biblical or even much of a religious angle. Lets try the new Social and Political Theory forum.

deadman_932

There's (of course) a lot of ruminations on this in science fiction. Heinlein. Avram Davidson, Zelazny, and others--hell, even George Bernard Shaw wrote "Back to Methuselah." You'll need to halt multiple aspects of senescence/deterioration to prevent winding up a really old mumbling poop sack. Transference to some kind of digital enters in there, rejuvenation, etc.

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue30/extend.html .
Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy. George Slusser, Gary Westfahl & Eric S. Rabkin (eds.) University of Georgia Press. 1996

Angra Mainyu

If I have to speculate, a change would be that policies severely restricting reproduction would become acceptable - alternatively, there would be armed conflicts between those claiming to have the right to have as many children as they choose, and those trying to impose strict limitations.

So, yes, dominant moralities would have to change, at least in much of the world.

Mysterious

You are correct. There would have to population control measures. But the problem here is that over-population is not neccessarily a problem. If educated, strong minded, comptent, high income, devoted, outgoing community oriented, etc people are having children, society would NOT BE WORSE OFF BY HAVING LARGER POPULATION. There is still much room for more people.

The problem is these low educated, low minded, arrogant, social and cultural deviants that only care about their own are having children, society will have severe troubles.

As far as the dominant moralities, yes they would have to change.

Trout

People would probably be so bored after 300 years of the same crap that they would become liberal heathens with no loyalty to any constructed reality like a nation, religion or corporation. Sounds bloody awesome.

Angra Mainyu

But there isn't enough room for so many. Suppose a person has, on average, a kid each 100 years. That would mean a tenfold increase in population in 1000 years, if the sons and daughters of the original ones didn't reproduce, but if they did at the assumed rate (1 child a century), the numbers would grow much faster (too lazy to do the math now , but you get the idea).

Then again, after 1000 years, society would be so unrecognizable that it's hard to even speculate on what else would change.

Wretchosoft

I would probably kill myself. 1000 years on this planet? With these people? Damn!