"It's the ciiiiiircle of life..." -- The Lion King

Lately I've been thinking about the cyclical nature of life. We spend work-hours in the office, which can often worsen our health, to gain money to spend on health care to artificially extend our lives so we can put in more work-hours before we reach old age (yes- I know that's a run on sentence, but I can't be bothered to fix it. I don't English).
Perhaps, this is a factor in why people working in high-stress, high-injury environments often to fail to amass any significant savings. Thus, their children are left without any beneficial funds to improve their education. They have to take up similar positions to their parents and repeat the process. With this in mind, it is an easy step to assume that poor families can find it hard to crawl out of a low socioeconomic status.
I'm strong believer in the transhumanist movement, but with this rotation of work and flagging health I'm starting to question the purpose of extending our lives beyond the natural capacity. Yes, if we augment ourselves with new technology, great people will live longer to possibly achieve even greater things, but what will this mean for us average joes? Will we go insane from the monotony of the cycle, or will we use the extra time to find a field we excel at and become great people ourselves?
----------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment