Ageing vs longevity

What a great interview with folks who are actually trying to solve the problem of ageing better, not just living longer!

1. The life course is a social, cultural construction. We can put these extra years anywhere we want, and we can then begin to chart a course forward that identifies the challenges that come about because of longer lives and start finding solutions. It should not be focused only on old age. Rather we need to envision healthy, engaged century-long lives and modify the world so that most people achieve them.

2. Our educational systems were built for young people. We didn’t have public education in the United States until the early 20th century, and initially states required children to complete only a few years of school. Now high school is the end of required education, when you’re reaching 17 or 18 years old. Even if you extend your formal education into your mid-20s, that doesn’t make sense if your working life extends for many decades, especially during a historical time when information generation and technological advances are so rapid.
It did make sense, however, if you were going to live to 50, which was the case at the beginning of the 20th century. It made sense to follow those kinds of norms: get an education early; get a job; work like a dog; retire, if you’re lucky, for a couple years; and then die. You try to make sure your kids survive, and you launch them off to start their own families, and so on. Again, it made a lot of sense for lives half as long as the ones we have. But if we’re going to live for 100 years, we’re going to work a lot longer. That means we need to learn a lot longer, and we should rethink what the educational system is about. We need to continue to learn throughout our lives.

3. When you take on a big social problem, whether it’s policing or the need for deep culture change around longevity, there isn’t a single discipline that’s going to solve it. There isn’t one expert who knows the answer. It takes multiple voices and perspectives to solve it and still more to implement needed changes. I think you’re exactly right that when people try to set up multidisciplinary programs in a generic way, it often fails. I think that’s because people struggle to talk across their languages, views, and perspectives.

4. The opportunity here is enormous. Longer lives mean we have more time to spend with our loved ones, to chase our dreams, to realize our goals. Living longer is a terrifically wonderful gift. We have this extra time, and it’s really up to us find ways to make sure it improves quality of life at all ages and stages. The great thing about this challenge is that if we address it, life gets even better at all stages. But we need to be creative and think out of the box. If we do, we can make century-long lives the best thing that ever happened to us.