Many argue that aging is the ultimate disease and that we should extend human life for as long as possible through medicine and bio-enhancements. This is a fundamental mistake, writes Santiago Zabala. Aging is necessary to make our lives meaningful and so for our very existence .

In this age of disruptive innovation—where only the new, profitable, and productive is valued—aging can become a remedy to a culture excessively preoccupied with the future. Indifference, irresponsibility, and ingenuousness usually result from a failure of memory, which is symptomatic of such supposedly disruptive innovators as Mark Zuckerberg and Vinod Khosla. Even though they believe “young people are just smarter” because those “over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas,” a recent “rigorous study that looked at 2.7 million company founders, economists at MIT, the US Census Bureau, and Northwestern University concluded the best entrepreneurs are middle-aged.” Plato and Kant already contemplated how the order of kinds of knowledge was supposed to follow that of ages. Plato believed that the leadership of the republic had to be reserved to the elders who could contemplate the Good and guide citizens toward a higher degree of humanity, and Kant thought that at least sixty years were necessary to form a philosopher able to write anything original. Leaving aside exceptions— Michel Foucault died at fifty-seven—the issue today is that aging is still treated as a problem, which Simone de Beauvoir noticed half a century ago.

According to the French philosopher, “old age is not, in itself or necessarily a problem, though part of the problem of old age is that we treat it as if it is.” This was true not only in 1970 when La vieillesse (Old Age), was published, but also today as is illustrated by a recent special issue of the MIT Technology Review titled “Old Age Is Over! If You Want It.” The editor explains that the issue “is about big advances in longevity medicine that may be coming soon.” Predictably, the predominant tone of the articles (“What If Aging Were a Disease?” “Old Age Is a Waste,” “The Anti-Aging Drug That’s Just Around the Corner”) cites aging as a problem that we can solve through technological interventions. In recent years several Silicon Valley billionaires have begun funding companies (AgeX Therapeutics, Human Longevity, and many others) that specialize in developing methods for slowing or preventing aging, something that they in particular (but some of us also) desire.

The wish to extend the human lifespan has a long tradition in many cultures and religions. Science has turned this wish into reality

 The wish to extend the human lifespan has a long tradition in many cultures and religions. Science has turned this wish into reality as the simple difference between life expectancy between African and European countries demonstrates. In a number of countries south of the Sahara life expectancy is less than forty years, but in central Europe it’s seventy to eighty years. The causes of this inequality exceed the strictly medical realm; structural and sociological features play an important part. But difference in life expectancy also occurs within developed countries, where the opportunity to live is determined by race and class. “In Chicago, the city with the largest disparity, life expectancy varied by up to 30.1 years, and in both Washington, D.C. and New York City it varied by more than 27 years.” A recent study examining Australians’ life expectancy found people living in outer regional and or remote areas had premature death rates about 40 percent higher than those in major cities.