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Why People Don't Live Past 114
kkleiner writes "Average life expectancy has nearly doubled in developed countries over the 20th century. But a puzzling part to the equation has emerged. While humans are in fact living longer lives on average, the oldest age that the oldest people reach seems to be stubbornly and oddly precisely cemented right at 114. What will it take for humans to live beyond this limit?"
No one likes the idea of dying, but I think we might be less traumatized by it if we felt our time on earth meant something. Let's face it, working a McJob, fighting with an unfaithful spouse, buying lots of crap on Amazon.com and cheering for corporate football teams just doesn't make us "feel alive."
Bible verse by Anonymous Coward modded Informative... Obviously the Jehovah's Witnesses won the Wheel of Mod spin today.
I8-D
Personally, I would happily be immortal.
To want to die is insanely stupid IMHO.
As for suffering, I suffer every day. I'd still rather live forever suffering those pains, than die.
Even the sort of fairy-tale immortal where I cannot die. Even if I were sucked in to a blackhole and left there for millions of years till it evaporated, I'd still rather exist than UNexist. To become infinitely nothing, lesser even, is the most frightening thing in existence.
You sir, have managed to master the art of numerology. And what an art it is. It can find anything relates to any number, and those numbers can relate to other things, to positively prove that any two completely unrelated things are equal and tied through destiny, predetermination, or that some deity has made himself known through an image of a dead guy on your grilled cheese sandwich.
That's also why I stopped eating grilled cheese sandwiches. But they did sell nicely on eBay to religious nuts.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The real question is this: If the fruit of knowledge is how Adam gained the understanding of what is good and what is evil, how on earth was he supposed to know that disobeying the big guy was wrong? And my understanding isn't that he was banished as punishment, but rather, as a pre-emptive strike so that he didn't think too hard about what the "Tree of Life" would mean. Wait a minute - tree of life - the tree that granted immortality? Guess Adam wasn't going to live forever to begin with after all, or else the big guy wouldn't have put that tree there or cared! ... Why the hell did he put either tree in the garden? What was the purpose?
To catch someone who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong doing something wrong?
What the hell kind of Poseidon-as-a-horse-copulating-with-a-Nereid nonsense is this??
No, this is;
Roy Batty: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. :)
Has to be watched again. I'm always just utterly gobsmacked when he lets the dove go, then dies on the roof.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.