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Positive Aspects of Radical Life Extension #1
Posted by
thughes
,
08 April 2008
·
588 views
Life Extension and Transhumanism
I thought it might be interesting to examine what I think are some of the positive ways radical life extension will improve our current society.
First up:
1. Balancing Careers and Family
Right now, its unfortunate that everyone's most productive career building years tend to coincide with their most productive family building years. This is especially hard for women. Your typical career woman will have considerable downtime per child, even if she intends to return to work. Plus, many parents of both sexes find themselves missing important aspects of their children's early years by investing too much time in advancing in their careers while their children are young. They have little choice, however. They may not have time to advance their careers as they want if they wait until after their children leave home. So, for many it comes down to a choice: sacrifice quality of life with family, or sacrifice some of your dreams. Whether due to evolutionary biology or to current society, women are still hardest hit finding a balance, and proportionately more women will sacrifice some of their own dreams to stay at home, or limit their work hours, for their children, leading to at least a noticeable percentage of the current disparity in the higher levels of the work force.
Ambition is healthy, dreams are healthy, both help advance the world for all of us. Its a loss for everyone that people have to make such choices. Enter radical life extension. Now, there are a number of choices you can make: sacrifice time and advancement early on to have children young, or develop a strong career, build a large retirement fund, and leave work once you are ready to build your family.
This should also help the current disparity in the work force, something that is important for reducing those aspects of subtle prejudice we all know are still there, since familiarity should teach our subconscious better. It would be nice to reach a time and culture when the talented of both sexes can strive for the same things with equal chances of success, and still have a family and a healthy marriage. No more life changing choice of career or family.
I realize that with radical life extension there will likely be smaller families, but I suspect there will always be children around, at least in some number. Their childhoods should considerably better once we are no longer dying off too soon to balance them and careers both.
- Mey
First up:
1. Balancing Careers and Family
Right now, its unfortunate that everyone's most productive career building years tend to coincide with their most productive family building years. This is especially hard for women. Your typical career woman will have considerable downtime per child, even if she intends to return to work. Plus, many parents of both sexes find themselves missing important aspects of their children's early years by investing too much time in advancing in their careers while their children are young. They have little choice, however. They may not have time to advance their careers as they want if they wait until after their children leave home. So, for many it comes down to a choice: sacrifice quality of life with family, or sacrifice some of your dreams. Whether due to evolutionary biology or to current society, women are still hardest hit finding a balance, and proportionately more women will sacrifice some of their own dreams to stay at home, or limit their work hours, for their children, leading to at least a noticeable percentage of the current disparity in the higher levels of the work force.
Ambition is healthy, dreams are healthy, both help advance the world for all of us. Its a loss for everyone that people have to make such choices. Enter radical life extension. Now, there are a number of choices you can make: sacrifice time and advancement early on to have children young, or develop a strong career, build a large retirement fund, and leave work once you are ready to build your family.
This should also help the current disparity in the work force, something that is important for reducing those aspects of subtle prejudice we all know are still there, since familiarity should teach our subconscious better. It would be nice to reach a time and culture when the talented of both sexes can strive for the same things with equal chances of success, and still have a family and a healthy marriage. No more life changing choice of career or family.
I realize that with radical life extension there will likely be smaller families, but I suspect there will always be children around, at least in some number. Their childhoods should considerably better once we are no longer dying off too soon to balance them and careers both.
- Mey
