Assuming I Live To Eighty
By: William Constitution O'Rights
The First Immortal
Assuming I live to eighty, will I adapt to future strangeness any better than someone born eighty years ago?
All of us have some tendency to deny the possibility that time may leave us permanently stranded along the wayside. All of us, at one moment or another, have condemned the previous generations mind set as wrong headed and the next generation’s attitudes as irresponsible. Inevitably, someone will someday consider my current opinions hopelessly out of date. How well will I survive my relative obsolescence?
I accept the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe such freedoms also include the freedom to die, the freedom to starve, and the freedom to feel disappointment. I do not believe in sustentative rights, such as the right to free healthcare, the right to receive food you haven’t earned, the right to have a job simply because you’re breathing.
Of course I can imagine acting as though I believed in sustentative rights. If I were hungry and penniless, I would probably beg for a hand-out. Still I would know that I was living off the kindness of strangers. I doubt if I could convince myself that society owed me sustenance for no other reason than the fact of my existence.
But let’s jump ahead one pretend century or so.
I awaken from cryonic suspension to find that U.S. society’s nascent belief in sustentative rights has grown to encompass all aspects of life. Not only does every citizen have the right to healthcare, food, and work, but he also takes for granted his right to housing, clothing, and entertainment! A young person could spend his entire life playing in government sponsored virtual reality, without a moment’s thought about how he will earn a living or better himself. As far as I can discern, ninety percent of the population sits around on its lazy collective butt and happily vegetates.
What’s the point in all this I might ask myself. Why do we need fifty billion worthless drooling idiots taking up space on this planet?
This question would have no meaning because the circumstances of my youth no longer exist. Throughout the 21st century, advances in computers, communications, manufacturing, and power systems created a social system with more wealth than any other in history. Technology gradually made food, clothing, shelter, and even entertainment so cheap that governments could dole out these items as easily as they used to mail out tax forms. The vast majority of people did indeed choose to spend their lives in nothing more ambitious than consumption and reproduction, though a significant (if ridiculed) handful continued to strive, learn, and expand the possibilities of humanity.
And who could blame slackers for taking advantage of the bounty? No law of physics compels humans to labor for their daily bread. Are digging ditches and shuffling papers fundamentally more important than napping and playing games?
Maybe this sketchy future bears no resemblance to what will come to pass, but social conditions will change drastically over the next century.
Live Long and Well
William Constitution O'Rights
The First Immortal
