We don’t have to age and die (apart from accidents and disease). There is no intrinsic biological reason for ageing. Biologically there is no reason why we cannot live for ever as youthful creatures.
Yet we don’t. Once we pass our teens attrition begins to set in. Our tissues age. Cells die and organs don’t work as efficiently. As Bob Dylan said – ‘He not busy being born is busy dying’.
There must be a good biological reason for this and there is.
We are born, we grown, mature and then we age, decay and die.
The reason is quite simple. We are programmed to reproduce and bring up our children. Once we have done that our job is done. After that we are taking up valuable resources that our children need in order to survive. Biologically why waste good food on people who are no longer going to reproduce. Best to get them out of the way and give our kids a better chance.
By replacing one generation with another we enable mutation and evolution to occur. That enables us as a species to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
In actual fact the only biological reason for living as long as we do is that, as grandparents, we do a valuable service of helping look after the grandchildren. If not for that role we’d be popping our clogs in our forties and fifties.
Being biologically redundant is the sting.
Good grief… biologically redundant! Okay, Opher, do that redesign thing so we can all live forever. But then again, the overcrowding would be unbelievable. We could colonize other planets…
We could just stop having children?