You can't always get what you want. You get what you need, oh yeah

Tom Cruise's character keeps talking about an "Ellie" in the movie Vanilla Sky. Thanks to a therapist, we then get to find out that it is not a woman's name, but L.E., which refers to Life Extension.  I don't want to reveal any more about the movie in case you have never watched it.  (It is not any classic; shrug your shoulders and move on!)

We humans seem to be increasingly obsessed with extending our life spans.  Keep in mind that the life span is different from life expectancy.  My favorite example to highlight this is Socrates--the philosopher, not the soccer player.  Socrates lived 2,500 years ago, and died at about 71 years of age.  He would have lived for more years had he not been given the death sentence.

Over the past 2,500 years, and especially over the last 200 years, we have dramatically increased the average life expectancy across the world.  More and more people make it to old age than ever before.   The life span revolution is only beginning:

[It] may be possible to lengthen lifespans further if improvements in health at the highest ages can be realised and if high quality elderly care is widely available. Indeed, if this is so, then the human longevity revolution is set to continue for some time still.   

I am in quite a minority when I look forward to the end at 75.  At some time, we have to die.  How much farther do we want to push this expiration date?  (And that is explored in Vanilla Sky.)

If the life in your years is supposed to matter more than the years in your life, it might feel like modern humanity has backed itself into a corner.

With an extension in our life span, with more years in our lives, what are we going to do with that time?  Catch up on sleep that we missed out on when working like a dog in the younger years?  Watch stupefying entertainment in three devices at the same time? Travel to the moon?

“The time has arrived in our modern era to stop trying to make us live longer ... Instead, we should just focus in on health extension rather than life extension.”

Makes sense to me.

Be careful about what you wish for:

"You don't want to live to be over 100 years old if the last 20 years of your life are spent in pain and sickness," Olshansky said. "Ideally, you want to compress the years of decay and disease -- what I call the 'red zone' -- into as few as possible at the very end of life. We should not continue to pursue life extension without considering the health consequences of living longer lives."

After 75, the probability of the "red zone" vastly increases, I would think.  Would you prefer to be in the red zone for a few years rather than exiting?