fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5472 ]

[ SECRET POST #5472 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5472 ⌋

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I feel like it doesn’t really make evolutionary sense for us to live more than 30 years or so. I know part of it is that we’ve invented medicine and things that lengthen lifespan because we’re terrified of death, but that only accounts for the way we all live to be frickin’ 90 now, not for the fact that we used to die at 50 and not 25. Why are our lives so drawn out? We’re helpless children for much longer than any other species. Then we lose the ability to feel happiness and just continue chugging along for decades and decades and why?

I’m personally not complaining.

If you're asking for the biological reasons behind the long childhoods, I have no idea, I assume it's how long it takes for our brains to be functional enough. If you're asking why we pushed to extend it even longer, as long as possible, it's because we wanted to. People want to live as long as they can, as long as they're living reasonably well. I think most people don't lose the ability to feel happiness. Well, depression and other mental illnesses are a thing, but a lot of them are treatable.

DA

We're born less developed and able to fend for ourselves than a lot of other mammal babies, because of our big brains and the way the human body is designed to walk upright. If we were born at the same developmental stage as, say, a puppy, our heads wouldn't fit though the pelvis. So all humans are born somewhat "premature."

There's evolutionary benefits for group survival and knowledge transfer

I'm pretty sure people were living into their 70s and 80s like 2000 years ago.

This.

It was easier to die young because of lack of sanitation or medical care, but if you avoided injury or disease then you'd have much the same lifespan as today.

DA

Yes THIS. People see a low "average lifespan" and think that people were normally dropping dead at 50. But the actual reason that number is so low is because so many babies and children died of diseases that we have vaccines and treatments for today.

Exactly. A lot of people did die young, because of injuries, illness or childbirth, but that doesn't mean that no one lived into their eighties or nineties, or even beyond. It just means that many, many people died young because life was dangerous and there were a lot of things that could and did kill most people before they got to that age.

And the industrial revolution was absolutely brutal on workers health. If we're wondering why so few working class people reached great age during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when our expectations about lifespans seemed to crystallise, it is because capitalism was literally killing them for profit.

Because we take so long to reach maturity, it means that it takes two generations worth of life to be able to teach the next generation what they know. The grand parent is still parenting the parent even as the parent breeds. That and we've been selectively breeding ourselves to be able to live longer too. There has been a subtle pressure, for a very many hundred years, to only have kids with people whose parents and grand parents lived long, and to not date people whose parents died young. Evolution is still happening to us, we're not immune to it.

Most people still live to about 80, not 90.

things that lengthen lifespan because we’re terrified of death

I don't think sick or very old people are afraid of death, they don't want to leave their loved ones. If you enjoy your family, why wouldn't you take the opportunity to try to stay around if you can feel as well as possible for as long as possible?

Edited 2021-12-30 01:37 (UTC)

This. Why frame it so cynically, like literally everyone is just too cowardly to give up living, and not any other reason? It honestly reminds me of my brother when he was going through his edgy phase, and he was convinced that old people shouldn’t be allowed to live past 70 “for their benefit”. It honestly blew his mind enough to change it when someone told him a lot of older people don’t want to die, and have things worth living for.

DA
+100

Death is inevitable and we should accept it but there's nothing wrong with loving life and wanting to put that off as long as possible!

A lot of people really flourish and come into their own after retirement, because they finally have the time to pursue the things they want to do without having to go to work every day.

old people shouldn’t be allowed to live past 70 “for their benefit”.

Like the cult in Midsommar!

You want to read about "the grandmother effect" - having a generation older than the current child-bearers is important for long-term survival and knowledge transfer. Other large mammals like orca and elephants do the same.

Modern medication doesn't so much keep very old people alive as get vastly more people through middle age in good condition. My grandmother (born 1916) was elderly at 70 and died a few years later. My parents (born 1946) are older than that now and are generally healthy and busy people.

I don't know where you get the idea that people chug along for decades in misery, though. If you do end up with dementia, your expected lifespan is only a few years.

Speak for yourself.

80 years will barely put a dent in my TBR list. It's nowhere near enough time, IMO. I still have 80 years worth of stuff I want to do, and I'm 50!

Then we lose the ability to feel happiness and just continue chugging along for decades and decades and why?

This isn't normal aging, anon. It's depression. Get thee to a therapist.

Then we lose the ability to feel happiness

Um...no we don't, not as something that automatically happens. Do you really think this is universal and not a symptom of depression?

Actually, our lifespans are not actually much longer than they've ever been. Yes, due to medicine and hygiene and better working conditions, we've added some years. But the average life expectancy you read about being much lower in earlier times was much more due to high infant mortality rates - if you have a set with a lot of very low numbers along with high ones, the average will end up in the middle the average for a set like {0.2, 0.1, 0.2, 0.1, 0, 0, 24, 53, 82, 91, 75, 78, 69, 72} is 38.9.

Humans are definitely not the longest-lived by a longshot, though. I mean, there are immortal jellyfish, Greenland sharks can live 400 years, a giant tortoise can live 300, a Macaw 100, etc. I personally have never really understood super-short lifespans, like the Mayfly thing, 24 hours and that's it.

And, my goodness, Anon, who are you hanging out with that you think no one experiences happiness past 30?

Oh man, I have so much to say on this subject. But first, commenters above have mentioned but I will state again, losing happiness isn't an intrinsic part of growing older. If you feel you have just lost the ability to feel happiness, that's depression. Please go see your doctor. Everything you mentioned has an explanation. I will try and answer all of them here.

The science behind aging is amazing and fascinating! This is going to be a very brief intro and will still be very long but it's a topic I love.
So first! Basically, aging happens when our cells divide and multiple (cell mitosis) and the ends of our DNA get loped off in the process. We have a buffer of junk DNA called a Telomere but when that is gone, every time we need a new cell, we start cutting into our cell blueprints and creating inferior cells. So things stop working as well, wear and tear starts building up, and our bodies start to become nonfunctional and we eventually die. This is pretty consistent across all species (except a rare few exceptions like the Naked Mole Rat who appear to never age. For some reason. Nature is crazy.) It can be modified by things like metabolic stasis, which is the reason that the Arctic Woolly caterpillar 'lives' for years.

It absolutely makes sense for us to live as long as we do. We did not 'lengthen our lifespan'. We're pretty much encoded with a hard stop. Average lifespans are exactly that, Averages. When a quarter of the people born die before they are 5, it drags the average down. Black plague, drags the average way down. But people have always been able to live into their 90s. And some did!
And even that is relative. We don't live a crazy long time. We only live so long compared to so some species. I'm sure General Sherman (the tree) is laughing at our puny lifespans.

Our lifespans Are an evolutionary adaptation. It takes a lot of resources to grow these big mammalian bodies and giant ape brains. Humans go the quality over quantity route for offspring. We invest loads of resources into our offspring.

We remain 'helpless children for so much longer than any other species' because human offspring are born premature, compared to other species. Those massive brains we have give us incredibly large heads. You may have also noticed we are one of the only animals to walk on two legs. To become bipedal, our pelvis had to change shape and compress. This means the space through which a child must pass is much smaller than comparable species. So to allow us to give birth to these massive brained children through our little bipedal pelvis without killing the mother (which still sometimes fails and gives us a higher maternal death rate than most animals), we give birth to them prematurely and take care of the rest of the gestation time outside the womb. So while an elephant gestates for nearly two years and pops out a kid who can walk, we have to expel them early and instead of getting a toddler, we have a little helpless fetus.

And after all that, we then we invest more resources into raising them for years. But our offspring survive! Compared to animals who choose the quantity over quality route, our offspring survive at an astonishing rate. Even among other carnivorous/omnivorous mammals. A quarter of lots of apex predator species won't make it out of adolescence but humans do.

We would not have evolved this way if it didn't have a payoff. We are very energy intensive creatures to create, with lots of risks. So we protect that until the subsequent generations are self-sufficient. You argue, 30 years is all we need to get there. But, let's look at The Grandmother Hypothesis.

Lots has been hypothesized about why adult human women lose the ability to reproduce later in life (and adult men get a bunch of issues as well which lower their fertility but this is specifically about women because women have a full stop). The current favorite is called The Grandmother Hypothesis. It states that to have an evolutionarily successful child (one who grows and reproduces) you need so much investment that it makes sense for older women to give up risky late in life pregnancies, where they may die before raising the child to adulthood, to give extra care to their grandchildren to ensure the next generations' survival. Every ounce of help you can give to your subsequent generations is a plus of the scale of survival for your genes. It makes more sense to invest in a sure thing instead of an unknown. I known my child is around to care for this grandchild until adulthood. Who knows if my next child will make it that far. It makes sense, evolutionarily, to protect your secure investment rather than gamble on a new one.

tldr; Humans have always lived to be old. Our babies are useless as a tradeoff for walking upright and being really smart. We live so long to help our subsequent generations. It all makes evolutionary sense. If you feel life is meaningless and you cannot feel happiness, please talk to your doctor.

Very well-said!

My grandma and other elderly people in my family are still perfectly jovial, anon. Hell, they throw the best parties I've ever seen.

I mean, I know this is an unhinged post from someone who's severely depressed and needs help far beyond what this comm can give, but I still want to address this little bit of math here:

not for the fact that we used to die at 50 and not 25.

Humans need to live well past 25 because our children need at least 15 years to raise, and no one should safely give birth before 15 AT MINIMUM. The absolute lowest age a parent can die without disadvantaging a child who depends on them is 30. And yes, that will be traumatic still, and that child will suffer because of that unfair early loss.

It's an evolutionary advantage for parents to live long enough to raise their children to full adulthood, and still be around to help out with the grandchildren, if there are any. It's an evolutionary advantage to have aunts and uncles to help out even if they had no kids of their own.

And, also...people who are not desperately depressed tend to enjoy life and want to live as long as they can. My childhood was ok but I'm much happier now in my 40s.

Life keeps happening after 25, after 30, after 50, after 80, there are 102 year olds enjoying their experience right now. You are either A) really depressed honey look into online counseling, B) surrounded by fandom friends telling 30 year old women to get out of fandom and "go take care of your children" in which case oh honey go get better friends, C) obsessed with childhood media and youth culture and drinking that Peter Pan cool-aid, or D) everything at once.

My 20s were better than my teens, my 30s have been better than my 20s (yes, even with the pandemic) and I'm hoping my 40's will keep up the trend.

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[ SECRET POST #5472 ]

Why do humans live so damn long?

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