The Rented Life

One of the things I find most humorous about humanity is our ability to be contradictory. We say one thing yet clearly mean another. Human nature, yes?

We are ultimately self serving. It is something in our makeup, our biology even, that produces this selfishness. We tend to place emphasis on ourselves first. I'm not saying it is good or bad, simply a trait of humanity.

However, the one thing that almost everyone fails to remember is that we are here on borrowed time.

On average, the human lifespan is eight decades. During a single human lifespan, several other generations come along (I find the idea of generations itself interesting; there will always be others born after you, and in a real sense every year following your birth is yet another generation, as really they blend together). The newer these generations, the longer they will survive you. Somebody born thirty years after you were born will likely be around thirty years after you've died.

While it is said that humans are the only animals on Earth that are aware of their own mortality, we also seem to be the ones least likely to acknowledge it. That same selfish streak that so defines our actions seems to make us think that the only life that truly matters is our own, or at least that which is around as long as we are. We say that we care about children, about the young voices, and indeed go to extreme lengths to protect them. However, that protection, that care, seems to wane as they age. By the time the young become adults, they have joined our ranks and are treated with the same regard we show toward other adults.

In short, it's sink or swim.

And as with all the others amongst us, the selfishness begins its cycle anew.

Each generation treats the world as its own, yet feigns concern about the young. We talk about how much we care about children yet treat the world as if it were ours and ours alone. It is a world that they will inherit from us, yet we seem to give that fact little thought at all.

In his book "Next", author Michael Lewis explored how the then up and coming generation in the 1990's and early Aughts were handling the world that they were being handed, and their use of this nascent technology to make a better one for themselves, usually to the consternation of the adults.

One theme that was a constant in his book was the fact that there is actually generational warfare going on. While we say we care and want the best for our children, the truth seems to be that we fear them and what they might do to the world that we have really created for ourselves.

I find this idea fascinating. It actually makes sense, for it never really becomes so apparent as when the younger generation reaches adulthood. There seems to be a cut off point for caring about those younger than us. There is some logic to it, to be honest. But all this posturing we do for children and making their world better seems to be insincere at best; they will eventually become adults, and at that point we won't care.

Perhaps this dichotomy is no better illustrated then the lengths we go to protect the rights of the unborn yet how we also seem to be underfunding public education and simultaneously destroying the very world that they will inherit.

We love babies, we hate people.

And we love our own babies more than anyone else's. If you need proof that humans are nothing more than animals, look no further than that; our offspring first, our genetic heritage first.

This tendency to only think of what benefits us and our offspring is indeed linked to our very genetics. We want to give our own gene pool a better chance to propagate.

If we expand our point of view to beyond our own lives, we will find that thinking of our own life as the only one that matters is ultimately destructive. Too many of us think this way already. We are not immortal, we rent this life at best. One day, we will die, and our true heritage is what we leave behind, who we leave behind. If we think beyond our own mortal lives, we can truly produce a better world not just for the here and now but for the yet to come.

That's real immortality.