this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Pulling the plug before 60? Where do you live that everyone over 60 is on death's door?
I'm reasonably well past that and there a whole lot of us and we're still going strong. I swam an open-water 10k at 63 and am planning another for my 70th. I'm working on breaking 4:30.
A neighbour finally stopped competitive cross country marathons last year at 75. He's not retiring from cattle ranching until he's 80. Cattle ranching around here means horses, roundups, roping, branding, fence maintenance, etc. Not for the faint of heart or weakness of mind or body.
Another guy, at 94, was up and down a ladder repainting his house. Nobody blinked an eye.
30 years ago, I ran a free introductory programming course through a community association. Ages ranged from 12 to 83 and most of the class was over 60.
That's just neighbours, not any kind of "old and bold" club. Sure, the care homes are overflowing, but that's a supply problem, not a demand problem. Only a relatively small fraction of people will ever see the inside of such a place, except to visit someone.
there are countries where people save for their retirement (and pay for health insurance) in pesos, rands and whatnot.. alot of people outside of the us and the developed world are one cancer away from bankruptcy, and thus, death is a way less painful exit. people in the phillipines earn 233$ on average per month, can their health system afford melanoma treatement for everyone ? i doubt so. is it worth to spend all ur life's effort on one random drug ? .. americans (and all developed world citizens) need to be less centric really..
Cancer treatment is not that expensive depending on the cancer people actually have. It really depends on what people have, but in places like India treatment starts at $1000 and averages $6000 or so. In Indonesia 77% of people diagnosed with breast cancer survive the next five years for example.
Obviously a cancer diagnosis sucks and in many cases like lung cancer you very likely die soon(so do not smoke), with or without treatment. Even when you can afford it, it might be a good choice to avoid the pain of the treatment and just go for it. However the situation is not one of you get sick and you die even in poor countries.
I understand that different countries are different. If cancer is going to be a financial disaster at 70, it will also be a financial disaster at 50.
And you may have missed my point. My point was that debilitating health problems after 60 are not the norm, but the exception. Now that I'm past 60, I'm more likely to make it to 90 than I was at any other time in my past. And that same statement has been true for all of human existence! The life expectancy numbers we are most familiar with are almost exclusively the result of how we deal with infant mortality, pediatric illness, and the behaviors of adolescents. The first 20-30 years are far more risky than the last 20-30.
Not only that, if suicide is the painless way out, at least wait until the onset of pain!
Your own generation and our previous generation ruined the planet so much that youngsters nowadays no longer live healthy like you did.
also women with their high maintenance behaviour: price inflated cosmetics that come in not so ecofriendly packaging (both the amount of paperwaste, and the amount of cellulose took to make said paper ) , their non eco-friendly fashion and fast fashion, even the tech industry that sell ewaste iphones for 5 times their worth and creating economic inflation in the process: genders also have different carbon footprints
I'm well aware of what various generations have done to the planet. I'm not sure what that has to do with the fact that the majority of those who get to 60 with their health intact will continue with their health intact long enough to make checking out early kind of pointless for at least a decade, probably two.
My first comment was with respect to whether 60 could reasonably be considered the end of the line. I would argue that even considering planet fuckery, 60 won't be anywhere near the end of an individual life until the environment is damaged beyond all repair. At that point we'll be looking at human extinction, not just personal extinction.