LONGEVITY will the time we are given increase?Spoiler: longevity is not synonymous with eternity

by Stefania Turco

There it is, like an invasive ivy, Longevity peeks into every field of human knowledge. It blossoms on the lips of doctors and biologists, but also lawyers, economists, IT specialists, coaches are almost tired of it. It tastes like the future, and yet it demands enormous responsibility here, in the present.

A multidimensional concept, Longevity embraces all humanly shared space, with its passage of time, and a single enemy.

There are aggressive enemies and others that are silent, beneath the surface, still waters eroding the foundations of arrogant certainties. Longevity has one enemy, and it looks at it with sufficiency, disgust, and concern: quality of life.

Have you also felt that cold shiver running down your spine just hearing it? Longevity, long life! And the brain’s synapses already compare it to eternity, a frightening image of the future.

Now, I take for granted that whoever reads me is surely better than I am, but I admit that I already find myself in extreme difficulty behaving with common sense, ethically. And honestly, I don’t know how much my fragile psychological structure could be a temporal extension of such superhuman commitment without giving in to impulses, instincts, reactions, capitulations, misfortunes, even if within these there are fleeting moments of satisfaction. And I ask myself a legitimate question: am I interested in enduring potential longevity? Or rather, am I capable of enduring others’ longevity? It is incredible how in Italian the verbs “to endure” and “to support” are interchangeable, but the question remains. Will we hum advertising jingles: “it’s enough to live longer, live longer better!” and will it be yet another lie?

Whatever my thoughts may be, the legal, economic, biological, and technological paradigm of longevity redefines the concept of time, along with its associated values, including health and individual and collective responsibility. I try to explore this concept from different angles, as if I were capable, seeking an intersection between systemic visions.

If I were a jurist, I would think of longevity as a matter of emerging rights and duties. If I were an economist, I would consider it a structural variable of productive and welfare systems. If I were a biologist, I would recognize it as the result of complex and adaptive cellular processes. If I were an IT specialist, I would see it as a field of convergence between data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

the concept of law changes

In the law of the near future, longevity introduces an unprecedented tension in the protection of life, between the right to life and the right to a better quality of life over time.

The extension of life expectancy imposes a profound revision of traditional legal categories: individuality, property rights, work, pensions, health protection, decision-making capacity, biological and testamentary self-determination, security, international relations.

The question changes: no longer “how long will I live?” but
“under what legal, economic, and ethical conditions will I live longer?”

Incidentally, longevity requires regulatory systems oriented toward prevention, toward valid protection of human capital over time, toward absolute and new forms of individual responsibility for one’s own well-being. Certainly, the law of the future will no longer be able merely to manage or limit damage, it will have to make it possible to sustain life in optimal conditions. And philosophically, I ask myself: when, and for whom exactly, will this very long future begin?

economics: from capitalist consumption to investment in the sustainability of life

Longevity will be a transformation of value and can no longer be understood as a cost. A cost implies the production of capital that obviously cannot be infinite, at least on current Western capitalist bases.

A person who ages well is a resource that continues to create value, experience, vision, and stability. Can they still be defined as old? Even the way we express ourselves will change!

A long-lived population will have to be healthy, fully participative, and aware to reduce pressure on healthcare systems, to extend cognitive productivity capable of creating value and we will find ourselves redefining the very concept of career and human capital. This is a revolution in thinking!

Pay attention: the real economic risk is not living longer, but aging badly, or more optimistically, aging how? The economies of the future will not fail because we live long; they will fail if we are left alone in the swamp of deterioration.

For this reason, the Longevity economy does not concern only pharmaceuticals and healthcare, but continuous education in coexistence, redesigning work models (will we reintegrate traditional crafts?), investments in prevention and well-being and, let me say, a psychological and philosophical update, because the long-lived, healthy, conscious human now appears to me almost like a superhuman.

To sum up, let us immediately abandon the concept of public spending in favor of systemic investment in future stability; otherwise, we will all risk certainly dying later, but with bitterness in our mouths, cursing humanity as a whole while hoping to pass beyond as soon as possible.

biology: time written in the cells

Longevity is the result of a dynamic balance between genetics, epigenetics, lifestyle, and environment. And here science has made giant strides, understanding the patterns underlying life itself. Life is information, and aging is neither death’s revenge against life nor a biological error, but an adaptive, and avoidable, process. Remaining young adults will become the norm, and this future is already visible, even if not accessible to everyone.

Today we know that chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, and the disruption of biological rhythms, all deeply interconnected, are modifiable factors. A sort of perfection is theoretically applicable to reach centuries of life! Frightening, right? Believe me, our body is not a mechanism designed to break.

Life is a conscious, self-produced system, intelligent, adaptive, sensitive, and receptive to stimuli from which it learns and evolves.

We will not escape time; we will dialogue with it, through conscious nutrition (will we nourish ourselves only with active principles?), intelligent movement (will nature become our ally?), stress management (perhaps by avoiding killing one another), sleep quality (how many more hours will we sleep?). How long will it take to reach these goals? According to Agenda 2030, the countdown has begun.

Let us move to the IT perspective, where Longevity fits well into one of the most advanced fields in the application of artificial intelligence and big data, bearing in mind that technology is not cold, ignorance, or the death of progress, is.

As I write, it is already possible to monitor biological parameters in real time, predict risks before they manifest, personalize prevention and improvement interventions, automate work making it more creative, eliminate time wasted on communication and bureaucracy with institutions.

International forums tell us that technology does not replace human beings. It helps them grow! And so it must be, necessarily! No one wants the hell of eternity in metropolitan traffic, tormented by bureaucracy, forced into repetitive work interacting with rudimentary robotic dullness, fed on pills, dodging a cascade of bombs delivered by ultralight drones under a biochemical rain.

Thus, algorithms, wearables, predictive models, and AI become tools for awareness, informed decision-making, and personal responsibility.

Digital longevity cannot and must not be control, but knowledge applied to life, culture and cultivation of life. What a transformation!

And so the concept of “longlasting” ceases to be a futuristic promise, becoming more and more a daily choice, individual and collective, that integrates science and philosophy, health and technology, economics and law, and recognizes life as capital to be protected.

Now, right now, today, we are playing for the future. Because all this cannot depend only on laws, markets, and technology, but on when and how much we decide to become conscious custodians of our time, the most precious asset that exists.

I do not want to add years to life.
I want to add life to years, with presence, coherence, and dignity.

Written, reread, and undersigned: yes to longevity, but I will not wait for it to happen to me. I begin today.

Stefania Turco