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I had an interesting backgammon match today and I found in it several lessons I’d like to share. Even if you don’t know the game, hang in there with me. I think you’ll still appreciate the moral to the story.
It was clear from the first roll of the dice that my opponent was a rank amateur. She had trouble discerning which color she was to play, in spite of both a visual and a verbal designation. Her first few moves made it clear that she had no grasp of strategy either.
What she did have going for her was the devil’s own luck. Backgammon is as much a game of chance as of skill, and the dice were definitely rolling her way. She outplayed me through the entire game thanks solely to her good fortune. By the time she reached the “home stretch”, I was a hundred points behind, a position from which it would be virtually impossible to recover. Still, there was that one slight chance I could pull it out and there was no money riding on the game, so I hung in there and waited for my opportunity.
Then my chance came. One disadvantageous roll on her part meant she would have to leave one of her pieces vulnerable to my attack. Now this was no dire situation from her perspective. Even if I’d managed to knock her piece out, only one chance in six, she probably still would have wiped the floor with me. She agonized over her move, clearly not willing to leave a piece open, but she eventually figured out that she had no choice.
And then she conceded the game.
Her unwillingness to play out what was an all‑but‑certain win left me puzzled. I’ve been reading insights into the situation all day.
- Even when you don’t know what you’re doing, things can still work out for you in an astonishing fashion.
- Even when you do know what you’re doing, sometimes the breaks just don’t go your way.
- Unless your losses are too great, don’t give up on an unlikely position. You might still get a chance to come back strong.
- Just because you’re faced with a possible setback, that doesn’t mean the game is lost.
- Good luck will only take you so far. You must understand the game if you really want to win.
You may find other lessons here, too. All I can say is that this was one time I was sorry I wasn’t playing for real money. I could have cleaned up.
A friend recently told me about an interesting podcast he’d heard. The subject was medical advances in the field of human longevity. The premise was that medical and technological advances would soon outpace the extended lifetimes they produced, potentially resulting in a human lifespan of a thousand years or more. In fact it was suggested that the first people to live to be a thousand might already have been born.
My friend thought this was an exciting idea and he’s all for it. He thinks that since we now spend 40 or 50 years figuring ourselves out, such an extended lifetime would result in 900+ years lived in maturity and self-actualization. He imagines travel, education, the perfection of skills, the pursuit of interests and appreciation of the arts. He makes it sound wonderful.
Call me a cynic (and many have), but I’m not so enthusiastic. I can’t help but wonder if our human tendency to squander precious things wouldn’t reassert itself with a vengeance once our mortality was pushed beyond the range of contemplation. If you can reasonably expect to live to be a thousand, why not spend your first 800 years wallowing in the pointless pleasures of youth before you start getting serious about your life? What sort of world would be created by a population of rash, self‑obsessed “juveniles”?
And that’s just one of the problems I foresee in a world of millennials.
Since technological advances are initially rare and expensive, the first individuals to benefit from them would be the fabulously wealthy. Only the Paris Hiltons and Michael Jacksons of the world would get that first taste of eternity. After them would come royalty and billionaire businessmen along with their progeny; the movie stars and world‑class athletes; the politicians with their trophy wives. These will be the first to enjoy a virtually limitless life. Such individuals know only privilege and exclusivity. It will be their impulse to restrict access to longevity and grant it only to those they wish to leverage. There may be nothing egalitarian about access to the technology for a long, long time.
Once longevity becomes more widely accessible, it seems to me that a caste system would be created. After all, someone has to cut the lawn, scrub the toilet, collect the garbage and sweep the streets. Who would want to bus tables for a thousand years? I can see the earliest wave of millennials—the wealthy, corrupt and powerful—justifying to themselves the retention of an underclass to do all the dirty work of life. The upper and middle classes will support such a system once they are granted access to long life themselves. It will serve to validate their identification with the wealthy and powerful. It will be easy for the long‑lived to excuse the slavery and oppression of an underclass by pointing out the “kindness” of allowing them only a hundred years to live.
There’s also a tangle of ethical questions that spring up around the subject of human reproduction. In a world where the most fecund woman can produce only 12–20 children, we’re already faced with crippling overpopulation. How will medical advances affect female fertility? Will we still be required to reproduce by the age of 40 or so—an age of infancy in a world of millennials—or can we expect the range of our fertile life to be extended along with our vitality? Try and imagine a world where any woman might give birth scores of times, even hundreds of times. The whole concept is staggering. And what are the alternatives? Forced sterilization? The outlawing of pregnancy? Will technology undertake the task of propagating the species in order to maintain population equilibrium? If so, who will control that process? Church? State? Industry?
Another issue is our current dynastic structure of power and wealth. What will the grown children of the wealthy and powerful do when the patriarch never steps aside? What is the opposite of a power vacuum?
It’s also not clear that the human psyche is resilient enough to withstand the demands of such a lifespan. Today’s centenarian has seen technology advance from horse and buggy to the exploration of the solar system. Does the human mind have the flexibility to incorporate the changes wrought by century upon century of human achievement and still remain sane?
All these issues and questions jump immediately to mind. I haven’t even begun to consider things like the penal system, the scarcity of resources, humankind’s murderous nature, our taste for warfare or our propensity to commit genocide. A thousand‑year lifespan might ultimately produce some sort of Utopia, but I fear it would only be after millennia of ruin and devastation. I don’t think the surviving world would be anything we would recognize.
That’s assuming any sort of world would survive at all.
It’s all a fascinating concept, but I think the question is a valid one: Do you want to live forever?
Maybe it’s a sign of aging; maybe it’s a sign of the times. Whatever the reason, I’ve begun to lose patience with the American preoccupation with “improving” food products to the point of tastelessness. It seems that good is never good enough. Manufacturers are always looking to cut their costs and extend the shelf life of their goods. Occasionally that quest works to the consumer’s benefit, but often it creates a noticeably inferior product.
A case in point: Recently I went to my local grocery store. On the way in, I noticed at the opposite entrance the unmistakable display of cookies sold as an annual fund‑raising project for a national youth organization that shall remain nameless. I love these cookies—okay, all cookies—and I made it a point to leave by that entrance so I could obtain two boxes of my favorite variety, the chocolate‑covered peanut butter ones. I’ve eaten this particular cookie for years and have a distinct memory of how delicious it once tasted. Sadly, that product of my memory is no more. Today’s analog has a chocolate coating that is waxy to the point of failing to melt in the mouth, where once it was smooth and creamy. The “peanut butter” component contains no peanut butter flavor or texture, and while it was once a sizeable dollop of peanut butter crème, it is now a dime‑sized, dime‑thin layer of hard brown paste. I’ve eaten rice cakes I enjoyed more. I have purchased my last box of fundraiser cookies.
This is certainly not the only food product that has morphed beyond recognition over the years, just the one that most recently drew my vitriol. I’ve also sworn off my life‑long favorite smoked sausage, my favorite frozen fruit pie and my once‑loved brand of dill pickles.
One of my long‑time preferred hamburger joints used to make real, homemade, slice‑the-potatoes‑here French fries. Now they serve frozen potato product that comes in a plastic bag. When I commented to the manager, he assured me that the change was due to customer preference. I find that hard to believe. I haven’t been back there since.
I know that if your factory cranks out millions of boxes of crackers a year, saving a half a penny per box by ingredient substitution makes good financial sense. If your customers truly cannot tell the difference, then why not do so? But where is the sense in minimizing cost and maximizing shelf life if it turns your product into something your customers will no longer buy?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe today’s young people are so accustomed to organic chemical concoctions and synthetic foodstuffs that they really have no concept of how actual food is supposed to taste. Maybe genuine ingredients and home‑cooked flavor are part of a rapidly fading past that will never be again.
Such a loss.
Good news, everyone: I’m going to live forever! At least that’s the conclusion you might draw if you examined my behavior.
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About shelbajo.com Of all the blogs in all the world, this is the only one for which Shelba Jo is wholly responsible.
It includes fiction and nonfiction, sense and nonsense, truth and lies.
I leave it to you to decide what is what. |