Cultural elites-and by elites I basically mean yuppies-love to compete. Some might say that’s why they’re rich. You go to Georgetown, so you’ve probably noticed this. They compete for everything. Schools, grades, clothes, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, rings, rocks, cars, apartments, starter mansions, pets, children, and finally schools for their children. Cue Lion King music.
Through this entire complex muddle of outright, aggressive competition and calculated feints, human longevity shines through. Pretty much everyone wants to live longer, and if the hype is correct, human beings will soon be doing just that. Some people might express that desire more forcefully now, but coke-sniffing Eurotrash and eco-conscious hippies alike would be excited at the availability of proven prescription drugs to lengthen their lives.
The very idea transcends political boundaries and personality types, especially when advances are made incrementally. If a pharmaceutical company came out with a product now that they claimed could double human lifespans, people would probably make a lot of noise about the immorality of extending our own lives. But if the change was gradual- and it’s hard to imagine it not being gradual-pretty much everyone is going to be on board. And not only will they be on board: they will approach it with the same gung-ho spirit of competition that makes them yuppies.
This will be the true consequence of biotech advances. The past few years have seen a lot of discussion about the complex ethical questions posed by things like cloning and stem cell research. The question isn’t so much an ethical one as it is a question of chronological proximity. When the development in question is far away, people are far more likely to have strong negative reactions. Once the idea becomes a real scientific advance, people weigh their opinions of things in terms of whether or not that particular product will help their lives.
Most people have very strong reactions against cloning. But if, for example, we find that in the long run developing synthetic organs is far harder than cloning yourself and then parting out your cloned body, look for people to start having different feelings on cloning. A not-surprising future development would be a cloning-based market for organs not dissimilar to the current black-market for organs. Sound horrifying? I agree. But to children born in the past few years, cloning will just be one more thing people have seemingly always done (like using the Internet). An organ market based on cloning might offend them not in a panicky, horrified sense (my personal reaction), but instead in a sad, concerned-but-unsure-of-how-to help sense., much like how people react now to black-market organs.
This search for healthy longevity, and the most cost-effective way to achieve it, will be the next big competitive obsession, and its most obvious manifestation will not be a seedy underworld of clones, but instead an all-out drive to have the newest, most high-end (or expensive) treatment. Every few generations, we need a major new field of consumer products to give people a way to spend all the additional money they’re making. Computers have been pretty good for this, but the difficulty is that they aren’t expensive, and they keep getting cheaper. We compensate for this by putting them everywhere and in everything, but they just don’t provide the same outlet for all of your disposable income as, say, a car. Cars were and remain excellent outlets for income, especially because they don’t tend to get that much cheaper. Any efficiency improvements that lead to cheaper cars are outweighed by people’s desire for more flash and luxury.
But for a lot of people of our generation, having a car is just sort of a background thing to do, even if it is really nice. Electronics occupy the consumer spotlight. As we age, consumer electronics advances will probably start to feel pretty mundane, and if even a fraction of the hype about coming medical advances pans out, personal medical improvements will move to the spotlight as an outlet for income and a field of competition.
Specifically, the level of competition in looks and physical fitness will rise to unimaginable levels. A generation that has been reared on careful dieting, obsessive gym habits and an extremely high sensitivity to body image is about to find that medical advances will provide outlets for their body-image issues that they never would have thought existed. Older women are already increasingly expected to maintain the body shape they had in their 20s. The pressures on older men are different, and sometimes easier-taking Viagra, for example, is easier than 25 hours per week of Tae-Bo-but will probably increase comparatively as more treatments become available. Yuppies will need something to spend all that money on-especially as their productivity continues to rise-and what could be more satisfying, expensive and naturally expressive of one’s superiority than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on keeping yourself looking like you’re 27 well into your 110s? Of course, the satisfaction is only short-term, but that keeps the competition moving. Evidence suggests that once people have a certain level of comfort in their lives, acquiring more wealth doesn’t make them much happier. Being “prettier” is probably the same way. So maybe we won’t be happier. We’ll just be the same, but for longer.
Bill Cleveland is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and assistant voices editor of The Georgetown Voice. His original topic was even less relevant.
