I think what you’re saying is two things, and that we might actually agree — we’re just not talking about the same thing.

I agree with you that older people probably have less to look forward to, but that is because of the diseases of aging (including memory problems, but also other pathologies that end up killing you). That is the result of the problem, not something that is good in itself, or impossible to change (we already have vastly longer lifespans than humans have had for most of history – ancient Egyptians lived to about 20-30).

If your body wasn’t failing, it wouldn’t matter how long you have lived before. You would want to be able to project back and forth as well as use your memory functions to their maximum potential, which is why it’s important to figure out how to repair the damage that accumulates in our brains as we also figure out ways to repair other things.

I don’t believe that life is an hourglass and that we have a certain amount of sand that will run out. We’re hitting a ceiling because we currently live to ages that are in evolution’s blind spot; post-reproductive ages don’t get the benefit of natural selection. Our body is very good at maintaining itself in a robust state as long as we are within that reproducing period. We just need to figure out how to keep ourselves in that state indefinitely by fixing the damage periodically before it leads to pathologies (google: ted aubrey de grey).

The second thing you are saying is that it might make more sense for someone who’s closer to death to “reimagine the vast territory behind her”. But the study that I’m quoting says that the memory problems affect both future and past projections, so older people are getting robbed of their memories. In fact, we’ll all get Alzheimer’s disease if something else doesn’t kill us first – beta amyloid fibrils are accumulating in all our brains, it just needs to pass a certain threshold to become a pathology and it happens faster in certain people than others. A good reason to join folding@home.

In want to change that with all my heart. It’s the best way to reduce suffering on this planet (aging kills hundreds of thousands each day), and it is why I’ve been reading molecular biology and biochemistry stuff, as well as donating to aging research at the Methuselah Foundation.

You are assuming that time is not only linear but one-directional, I think.

So let’s say you and I both have the same continuum of about 88 years, with a starting point and an ending point. Your marker right now is. . . where? Somewhere under 30, say, and most of your life stretches out ahead of you. The territory for future dreaming (and that’s not the only kind you can have, btw) is 58 years.

I’m 58. So I have 30 years to dream and think about.

My mom, who’s 87, has one. Does it make sense for her to devote herself to that one year ahead–and that one by all signs not so pleasant, or does it make sense for her to reimagine the vast territory behind her?

Some researchers who work with people with Alzheimer’s disease are working with imagination as a way to connect. But it doesn’t need a future in which to range. There’s the past and present to invent and reinvent.

I care about the future very much, but less for what it will be for me than what it will be for others. My mom thinks of it mainly in terms of how much longer she will see the ones she loves–before she gets to see, as she believes, the ones who wait for her.

Chris

It’s not a binary thing; it’s not because we can think about the future that we’re bad at being in the present and caring for others. Losing something doesn’t necessarily mean gaining something else.

One of the gifts of aging may be learning to live in the moment.

Another may be thinking about our children and grandchildren–others–in the future, concentrating on benefits to them, not ourselves.