Kinsley meditates on the Vanity of Longevity.
True or false: "We know life-is-short, yet we are forced to live as if it were not."
I agree with AS (but not on the grounds of eternity). Kinsley doesn't go further than to outline how the [capitalist?] "World of Achievement" is also a last-man-standing game, quite often, elimination pool. There is an old interview Norman Mailer doing just the type of socio-metrics involved in sizing up someone's lifespan (it may have been on the occasion of meeting Vidal or Buckley or some such - I don't recall).
You can be knocked out because of your health.
"I used to be a judge" is another matter, about people transitioning from a life defined by work and "standing" to something else. (In fact, some companies help senior executives when they transition out of highly-demanding, all-encompassing jobs).
I'm not sure there is much in the insight that the death-sweepstakes seems egalitarian, to Kinsley. It's not completely, given the wonders of healthcare.
One thing Kinsley doesn't note about the way the actuarial tables work: the longer one lives, the longer one is expected live, other things being equal. Fancy that.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Lifespan and Competition
