Six years ago, one of our smart bankers told me that with the progress of medicine, people born today can live to be 110-115 years old. He headed a bank in a group that also owns insurance companies, so the study of human life expectancy is an activity for them on which their own business future depends. I remembered this conversation when I read that Vladimir Putin spoke with Xi Jinping about the possibility of multiple organ transplants, extending human life and practical immortality. His Chinese colleague replied that he had heard about the possibility of a person living up to 150 years.
It is true that many dictators and their cronies have tended to consider themselves intermediaries between the Creator and the earthly world. As superior. As more deserving of life. It may not even be a matter of selfishness, but of the distorted belief that only they can preserve their countries and lead them properly. And therefore they should continue to do so as long as possible. Others had a penchant for the esoteric. Hitler was looking for the “spear of fate“, with which, according to the New Testament, a Roman soldier pierced the crucified Christ to check whether he had already died. American General George Patton believed in the existence of multiple reincarnations. But according to him, a person always retains his gender and character traits. So he has always been a warrior – since the time when our ancestors fought mammoths. He even wrote a poem in which he suggests that it was his previous “self“ that could have pierced the Savior – Through a Glass, Darkly.
Xi's answer is also quite interesting. It is conditional, it contains the phrase “I have heard“. That is – he doesn't know because he hasn't researched the topic. He knows about it, but it hasn't been the focus of his interests. And that makes us think that he rather views the issue not as a potential client of advances in biotechnology, but as someone who doesn't hinder its development.
But if he and Putin are thinking about it, it's impossible for an ordinary person not to think about it. Keeping track of trends and the outlines of the future is something that can only be beneficial. In an interview, Putin said that the young members of his family are studying Chinese. My mother is still proud that when she enrolled me in the early 1990s to study English at one of the best schools that still exists today, her colleagues told her that she was wasting her money and that there was nowhere and no way that this language would be useful to me. At that time, my mother worked as an accountant in a state-owned enterprise and was laid off when they introduced computerized accounting.
I say this to emphasize that she did not drink coffee with the top, but in her own intuitive way she tried to pave my path in life, while others were already sending their children to private boarding schools in the West or preparing their heirs for TOEFL exams so that they could at least get their higher education abroad. It never hurts to listen, to try to feel the direction of the wind and to prepare for the change, so that we can profit from it or at least stay above the surface.
In one of its annual reports, the Swiss UBS reports a record increase in the so-called everyday millionaires – a category that, in my opinion, can most correctly be called “random millionaires“ in Bulgarian. These are people without family privileges who achieve wealth between one and five million dollars – athletes, singers, artists, inventors, bloggers, influencers, etc. The conclusion is that times, no matter how chaotic they may seem, provide opportunities. With a little knowledge of English and the capabilities of artificial intelligence, today a person can create content accessible to the whole world, even while herding sheep in the Rhodope Mountains. As long as they have knowledge, vision, ambition and self-discipline. And these things depend only on the person and his parents. Everything else - technology, mobile network and market - is around us and has never been so accessible.
Yes, there is competition. It is monstrous. That is why self-development - learning, enrichment of general culture - have never been so important.
At the same time, the dangers are much greater. The simplification of the population is already endangering our lives. Idiots are crashing their cars into buses, others are causing death with ATVs. In TikTok is full of people recording their mileage when they exceed 180 kilometers per hour. Others call the fines “formal recognition” of their driving skills. Still others boast that as long as they have visibility, they don't care if the line between the two lanes is continuous, and calmly proceed to overtake.
Children are challenged to swallow capsules of washing powder, take pictures on the roofs of trains and electric poles, risking being killed by the rainbow. They climb cranes. Do we realize that every day we learn about people who voluntarily risk their lives – not as a sacrifice, but misled by online trends with an anonymous creator?
In the years of our youth, serious conversations with our parents were extraordinary events. What is sex? How to choose a high school? How not to lose ourselves after the first love disappointment? Why not use drugs? Should we join the barracks, work or continue our studies at university? And when we talked things over, it didn't end with turning off the TV and serious conversations for months.
Today, we have to warn our children not to reveal personal and family information to their anonymous “friends“ with whom they play online. Let them not be misled by the examples given by participants in reality formats. Let them understand that it is not good to harm ourselves and take risks just to be seen and liked. But before that, we need to explain what harm, self-harm is. How valuable human life is and that, unlike computer games, there is no restart in it. The latter was said by a person on TikTok while filming how rescuers for the second time in a day pulled a person who did not listen to them to stand on dry land because of the big waves and the red flag.
All this promises to divide the world into two - a privileged elite and a plebs, who will depend on natural selection. Not that it has not been like this before, but today the stakes are much higher, and the prospects - clearly outlined.
500 years ago, the plague mowed down people, without caring whether they were poor or rich, aristocrats or commoners. Even in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, the diet of the poor was far healthier than that of the aristocracy. All the bacteria that came with meat, eggs, and dairy products in an era without refrigeration did not protect the rich to a greater extent than the poor. This is what Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in economics, reminds us.
Today, it is almost the opposite. Advances in pharmaceuticals now allow people to lose dozens of kilograms in a year without following a diet or sweating through physical activity. Perhaps one day these solutions will come without the risk of side effects. If not, at least their prices have already fallen to such an extent that the fitness industry, the business of dietitians and nutritionists in wealthy societies are already gasping for breath and are on their way to becoming a luxury for a select few.
Social mobility is possible today. Born into a family of one class, a person can easily climb to a higher and richer one within his lifetime. Stress, frivolities, temptations and momentary comforts can only distract us from everything that the world offers in historically unprecedented proportions. At the same time, increasing life expectancy will mean pressure on pension systems. We may have to work until old age, and therefore it will be important to be prepared for a change of profession or for some small entrepreneurship in the third age.
Gold diggers who marry for money may also disappear. If instead of five-ten years, inheriting the wealth of an elderly partner begins to separate them for 30-35 years, they will certainly think twice.
The key is to be self-disciplined, careful, studious and healthily ambitious. As Robbie Williams sings – Go Gentle, through your life – live in moderation.