lucretius on the nature of things audiobook

Surely they are only pretending to accept death in order to comfort themselves and each other! But when I pressed people around me on the matter, they too insisted that they were okay with dying. (Of course, this might be because they are young.) As someone who finds death to be a gruesome prospect, I find this easygoing attitude toward death weird. Half of the class say that they have never really thought about death.

Contrary to what we might expect, the vast majority are content with a natural life span. At the beginning of each semester, I ask my class how long they would want to live, ideally. My own experience teaching an undergraduate class on the philosophy of death confirms some of these findings. Only 8 percent said that they would want to live beyond 100, and only 4 percent said they would want to live beyond 120. The average ideal life span turned out to be about 90. When asked how long they would want to live, 69 percent gave a number between 78 and 100. His results were similar to those of a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center about Americans’ opinions on death. Out of 30,000 people, around 60 percent responded by saying 80 years, 30 percent said 120 years, nearly 10 percent said 150 years, and less than 1 percent said forever. People were allowed to imagine breakthroughs in antiaging medicine. At each venue, he asked the audience if they would want to live 80 years, 120 years, 150 years, or forever. Writer David Ewing Duncan traveled the United States giving talks on biotechnology and life extension. This article is adapted from Ingemar Patrick Linden’s book “ The Case Against Death.”

Lucretius on the nature of things audiobook