If we live 100-plus years, life will need a rethink

Marriage might evolve as a medium-term contract with a right to renew every decade. Picture: istock

The average Australian born today can expect to live well into the 22nd century. Longevity is a gift that has been bestowed upon the generations that straddle our time in history – although who’s to say the commonly accepted starting point of “old age” might not push out to 100 in the developed world at some point next century?

In many ways, we the people of the 2020s are the luckiest generation in human history, and especially in Australia. We are free, fed and educated. In the past 150 years we have sewered our cities, developed penicillin, invented a vaccine for cervical cancer. We have averted a world war for 80 years. We are alive to matters of social justice. We are aware of the need to preserve the environment.

But of course there is more to be done. We have a culture of always seeking improvements to the way we live. Ultimately, it is this force that delivers our quality of life and, I would argue, our greater longevity. And if this is the case then we need to start thinking about how we manage life’s (much) later years.

Official UN projections show the world population declining late this century. We have already passed the points of peak baby, peak toddler and possibly also of peak teenager. But the number of people aged 65-plus will still be rising in 50 years when the global population is falling. There will never have been as many 80 year olds, or 100 year olds, in human history as there will be in the year 2100.

Perhaps, in time, measures will emerge that reflect access to concepts like longevity, environmental amenity, human contentment. How would the Australia of today fare by these “future” measures? In a world, in an Australia, with a rising proportion of the population aged 60-plus there needs to be an adjustment to the way we live, work and form relationships. Perhaps the workplace’s embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion should be widened to include a mandatory (greater) proportion of workers aged over 60? Perhaps the terms “old age” and “senior” will be considered highly offensive by 2034? Maybe a more sensitive term is something like “age advantaged”. (I’m open to suggestions on this one.)

And if humanity is careening towards a life expectancy of 100 then perhaps the working life shouldn’t end at 65. Work might evolve as a state that can be slotted into at will, that can be amped up or phased down, that offers skill upgrades and training in situ, that can be performed from different Zoomable locations.

But even in a world of people working longer on more accommodating terms there will still be an extended period of non-work, of what we now call retirement. Men in particular will need to develop social networks and skills to create and manage relationships outside work.

And maybe the idea of human relationships will get a makeover too. Marriage might evolve as a medium-term contract with a right to renew every decade. (A bit like a lease.) Perhaps friendships will evolve as a series of contacts that float into and out of the social orbit. One thing is clear: the ramifications of an older world require powerful social and economic change. The big question for Australia is whether we lean into this change or whether we accommodate its impact bit by painful bit. I say we lean into it!