Older and Wiser?

From Monday's discussion on Start the Week, Radio 4....

Is old age, a very old age that approximates to immortality, now on the cards-not as a reality but as a distinct possibility? Some scientists seem to think so. But what is being offered is not just that-instead, it is a sort of perpetual youth. Asked if they would like to live to a very old age-a couple of hundred years-most people were reluctant; but asked if they would like to be 29, say, for a very long time, well, now we're talking...all the women would also always be 29...

Is this just the dream of the baby-boomers, those who have never had it so good and cannot come to terms with the possibility that it might all go sour? Is this , on the other hand, a reflection of some innate wish for youth or is it a historically conditioned desire, a set of expectations fashioned by late capitalism? After all, capitalism is premised on the abolishing of limits, on radically altering our conception of time and what greater limits on our aspirations could there be than one's own mortality?

Would art, love be possible without time? More precisely, would they possible without the pull of the transcendent, a realm that transcends our own finitude?We love dying things... No mistake would be so great that it could not be rectified in time (as in the film, Groundhog Day), and no love lost so tragically final that we couldn't imagine finding it again.

The problem of being oneself for so long. Wouldn't we get bored of ourselves? The insufferable intoxication that is ourselves.
Wittgenstein: Immortality is the solution to which problem?

But would we be just one self if we lived forever? Would our memories be able to sustain us over such a long period or would we only have an experience of unconnected segments of a life, devoid of any common thread, any underlying unity -in effect, a series of fragmented selves? But if as person 'C' we can surely remember 'b' and if b can remember 'A' then C at least has memory of a memory of 'A'.

Why do anything if there's infinite time to do it in? (so speaks the Kashmiri!)
Kashmiri proverb: leave the rifle under the sun and after a while it will go off on its own. What would we do if we had all the time in the world? Is there a knowledge, an understanding , that is deeply tied to our finitude? Mortal thoughts, timely thinking...Would we, in fact, still be recognizably human or would we become like the gods or nature: timeless? Ibn Arabi would say, on the other hand, that it is precisely our finite nature that allows us to experience a whole range of times.

Nussbaum: Calypso: