Living Longer, Dying Differently

The average human lifespan has nearly doubled over the past two centuries. How does that affect how people feel about death?

If the prevalence and commonality of death has had any positive side effect on Louisianawhich has one of the lowest life expectancies in the U.S.its that residents have attuned themselves to its context. Early on, I got some sense of history and how ages compare, and how one of the responsibilities we face in this age is to be conscious of whats unique to it, says author Anne Rice, one of New Orleanss most famous daughters. If youre aware that in 1850 people starved to death in the middle of New Orleans or New York, thats a dramatic difference between past and future.

Rices classic novelsInterview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, and many morepredate the current vampire craze. Her oeuvre still stands above most of the genre, however, because it represents a unique approach not replicated even decades after many of the books first appeared: New Orleans framed Rices perspective as she grew up there. Modern metropolises have transformed their environs into finely tuned systems of order, but the Crescent City teems with a charmingly antiquated natural chaos. The city offers a living, breathing reminder of the pastand, therefore, of how far humanity has come.

The failure of most vampire literature is that the authors cant successfully imagine what its like to be 300 years old. I try really hard to get it right, Rice says. I really love taking Lestather most famous characterinto an all-night drugstore and having him talk about how he remembers in 1789 that not a single product there existed in any form that was available to him as a young man in Paris. He marvels at the affluence and the wealth of the modern world.

To a caveman, modern humans might appear not unlike Lestat and his vampire kin. We dont necessarily consume blood to live, nor can we transform into bats, wolves, or mist, but we do have a host of seemingly superhuman powers. Chief among those, to the primitive human, would be our ability to live long lives.

If a caveman were exceptionally lucky, he might have made it to his 40s, but he more than likely would have succumbed to pneumonia, starvation, or injury before his early 20sif he survived infancy in the first place, that is. Life expectancy for humans more than 10,000 years ago was short and didnt improve much for a long time. In ancient Rome, the average citizen lived to only about age 24. But most counted themselves fortunate to get even that far; more than a third of children died before their first birthday. A thousand years later, expectations looked much the same.

Over the course of the next 800 years, people in the more advanced parts of the world added only 15 years to their life expectancy. An average American in 1820 could expect to see 39. Lifespans started to pick up in the early 19th centuryaround the same time that vampire myths were proliferating in Europeand really sped up in the 20th thanks to a decline in infant mortality and improvements to health in general. By 2010, the average U.S. life expectancy had nearly doubled from two centuries prior, at 78 years, with similar results in other developed countries. To a caveman, or an average Roman, that would seem like an eternity.

Rice recognizes this perspective. Even with Louisianas comparatively low life expectancy, she and others from the Pelican state are still far better off than most people at any point in history. I would be dead if we were in the 19th century, says the septuagenarian. But were living in the most wonderful age. Never before has the world been the way it is for us. Theres never been this kind of longevity and good health.

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One question that inevitably arises when talking about living longer is, are we living better? A person might live to 100 today, but whats the quality of those later years?

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Living Longer, Dying Differently