I recently learned that there are some biological symmetries between almost all living creatures, in terms of size versus metabolism rate. Tiny creatures like mice and the shrew have very fast metabolisms; their hearts beat quickly, they breath rapidly, and they eat more than their own weight each day. But they burn out fast; their lives are relatively short, just a few years. Elephants are bigger than us, they have slower metabolisms. They live about as long as modern humans do today (70-80 years), but that’s a bit of an unfair comparison given that humans have the benefit of their brains and civilization; go back 2,000 years, and our average life span was more like 35 years. Admittedly, elephants in captivity don’t live as long as in the wild, but then again, how long would we live if we were held in captivity by elephants and they provided for our needs?<\/p>\n
The bottom line of all this is that we get about 300 to 500 million breathes in our lifetime; shrews, mice, cats, dogs, humans, horses, and elephants get a bit less, more like 200 million (but again, until about 2,000 years ago, less than 10% of the overall history of the homo sapiens species, we would only get around 250 million breaths in our average 35 year lifespan). So, civilization has given us maybe an extra 150 million breaths. The question is, are we using those breaths wisely? Are we happier than shrews, dogs, cats, horses and elephants in the wild?<\/p>\n
That’s a tough question to answer. But the process of civilization did make humans more wealthy on average, and it made certain individual very wealthy relative to everyone else. So we are able to ask this question: are the richer people of today happier than the poorer ones?<\/p>\n
I’d like to think that the answer is no, that wealth distracts us from the important things in life. However, there are some studies that show the opposite. For instance, this chart<\/a> and this chart<\/a> from The Economist both indicate that on average, people in the richer countries are happier than those in poorer countries. <\/p>\n Another way of looking at this is to ask, are we happier today, here in modern American society, than we were say 40 or 50 years ago? I don’t think there are any comparative surveys to determine that. Speaking for myself, I sometimes believe that things were better and people were happier back when I was a kid, in the early 1960’s. Life was slower and simpler, there weren’t as many people around, things were less crowded, the sun seemed to shine brighter, the summers seemed longer, etc. <\/p>\n But when I ask myself if I would accept an offer to transplant my 58 year old body to the year 1960 thru some sort of time machine, and live the rest of my life in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I start having second thoughts. No personal computers? No internet? No decaf coffee (other than Sanka, yuck)? Supermarkets that were smaller and dirtier and didn’t have much of a selection of fresh fruits and veggies? No copy machines, no faxes, no cell phones or smart phones, the n-word was still in use in most places? And they didn’t have many of the medicines that we have today, a lot of diseases that can be managed were fatal back then.<\/p>\n Cigarette smoke was everywhere, and cars broke down a lot. Most communities were very homogeneous, i.e. all white or all black or all Hispanic, etc. I’d have to re-live the Cuban missile crisis, when America came within a half hour of a big nuclear war. And then the Kennedy assassination, the riots in the cities, the whole Vietnam thing; and then the hippies and the summer of love and the campus \u201coccupations\u201d and the psychedelic music of the late 60s. There wasn’t much of a variety of different beers and wines in the typical liquor store (Bud, Miller, Schlitz, Rhinegold, Piels, Pabst; you want wine? OK, Gallo). <\/p>\n So, as crazy as things are today, and for all the things I miss from the old days, I’ll stay in the present. I’m more adapted to and more spoiled by things as they are today. So I’ll try to make the best of how ever many breaths I have left right here in the wacky world of the \u201ctwenty one-teens\u201d ,as the American Great Recession continues. (Half Depression, as I like to call it \u2013 the Depression of the 30’s lasted 10 or 11 years, and if we’re lucky, our 2008 financial crisis will be fully resolved by 2014). <\/p>\n One final thought: I’d like to see the correlation between national happiness and average lifespan along side the Economist graphs that I cited above. But one or two quick facts in that vein: Norway, Denmark and Canada are way up there on the happiness scale, and they have average lifespans of 80.2, 78.3 and 80.7, respectively; Indonesia, China and Turkey trail the pack in happiness, and their average lifespans are 70.7, 73.0 and 71.1. Australia is quite happy and people there average 81.2; Russia is pretty miserable and they average 65.5. I still contend that wealth doesn’t buy happiness; but it might, on average, buy longer lifespan. <\/p>\n It looks to me as though the prospect of an extra 5 or 10 years, or around 70 million breaths, does make people feel better about their lives (and of course, it works both ways \u2013 feeling better about life contributes to living longer). But in the end, we get what we get; the trick is to worry a little less about how many breaths we have left, and enjoy the simple act of breathing \u2013 right here, and right now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently learned that there are some biological symmetries between almost all living creatures, in terms of size versus metabolism rate. Tiny creatures like mice and the shrew have very fast metabolisms; their hearts beat quickly, they breath rapidly, and they eat more than their own weight each day. 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