LONGER, BUT NEVER ALIVE: THE GREAT LIE OF LIFE EXPECTANCY
- Madhukar Dama
- 8 hours ago
- 5 min read
LONGER, BUT NEVER ALIVE: THE GREAT LIE OF LIFE EXPECTANCY
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INTRODUCTION
We are told again and again:
"Modern civilization has triumphed!"
"People live longer than ever before!"
"We have defeated disease, hunger, and death!"
But behind the polished charts, awards, and speeches lies a deeper, darker truth:
We have not created longer life — we have only created longer suffering.
We have not defeated death — we have defeated living.
Modern "high life expectancy" is celebrated as the pinnacle of human achievement.
In reality, it is the pinnacle of human misunderstanding.
We have replaced vibrant life with slow mechanical decay, calling it "progress."
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PART I: THE MYTH OF LIFE EXPECTANCY IN THE PAST
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1. Life Expectancy Was Low — Only on Paper
Historical averages were low (30–40 years) because many infants and small children died — not because adults lived short lives.
Once a person survived childhood diseases, he/she could often live into their 60s, 70s, even 90s.
Ancient and indigenous records, folk tales, and archaeological findings show many elders guiding communities.
Example:
Many tribal elders today in remote forests of India, Africa, and South America live strong into their 70s without ever seeing a doctor.
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2. Life Was Shorter — But Full
Days were real.
People:
Woke naturally with the sun.
Worked with hands, moved with bodies.
Ate food straight from the land.
Felt hunger, satisfaction, seasons, soil, rain.
Loved, argued, danced, sang, built.
Life was physically hard but emotionally rich, spiritually full.
They lived fully — not merely lasted.
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PART II: THE MODERN ERA: HIGHER EXPECTANCY, LOWER LIFE
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1. Medical Machinery Extended Lifespan
Vaccines, antibiotics, hospitals, sanitation dramatically reduced childhood deaths.
Machines, chemicals, surgeries can prolong biological existence.
People can now survive:
Premature births.
Severe injuries.
Chronic diseases (diabetes, cancer, kidney failure) for decades.
But survival is not the same as living.
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2. The New Human Condition: Slow Mechanical Decay
From age 40 or 50 onward, millions spend lives:
Managing pills.
Managing hospital visits.
Managing body part replacements (hip, knee, heart valves).
Managing depression, dementia, and chronic fatigue.
Old age has become:
Not a ripening into wisdom.
But a medical project, a financial contract, a slow disintegration.
People exist. They do not live.
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3. The Collapse of Joy, Meaning, and Connection
Work has become endless and meaningless (sitting in boxes pushing papers, apps, and code).
Food is plastic and chemical-laden (ultra-processed, sugar-saturated, hormone-injected).
Relationships are shallow, transactional, screen-mediated.
Nature is distant — a weekend amusement, not a living companion.
Death is no longer accepted — it is fought, hidden, denied until the very last, creating agonizing ends.
We have created a world where:
> You survive longer,
but you belong nowhere.
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PART III: HOW LIFE EXPECTANCY IS MISUSED AS THE PINNACLE OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT
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1. Weaponized as Proof of Progress
Politicians, economists, scientists all point to rising life expectancy to prove that "humanity is better off."
It becomes statistical armor against any criticism of modern civilization.
The False Logic:
> Longer existence = Better life.
More years = More progress.
Reality:
> Longer imprisonment is not better freedom.
Longer decay is not better living.
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2. Used to Justify All Other Sufferings
Environmental destruction?
"At least we live longer!"
Mass depression and suicide rates?
"At least we live longer!"
Broken families, loneliness, addiction?
"At least we live longer!"
Disgusting processed food and polluted rivers?
"At least we live longer!"
It becomes the fig leaf hiding the naked ugliness of modern life.
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3. Selling Survival as Happiness
Pharmaceutical industries, hospitals, insurance companies all sell the illusion:
> "We are saving you. We are giving you life."
In truth:
They prolong dependency.
They manufacture chronic diseases.
They profit from mechanical survival, not from vibrant living.
The "life" they give is not thriving — it is endless maintenance.
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4. Killing Natural Life to Extend Artificial Life
We destroy forests to build hospitals.
We poison food to save lives with pills.
We electrify every village not to give joy, but to give advertisements and consumption.
We sacrificed quality for quantity —
and now we celebrate the growing quantity of hollow lives.
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PART IV: A WORLD OF SURVIVORS, NOT LIVERS
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Children born today are expected to live to 80–90 years.
But:
Most will be diabetic by 40.
Depressed by 30.
Fertility destroyed by 25.
Connected to gadgets and disconnected from life.
We have engineered a society of captive survivors.
Not lovers.
Not creators.
Not healers.
Not poets.
Not dancers.
Just managed, medicated, obedient survivors.
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FINAL THOUGHT: THE DEATH OF DEATH
In trying to defeat death,
we have defeated life.
Earlier, people lived knowing they would die —
so they lived boldly, simply, presently.
Today, people live trying not to die —
so they live fearfully, anxiously, bitterly.
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WE SURVIVE, BUT WE NEVER LIVED
they wrote numbers on the walls,
charts, graphs, reports, celebrations,
"life expectancy up!" they screamed,
"we have conquered death!" they howled.
but nobody danced anymore.
nobody sang to the moon.
nobody built homes with bare hands.
nobody tasted rain with open mouths.
they survived.
machines buzzed,
plastic tubes hummed,
pharmaceutical rivers flowed
through old, shivering arms.
they lived 85 years,
and smiled 8 times.
they sat in chairs
from birth to death,
crushed between deadlines, tax forms, hospital beds.
they ate food
that was never alive.
they drank water
that remembered more poisons than prayers.
they fought to buy time,
they traded joy for insurance,
they buried hunger under shopping malls,
they forgot the smell of their own childhoods.
and when death finally came,
it found no fight left —
only files, tubes, hospital slippers,
oxygen masks,
pills spilled like broken teeth.
this was your great victory, man.
this was your gold medal in evolution.
you lived longer,
but you lived like a stranger to yourself.
you survived everything,
except your own birth.
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HEALING DIALOGUE
(A young man awakening to the hollow lie meets Madhukar the Hermit.)
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[Scene: A tired young man, Arjun, climbs a rocky path where Madhukar sits under an ancient banyan tree. His body is healthy, but his soul is sick. He collapses before Madhukar.]
Arjun:
Madhukar... everyone says we are lucky to live longer today.
But I feel I am just trapped in a slow-moving coffin.
I have gadgets, food, hospitals, and jobs...
But I have no life.
Madhukar (smiling gently):
You are lucky, Arjun. Lucky to realize it before it’s too late.
Arjun:
But isn’t it progress, Madhukar? To live 80 years?
Madhukar:
*Eighty years doing what?
Staring at glowing rectangles?
Forgetting the smell of rain?
Swallowing 16 pills a day?
Paying EMIs until your bones ache?
Forgetting your grandmother's songs?*
Arjun:
They say infant mortality has reduced, diseases have been conquered, medical miracles happen every day.
Madhukar:
*And yet, Arjun, look around —
Are the people joyous?
Are their eyes bright?
Do they run to rivers like children?
Do they grow gardens, make songs, share fires under the stars?*
Arjun (whispering, broken):
No. They sit in offices. They take pills for sleep. They count steps on watches.
Madhukar:
Survival is not life, my child.
Stretching your existence across more years is not living more. It is often living less — diluted, polluted, domesticated.
Arjun:
Then what should I do? How do I live, not just survive?
Madhukar:
*Come back to life, Arjun.
Touch the soil.
Plant something every season.
Walk without counting steps.
Make food with your own hands.
Feel the sun without sunscreen.
Laugh until your ribs hurt.
Sing even if you forget the words.
Die when you must — but live before that, even if only for one true day.*
Arjun (his eyes shining for the first time in years):
Madhukar, I will die alive — not alive and dead at the same time.
Madhukar (laughing warmly):
That, Arjun, will be the only true victory you will ever need.
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