Senescence

A post within 5 hours? That's new.

Anyways.

Senescence. Aging. Growing old. An increased chance of mortality as a function of time, often exponential in Type I organisms such as humans.

Three theories exist that deal with senescence:

1. Mutation Accumulation: Basically the build up of mutations that affect one in their old age because it doesn't affect them when they're at a reproductive age. In other words, they pass on their genes before anyone realizes that there's something wrong with them. Not that having these things in and of itself is wrong since we probably all have something or other 'wrong' in our genes.

2. Antagonistic Pleiotropy: A gene that is detrimental to one at old age is beneficial to them during their reproductive age. Simple enough really. For example a gene that allows males to produce higher amounts of testosterone but gives them a higher chance for breast cancer in the future. Higher testosterone generally has some correlation with higher reproductive chance since the male would be more aggressive and therefore able to scare off other males and protect his mates. Except I don't think this works that well with the modern human, nor have I heard of lions dying of testicular cancer.

3. Disposable Soma: Our body only repairs what is necessary to ensure the successful passing on of genes to future generations. Whenever we get damaged, our cells have to ability to be repaired and restored. However, this theory suggests that rather than repairing our cells completely, which takes up more energy, the cells are only restored to an extent necessary for us to reproduce successfully. Which translate to each time we get hurt, we really do lose a bit of ourselves.


In any case, the 3 hypotheses converge at the same blunt point. Perhaps a truly impassable brick wall. At least for now.

We never really know what lies on our paths until we encounter it. We don't know what each path will bring, only having hopes that our choice could only ever bring with it the logical conclusion. But what if this brick wall rises out of nowhere in our paths?

What have I done with my 19 years of life? If I were to disappear right now, what was my impact on the people around me? The people elsewhere that I've never met? What... regrets would I have?

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Grandma, I'm going to miss you.