How old is too young to die?

Quoting TiredThinker

The average lifespan is late 70s early 80s, and the maximum lifespan based on hayflick limit is about 120 although people have lived longer.

The lifespan is about 120, but the average life expectancy is somewhere around 70s and 80s. Lifespan and life expectancy are not the same.

Anytime someone dies 10 years below life expectancy, that's too young to die.

"Too young to die?"

SIDS.

Otherwise, any age is fair game since growing old – tomorrow – ain't promised to any living thing.

:death: :flower:

When you're still enjoying life, it's too soon to die. After that, any time is fine, but some means are preferable to others.

Simple: whatever age I am when I die.

Quoting 180 Proof

Otherwise, any age is fair game since growing old – tomorrow – ain't promised to any living thing.

:clap: :sparkle:

Reply to TiredThinker

Each person is free to choose the perfect time to die. Abstract concepts such as "young" or "old" were created for the state for two basic motives: employment and pensions. The state considers you "old" when you are no longer productive, but is this connected to death? no.

A death of a 40 years old person is acceptable as much as someone who is 80.  Maybe the 40-year-old person already lived what was "necessary" according to his circumstances.

I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line… - Yukio Mishima.

Reply to 180 Proof Fair

Reply to L'éléphant There is a maximum lifespan for the species and a statistical lifespan over which 50% don't make it? My life will never span past my age at death.

I'd say 5. Or 4. Years of age. Those are too young to die.

Or did you mean, OP, what is the oldest age for a person to die, at which point he or she is still too young to die.

Well, if you asked that, I would not know how to answer it.

I know that for most people by the time they turn 80, life is not pleasant. At all. For some it still is, but for most it's brutal.

So I don't thing I'd be happy to live beyond 80.

But make no mistake: I won't want to DIE at 80 or beyond or before. That's the human paradox: we don't want to live forever, we just want to avoid going through the dying process. In other words, we may even hate life, but we still would not want to die JUST YET at that point.

Funny thing, this, being a human. Haha. I wish I were born a carburateur, not a bloody human.

Any age is too young. At no point is a person's potential exhausted. On the other hand people need to get out of the fucking way and die.

Quoting javi2541997

Abstract concepts such as "young" or "old" were created for the state for two basic motives: employment and pensions. The state considers you "old" when you are no longer productive, but is this connected to death? no.

The concept came long before the state. In all social animals, there is a period of maturation during which the offspring are considered too young to take responsibility for themselves, and are fed and protected. This is also a period during which half the offspring die, and that's an acceptable loss to the pack or herd. In old age, past the ability to fend for themselves and do their part in feeding and protecting the pack or herd, it is also acceptable for them to die. In robust adulthood, when they're an asset to the society, members are valued, and sorely missed if they die.

So, too, in human societies. The first years are so hazardous to human infants that a some primitive peoples didn't even name a child until the age of three, when it was considered viable. Beyond productive age, some humans choose to die and get out of the way. In some marginal societies, surplus or sickly babies, as well as those too old and infirm to contribute have been killed by their next of kin.

As far as nature is concerned, any age between three and senility is the wrong age for a human to die, unless that person is severely damaged and unproductive. But when people in modern prosperous society say "too young to die", they mean any age under 75. After that, they say "Oh well, he had a good life", whether it's true or not. Except the religious, who say "She's with God now" whether they believe it or not. These are ritual formulas, because we're expected to say something, and we really don't know, most of the time, what we really think or feel about an actual death. We prefer to think about Death in the abstract. And we do that, a lot.

Reply to Vera Mont No objections on your arguments about animals lifespan.

Yet, there are big differences when lifespan is applied to humans. Since the Roman Empire, this topic has been debated, and there have been problems with the specific age of who we should consider "young" or "old". For example: At the age of 14 a person in Roman times was able to get married and be emancipated from their parents. Why? Productivity and the sense that a teenager was ready to work and raise a family. Until late 19th century, children were part of factories and they were considered as a big part of capitalist economies. Nonetheless, the situation switched when the state realized that it was better to teach them rather than slavering them.

I see your point of considering people young when they are under 75 years old. But trust me when I say that this is another trick of the state to gain profits. If we increase the average lifespan, we will have more workers working for longer periods of time, which will result in collect more taxes. The group of active people comprises all of those who are between 18 and 67–70 years old (at least that's how it works here in Spain). There are a lot of productive people and a lot of tax incomes to be paid... See? The age and what we consider "young" or "old" depend on how much your body and brain are able to work. 
It is clear that a 26 years old is more vivid than a 65 years old, but the state makes sure both work.

For me, 13.8 billion years old, would mean I would have just about lived long enough, to be 'getting it all right!'

Quoting bert1

Any age is too young. At no point is a person's potential exhausted. On the other hand people need to get out of the fucking way and die.

:smirk:

I hope there is experienced peace for us once we die. Life at its worse can make a person question everything.

Quoting javi2541997

Since the Roman Empire, this topic has been debated, and there have been problems with the specific age of who we should consider "young" or "old".

Which is why I didn't specify number of years, or any civilized societies between pre-agricultural ones and our own.Quoting javi2541997

There are a lot of productive people and a lot of tax incomes to be paid... See?

And an awful lot of pension to pay out, for longer, as well as public amenities to maintain. In Canada, standard retirement age is still 65, but we can start receiving [a smaller] pension at 60 or [a larger one] at 70.

Quoting javi2541997

The age and what we consider "young" or "old" depend on how much your body and brain are able to work.

I've never heard anyone say that a 26-year-old suffering from disabilities, addiction and depression (ie, distinctly unvibrant) is old enough to die, while a happy, clever 90-year-old was too young to die.

Quoting TiredThinker

There is a maximum lifespan for the species and a statistical lifespan over which 50% don't make it?

Yeah, I don't understand the answers on this thread. Those numbers are a result of health studies as it relate to population's well-being, which includes physical and mental health, security/safety, accident, etc. They're backed by science. It doesn't matter what one thinks what age they would like to die -- we're not talking poetic, spiritual, metaphysical, or choice here.

Just the improvements in water and food safety alone had contributed to an increase in life expectancy. If your country's life expectancy is still in the 45-year old, then you're behind 2,000 years in well-being. Short and long life has real, measurable meaning.

Quoting Vera Mont

I've never heard anyone say that a 26-year-old suffering from disabilities, addiction and depression (ie, distinctly unvibrant) is old enough to die, while a happy, clever 90-year-old was too young to die.

:up: :clap:

As a general recipe:

But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe.

We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

If that's wrong, then 10 years.

At least I was able to pick a position. :D

Quoting TiredThinker

What is too young to die, and what is the age after which most would accept that they probably lived a full life?

Too young to die is an age younger than the person making this remark, who likely remembers that he or she was quite vibrant and full of life in that age.

I've notice that usually people talk about people that have died before 50 or in their 50's as having "died young". After 60 dying starts to become quite normal and it becomes more ordinary and normal as the age increases. Nobody assumes an 100-year old to live decades more.

Also when parents have to bury their children, I would say then the normal rhythm of life has broken and you could say the children have died too young. Children are meant to bury their parents, not vice versa.

Quoting ssu

Children are meant to bury their parents, not vice versa.

Meant by whom? Over most of human history, never mind biological history, infant and early childhood mortality was always high, and accepted as the natural order of things. Any species that raised 50% its offspring to reproductive age was extremely successful - so successful, in fact, that it would overpopulate its habitat, which would result in a catastrophic event, like an epidemic or mass starvation, to get the numbers back to a sustainable level.

Our modern ideas about life and death are largely artificial, based on technology, not biology.

Quoting Vera Mont

Our modern ideas about life and death are largely artificial, based on technology, not biology.

Modern medicine has indeed changed our attitudes, the most perhaps in that infants are very likely to stay alive and not die at childbirth or at early age. Our attitudes toward early deaths of infants has changed.

Quoting Vera Mont

Meant by whom?

The usual lifespan would be so that parents die before their children or their grandchildren. Besides, people don't think an 90-year old dying as a huge tragedy. They usually do in the case of a 9-year old, especially it's hard for the parents.