h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Once again I stand amazed at just how backward this place really is. I wonder, is it deliberate? Today, for example, I discovered that the average life expectancy of a human female is 70 years. Well what is the point of that? Barely out of the crib and already you are on your way out again. It’s just typical of the pessimistic, mate-for-life negativity which surrounds everything here. Wake up! There’s more to life than just living you know!

 

Yes, there is more to life than just living - but not an awful lot more that I actually want to do. Dying, for example, I could not regard as a fun activity. The "pessimistic, mate-for-life negativity" which is represented by the shortness of a human female life span is even worse for males, in that their average life span is even shorter: you have to be depressed when you've so little time to work yourself out of it.

I don't know about how backward we all are, but I suspect that this attitude has been fairly common since people learned how to write, and is still fairly common even now. Avoiding the negativity which pervades the common human existence is a fairly universal task, and most people take a while to master it. If they do master it at all, they tend to do it shortly before dying, which may seem paradoxical but probably gives you a great sense of achievement.

Life activities other than living are commonly perceived as having to be left until you've actually mastered living, and most people haven't achieved this mastery yet.

Good luck with the editorship, by the way...