Simply a case of lost and found. My copy of “The Longevity Revolution: The Benefits and Challenges of Living a Long Life” (2008) by Robert N. Butler resurfaced recently after a clear up of my office; I had started to read it when it was first published, but only my home library detectives keep the secret of how it went astray.
So ready again for the time when, in my part of the world, the cold locks in and darkness still descends too early until March breaks us free, this and a few other titles of an unrelated nature will become my winter reads at hand.
As most people working in the field of ageing and longevity know, Robert N. Butler was a highly esteemed physician, gerontologist and psychiatrist and the first director in the 1970’s of the National Institute on Aging in the USA. In addition, Butler was the Founder of the International Longevity Centre (1990). Over the decades, this organization has grown to be a global entity known as the International Longevity Centre Global Allianceof which Canada is a member.
And if you ever wondered who coined the term ageism – it was Robert N. Butler in 1969; and here we are fifty plus years later and the term has certainly not lost its relevance.
On to the book. Leafing through it from where I left a bookmark, it came upon my mind that over a decade and a half now since 2008, so much has transpired in world events – scientific, medical and technological, and such life altering moments as the global pandemic of 2020 – that it would be best to start over at the beginning of the book to appreciate Butler’s historical references and his foresight on the challenges that lie ahead.
Though much of the book leans to American commentary, there is a part near the end of the book in Chapter 18 where Butler speaks about “Worldwide Democratization of Longevity: Overcoming Famine, War and Pestilence”. As heavy as that sounds from back then, so much of it is of heightened importance given our realities of 2025. Thinking of a number of international forums I’ve attended these last six years, I was struck by his opening sentence in this chapter:
“The revolution in longevity that began in the twentieth century has not been fully realized in the developing world, for not everyone enjoys equality in longevity.”
Let me hang with that thought until the entire reading is complete, this time for sure, and I will write a short review in a post early in the new year.
Also this winter, as a somewhat odd companion read, the other book at my elbow is Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Metazoa: Animal Minds and The Birth of Consciousness (2020). Going back half a billion years ago (reverse longevity maybe), there I will discover the first evidence of animal body form and the evolution of experience in animal life.
