JOST A MON

It appears that dieting is harmful to your health. The stress induced by forcing a change in your diet results in heightened levels of cortisol, which eventually leads to heart attacks and cancer.

Surely this just goes to show that there's really no clear road to health. Exercise? Forsooth. Consume fewer carbs? Bunkum. Yoga? What for? Lifestyle illnesses will eventually consume us, and for all the blandishments of gyms and sculpted bodies, our systems will go down sooner or later, and there is no possibility of a reboot.

The reason for all this quite simple: a human's life is supposed to end early! It's only artificial measures such as medical care, and petroleum-fuelled rescue apparatuses, and a taboo against nose-picking that have led to multi-decadal lifetimes and pollution. In the good old ages until Alexander Fleming started mucking about with fungi, diseases and wild animals kept our populations in check. There was little existential angst. Our footprints on this planet were short-lived.

So here is my solution to all of the world's ills: environmental degradation, voracious capitalism, the pensions shortfall. Every human's life should end at 40.

How does this help? Well, for one thing, knowing from early childhood that our life is limited to four decades will either instil a powerful drive to overachieve, or stunt us into a shadowy existence of ennui and fatalism. People with the former quality will work wonders in our understanding of life, the universe and everything; everybody else can become managers. No need for pensions, no need to accumulate wealth, no boom and bust, and the constant demand for immediate gratification should work wonders for production. People can procreate in their teens, consolidate their achievements in their twenties and thirties, look after their grandkids till they are 40, and then go quietly into the void, after, preferably, handing over the keys to their apartments to the nearest stranger.

Good plan, eh? What's not to like?