Something pervasive in our society molds our collective choices. Their weak side is submitting to the inevitable. This ambition of ours has borne fruit. Life expectancy has indeed increased. We can expect to live almost twice as long now as in the mid-1800s.
Fear seems to be the primary motivator.
In addition to the experimental leading edge of life extension, the ordinary, every day custom of keeping more people alive longer, through ever more costly medical interventions, persists. The result is that more and more, old age is about illness, about surviving on a practical level with multiple disabilities, about living with a sense of vulnerability. We have become victims of the health care system that our cultural values have created. The dying process has been transformed into a series of wrenching choices. He has lived a long life, a good life.