Nationalist & Spiritualist Longevity Myths
Another claim to longevity might be somewhat more reduced, is the idea of nationalist longevity. When people got very focused on how much better their country was as opposed to another, they began claiming that their country was so great in fact, that they were all over one hundred years old. For example, in the United States, in the 1970 national census, nearly 106,000 people claimed to be over one hundred years old. That’s quite a feat, no? Not just a few, but over one hundred thousand, apparently. This was an attempt to counter the claims made in the Soviet Union that their lifestyle resulted in extreme longevity. The Soviet Union was simply borrowing the claims made by the people of Caucasus, and then mixed it with Marxist idealism. Although the United States supposedly didn’t “go as far” as those in the Soviet Union, (that’s to be debated, as one thinks that over one hundred thousand people claiming to be over a hundred is going pretty far) there were people in the 1976 edition of Time magazine claiming to be the ages of 125, and 126.
Eventually, experts came forward from both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to debunk both claims made, and these claims gradually petered off into the occasional “I knew a guy who lived to be … from eating/doing/drinking” claim. However, in Cuba, nationalist claims to longevity continued to run onwards, but have also died out over a stretch of time. Pun intended. Other claims, that pretty much mirror that of nationalist longevity claims are that a specific race live longer than any other, or age better. Some claims are that “Our family has always lived very long,” etc. Based on familial stories of so and so’s grandmother, who lived to be a hundred and something.
Taoists often claim to live extremely long, in an example of spiritualist longevity, according to practice, instead of genealogy. The Swami Bua claims to be a different age each time he is interviewed; this wouldn’t be a big deal really, considering how often someone of his personage actually allows himself to be interviewed, except he claims a very radically different age each time. He also claims to have been born in 1889, which by this time would make him a record holder. But since he is not a record holder, the obvious sham comes to the light.
