Locke held the same assumptions about life, because life was almost inconceivably cheap in his day. Locke was born in 1632. A person born then would have a decent shot at making it to age 50 if he survived until age 5 … but only about half did. And “a decent shot” needs to be understood blackjack-style. Conventional wisdom says to hit if the dealer shows 16 and you’re holding 16 yourself — even though you’ve got a 62% chance of going bust, you’re all but certain to lose money if you stand. Living to what we Postmoderns call “middle age” was, in Locke’s world, hitting on a 16. We Postmoderns hear of a guy who dies at 50 and we assume he did it to himself — he was a grossly obese smoker with a drug problem or a race car driver or something. In Locke’s world, they’d wonder what his secret was to have made it so long.
Severian, “Overturning Locke: Life”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-09-11.
