There's a word for people like you...
May. 9th, 2003 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsDeath is a tragedy.
It is meaningless, unjust, and abhorrent beyond words. Religions concoct elaborate lies about it in the hopes of appeasing our fear of it. Even secular authors, as unable to do anything about it as the religious types, crafted sophisticated tales about how sick and wrong immortality would really be, about how horrible and terrible a truly long and successful life would be. All deaths are "untimely." Death does not give meaning to life; insted, the living give a meaning to death by stealing that significance away from those who truly deserve it, who can appreciate and return it: the living.
The same thing is true of disease and deformity. When some reporter says, "Little Billy's strength in dealing with his missing limbs teaches us all about humanity," I'd gladly give up the lesson in a heartbeat so Billy could walk-- and y'know something, I bet so would Billy. Such condescension, such sophistry, ignores the real pain at the heart of his story. If want to find a hero, go look at Christopher Reeves, who outraged many in the "disabled" community by publicly admitting he would do anything and pay anything to get out of his wheelchair.
The majority of people in this world, when they think of death at all, expect it to be inevitable, the outcome of a "natural span of years" that has been climbing steadily for over a century. While nobody in their right mind would want to roll back that success, very few think that a sudden, sharp increment in lifespan-- four centuries, five centuries, millennia-- is possible. When confronted with the question, the response is usually an ironic "It would be nice, but..."
Some of us, though, see through the lies and the sophistry. We have no intention of handing ourselves over to "our biological destiny" when it comes to death. Most people do: they get immunized, see a doctor when they're in pain, resist the biological world pressing in on them from all sides. But for some of us, that's not enough: we want medicine and science to do more than hold back biology for "a little longer"; we want that "biological destiny" held off for as long as we want. We want those centuries, those millenia. We are far too interested in a future we know will be exciting and wonderful, just as all futures have always been expected to be exciting and wonderful (and usually were, although in unexpected ways), to be satisfied with a "natural span of days."
"Transhumanists," "Extropians," "Posthumanists," "New Prometheans" are some of the names those of us who are actively interested in seeing the End of Death. Oh, sure, someday the stars will go out but, y'know, with enough time and enough thought, maybe even that could be overcome. Give us a chance. There is no harm in trying.
But thousands of years of "justifying" and "accepting" what has always been, up to this point, inevitable, doesn't disappear overnight. Remember, the very notion that immortality is a reasonable thing to contemplate is very new in human history, an accident of history no older than Darwin. On the other hand, the justification and acceptance of death has thousands of years of literature and tradition behind it. Nobody gives up thousands of years of tradition willingly.
The New Atlantis is the outlet to watch if you want to read these enemies of the future at work. Names you've never heard of, such as Percy Walker, or Leon Kass, the intellectual engines at the heart of this pro-death movement, who view death as "making room for renewal," as if we, the living, cannot renew ourselves, and their mouthpieces, such as Peter Lawler and Eric Cohen. The New Atlantis is absolutely Second Tier in the media, only one step away from those doing the hard thinking at the core of the issue. By the time it gets through academia, print media, and television/radio (the third, fourth, and fifth tiers of intelligensia), it's been boiled down to sound bites: "Medical blessings perverted into a false expectation of endless life."
But it's not an expectation, it's a hope. It's a worthy goal. It means replacing these frail bodies that suffer and disease and die with ones made of stronger stuff-- perhaps merely better and more resilient, more renewable flesh and blood, perhaps something else, perhaps a combination. The difference between angioplasty which lengthens life and telemerase renewal which potentially can lengthen life is a difference that makes no difference, except to the Mortalists.
And they have a word for us, now. We have called them the "Pro Death" camp, the "Mortalist" camp, as a form of perjury. Some of them have even taken to using "Mortalist" proudly.
They call us "The Extinctionists." If we change humanity, they say, then there will be no humanity: humanity, with all of its troubles and woe, will be extinct.
Well, fine. I have no problem with that label.
Remember, though, when people like Lawler write:
It is meaningless, unjust, and abhorrent beyond words. Religions concoct elaborate lies about it in the hopes of appeasing our fear of it. Even secular authors, as unable to do anything about it as the religious types, crafted sophisticated tales about how sick and wrong immortality would really be, about how horrible and terrible a truly long and successful life would be. All deaths are "untimely." Death does not give meaning to life; insted, the living give a meaning to death by stealing that significance away from those who truly deserve it, who can appreciate and return it: the living.
The same thing is true of disease and deformity. When some reporter says, "Little Billy's strength in dealing with his missing limbs teaches us all about humanity," I'd gladly give up the lesson in a heartbeat so Billy could walk-- and y'know something, I bet so would Billy. Such condescension, such sophistry, ignores the real pain at the heart of his story. If want to find a hero, go look at Christopher Reeves, who outraged many in the "disabled" community by publicly admitting he would do anything and pay anything to get out of his wheelchair.
The majority of people in this world, when they think of death at all, expect it to be inevitable, the outcome of a "natural span of years" that has been climbing steadily for over a century. While nobody in their right mind would want to roll back that success, very few think that a sudden, sharp increment in lifespan-- four centuries, five centuries, millennia-- is possible. When confronted with the question, the response is usually an ironic "It would be nice, but..."
Some of us, though, see through the lies and the sophistry. We have no intention of handing ourselves over to "our biological destiny" when it comes to death. Most people do: they get immunized, see a doctor when they're in pain, resist the biological world pressing in on them from all sides. But for some of us, that's not enough: we want medicine and science to do more than hold back biology for "a little longer"; we want that "biological destiny" held off for as long as we want. We want those centuries, those millenia. We are far too interested in a future we know will be exciting and wonderful, just as all futures have always been expected to be exciting and wonderful (and usually were, although in unexpected ways), to be satisfied with a "natural span of days."
"Transhumanists," "Extropians," "Posthumanists," "New Prometheans" are some of the names those of us who are actively interested in seeing the End of Death. Oh, sure, someday the stars will go out but, y'know, with enough time and enough thought, maybe even that could be overcome. Give us a chance. There is no harm in trying.
But thousands of years of "justifying" and "accepting" what has always been, up to this point, inevitable, doesn't disappear overnight. Remember, the very notion that immortality is a reasonable thing to contemplate is very new in human history, an accident of history no older than Darwin. On the other hand, the justification and acceptance of death has thousands of years of literature and tradition behind it. Nobody gives up thousands of years of tradition willingly.
The New Atlantis is the outlet to watch if you want to read these enemies of the future at work. Names you've never heard of, such as Percy Walker, or Leon Kass, the intellectual engines at the heart of this pro-death movement, who view death as "making room for renewal," as if we, the living, cannot renew ourselves, and their mouthpieces, such as Peter Lawler and Eric Cohen. The New Atlantis is absolutely Second Tier in the media, only one step away from those doing the hard thinking at the core of the issue. By the time it gets through academia, print media, and television/radio (the third, fourth, and fifth tiers of intelligensia), it's been boiled down to sound bites: "Medical blessings perverted into a false expectation of endless life."
But it's not an expectation, it's a hope. It's a worthy goal. It means replacing these frail bodies that suffer and disease and die with ones made of stronger stuff-- perhaps merely better and more resilient, more renewable flesh and blood, perhaps something else, perhaps a combination. The difference between angioplasty which lengthens life and telemerase renewal which potentially can lengthen life is a difference that makes no difference, except to the Mortalists.
And they have a word for us, now. We have called them the "Pro Death" camp, the "Mortalist" camp, as a form of perjury. Some of them have even taken to using "Mortalist" proudly.
They call us "The Extinctionists." If we change humanity, they say, then there will be no humanity: humanity, with all of its troubles and woe, will be extinct.
Well, fine. I have no problem with that label.
Remember, though, when people like Lawler write:
While pagan philosophers like Aristotle think that human beings as mortal animals can be happy, Augustine insists that human beings can never truly be happy as long as they are mortal, because their deepest natural desires can only be satisfied through an immortal union with the creator.What he really means is dead.
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no subject
My impression of what will occur is a series of gene therapies and genetic modifications that will significantly extend parts of our biological systems... But it will take a great accumulation of these to produce truly long life, since if only one complex system isn't up to the stretch the whole thing goes.
I have some specific hope that the benefits of caloric reduction diets will be simulated via gene therapies and/or drugs that mimic said dietary effects, and that could get the average lifespan up to around 100-120 within decades...
Just consider
Date: 2005-10-12 03:14 pm (UTC)I am 40, born in 1965. Right now and in the coming decennia, I have an average life expectancy of about 80. That means that if nothing bad happens with my body, or if the political/technological climate stays stable and expanding (barring an oil crash) I can expect to live to about 2040-ish.
I expect some advancement to occur, at the very least, in the next 20 years. That'll mean that the first elitists will get their hands on the first generations of life extension treatments in the 2020s. That will allow for testing, standardization and the price of these treatments to trickle down in that decade, which I expect will happen because demand will go up (even if not everyone likes to live forever).
However after a while most people will want to live an extra few lives. The first treatments will be riddled with bugs, but i'm fairly optimistic that in the 2030s there will be dependable treatments adding, say, a decade on average to life expectancy for people in the more affluent countries.
This will snowball steadily, adding a few years every few years as we go along. Barring political misadventure, global crisis, war, largescale environmental mishaps etc. I can expect to have aquired a fair shot at an extra few decades of expectable average life expectancy by 2040. That means that I will be enjoying my bonus jackpot years well after my number would have been up otherwise.
This means I am taking modest steps to increase my chances. I eat well. I avoid stress. I train 3-4 times a week. I avoid dangerous situations, let alone the whole topic of smoking, alcohol or drugs. This will add, on average, a few years. I am realistic; a piano might always fall on me. I have a chance to get, say, cancer, but as years progress cancer has had less of a bite as well.
By 2050 I expect life extension treatments to be able to add several decades.
Eventually however, and that eventually may be right in my window of reasonable expectations, this quantity will go up exponentially. The human body, apparently evolved by ramshackle evolutionary processes, should be be reverse-engineerable within a limited amount of time.
In 1992 it would take more than a century to chart the human genome. They finished just after the millennium. The same may very well happen with life extension treatments.
And I don't even enter really speculative factors in my expectations. If technology really accelerates, and we have some sort of (benevolent!) spike or singularity all bets are off. After a singularity hits humanity I might live forever but I as a being might totally transcend any defenition of human, alive, conscious, sentient or being. I might be a flux of software scattered over a region of space expanding at a fraction of the speed of light.
Some code originating from an upload of my mind may be dispersing into the intergalactic space in half a million years. But that's really speculative.
Re: Just consider
Date: 2005-10-12 06:45 pm (UTC)Also, while there's some merit to comparing the acceleration of computer tech and thus mechanical processes like genome sequencing, our understanding of said genome does not follow that same curve. It's still my impression that we only have vague ideas of how most of the genome actually works, let alone how to monkey with more complex systems. We certainly don't understand anything so complicated as how we evolved from proto-chimps and that's only a 1-2% difference.
I hold some hope that we'll find some set of genes that can all be changed at once and get a big boost in our lifespan, but that will most likely apply only to genetically engineered children for a long time, and we aren't likely to allow that anytime soon in this country anyway...
As far as uploading is concerned, I might well create a nifty software copy of myself if the tech ever gets good (hundreds of years minimum IMHO) but I won't kill myself afterward (however incrementally) to pretend that I'm now uploaded. Not that I think the philosophical argument is that simple, I just don't expect to be convinced by the glorified house-ape selling me the service. ;-)