HOW NOT TO DIE

How Not To Die

When someone says “eternal life,” the first thing that comes to mind is religion, the afterlife, and generally something spiritual. This is NOT what we would like to talk about here. We would like to talk about making our actual physical life endless in defiance of the natural order of things. For many, this idea seems so unattainable that they don’t even want to think about it, much less talk about it. For those who are a little more open-minded, the idea of endless physical life of a human being raises a multitude of ethical issues.

Most people are terrified of death but pretend like they are at peace with the natural order of things, the eternal cycle of life and death. Most of the world’s religions are centered around addressing the fear of death in various ways: sugar-coating the ugly truth with fairy tales about an eternal soul—body dies and decomposes, but the soul remains; reincarnation; other dimensions, and all kinds of other tranquilizing, comforting, and very imaginative narratives to avoid facing our own mortality. The truth is, however, that most of us are NOT HAPPY with the “NATURAL” ORDER OF THINGS! Most of us see our loved ones die and are not at peace with it, even if they die at the age of 100! Certainly, we are not at peace with our own mortality.

Up until modern times, there was no alternative to religion to address the mortality problem—science was in its infant stages and was not capable of providing any viable solutions to eliminate mortality.

However, in today’s world where AI can accelerate scientific development; where we have all kinds of discoveries in cell rejuvenation and stem cell research areas, genetic modification science is getting closer and closer to unlocking the mystery of aging. It appears very possible that within the next 30 years or so we will acquire the technology to rejuvenate our bodies, not just the skin. We will very likely become capable of extending our lifespan indefinitely based on scientific research and development of anti-aging and cell rejuvenation technologies.

In order for physical immortality technology to succeed, it requires recognition as legitimate and it must be made a top priority by both governments and private companies dealing with the issue.

For the first time in human history “Victims of Compassion” establishes the missing link between advance science based reversal of aging and our civilization’s suicidal obsession with income and wealth redistribution. Want to live forever? Fight for merit based capitalism and against redistribution of wealth!

As of now, physical immortality still belongs to the realm of science fiction or worse, is considered the province of scam artist “start-up” companies trying to exploit rich people’s fear of death and offer various untested and questionable anti-aging treatments. Doctor David Sinclair, a famous Harvard geneticist specializing in body cell rejuvenation and his colleagues all over the world, draw criticism from their establishment peers for being irresponsibly daring in their research, for allegedly promoting their advanced research without proven results, for trying to make money from health science sensationalism. Some representatives of the establishment academia accuse Doctor Sinclair and others in the genetics field of reversal of aging of being scam artists.

Even if Doctor Sinclair and his other colleagues working on reversing the aging process have not delivered a verified anti-aging treatment yet that can be made commercially available to the masses and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they should be encouraged to pursue this research further! They should be given all the tools necessary to do it and should be allowed to make mistakes and be wrong because what they are doing is giving us all hope to legitimize the reversal of aging as a concept! Doctor David Sinclair and others like him should not be facing the same witch hunt that Galileo or Giordano Bruno faced for their revolutionary discoveries from the establishment of the day.

So how do we make this immortality technology legitimate and realistic? First of all, we need to promote it as a legitimate goal for human progress. Right now, we are focused on virtual reality, on the digitalization of our society that helps government and private companies gain full control over us, we are preoccupied with redistribution of income schemes, demonizing the “rich” and glorifying the “poor,” giving more and more rights to employees without conditioning those rights upon good performance and loyalty to the employer and to customers. We are busy with medieval geopolitical battles over spheres of influence in the world, we are busy expanding the administrative state to control and tax the population more. We are panicking over climate change instead of panicking over the demographic catastrophe among people of European origin and extreme overpopulation in Africa, India, and the Middle East. We got most of our priorities all wrong.

We are worried about things that won’t matter to us as soon as we die, and we are doing nothing to make sure we don’t die!

The world, with all its problems and all our relationships with others, ceases to exist for us when we die.

We are trying to enjoy the little time we have on Earth while navigating the challenges of growing up, choosing the right career, the right life partner, child-raising, and later managing the aging process and treatment for all kinds of illnesses and the loss of loved ones.

What if we could gain control over the time we have to deal with all these challenges and eliminate the ugly process of aging and death? Maybe some people would eventually get tired of living, and then they should have the option of comfortable euthanasia, but most will probably want to keep going for as long as they enjoy it. Rejuvenating aging bodies, eliminating terminal illnesses, removing the mechanism from inside our cells that makes them die would bring about incredible changes in our lifestyle and relationships with others.

Someone whose physical age is 100 could date someone whose physical age is 20 without any sense of disgust or shame because both would look the same age. People would personally meet their ancestors born 200 years ago and socialize with their descendants who are 200 years younger. Pension benefits might cease to exist, and one person’s productivity would eliminate the need to replace them with a new worker for centuries.

Most advanced societies have unintentionally prepared themselves for this transition already: birth rates are below replacement level, and life expectancy and active lifespan are getting longer and longer.

This is no accident—this is preparation of a biological species for a new era where we won’t need as many new people as we need today because the previous generations can remain active and functional much longer. What is missing is the widespread application of the physical immortality technology in advanced societies. It’s missing because science is not there yet, but even when science gets there, advanced societies are not ready for physical immortality because we are still mostly preoccupied with wealth redistribution, and this is the biggest problem.

In less advanced societies, the number one problem is overpopulation. Number two problem is corruption and lack of economic and political stability. The less advanced societies are not yet eligible for widespread implementation of physical immortality technology and are not ready for changes that it can bring about.

Western civilization and its most advanced rivals and satellites with birth rates below replacement level are ready for physical immortality technology, but not qualified for its implementation until they stop prioritizing wealth redistribution over everything else.

We need to build a purely merit-based capitalist individualist society where people will not be shamed or compelled into sharing anything of value with those who they don’t like. In this new society, everyone will only be getting what they paid for, no more and no less. All wealth and resources will be distributed based on market forces, and inequality will be accepted as a normal state of affairs, not as a problem to be remedied by government robbing successful people in favor of less successful people. The meaning of social justice must change—social justice should never mean equal distribution of power or resources but should represent a system of rewards and penalties based on a combination of someone’s behavior, talents, starting capital, property ownership, and efforts. This new society will need to have a purpose that is far more noble and consequential than wealth redistribution: the purpose of ensuring commercially available life extension and physical immortality solutions. This will allow the wealthiest members of society to obtain physical immortality first, but gradually this benefit will spread to broader and broader circles, eventually becoming more and more affordable. There will also be a very powerful stimulus for everyone to succeed in life to be able to afford the benefits of life extension and physical immortality.

The natural order of things doesn’t work for us—we deserve better than that. Each individual who appreciates their own value should realize that it is time to reform current social priorities to change the natural order of things in our favor based on merit and legitimize the mission of achieving physical immortality based on biotechnology as the top priority for the developed nations.