Above is a video that discusses Life Extension, and what we are trying to do to combat, well, aging. It goes over the theories on it far better than I can, as well as the consequences, good and bad, when it comes to life extension. It also goes over the fact that, no matter what, death is still inevitable. Entropy wins in the end, so immortality is almost certainly impossible.
Death Positivity and Life Longevity, also known as Life Extension, are two interesting movements associated with Death. On this blog, I have leaned more into Death Positivity over Life Extension, more or less because I do not believe true immortality to be possible, and Life Extension efforts have yet to show recent, significant gains, and likely will not within my lifetime.
Life Extension does involve things like cryonics, which I’ve touched on this blog before, but there’s also a whole movement exploring other opportunities to never needing to face death. There’s vitamins and herbs you should take, hormones you should consider, stem cell research and regenerative medicine, gene therapy, molecular repair – honestly, it’s a huge movement that looks at many things, and I do wish them all the power in the world in extending life.
I even wish them power in finding immortality, although I consider immortality to be problematic in the larger scheme of things, notably, in resources and space. We’ve yet to figure out space travel, or colonize any planets, or create any space stations. If we achieve immortality, Earth simply won’t be enough to sustain all of us, and people will likely die from violence, starvation, dehydration, or other things.
Not to mention the damage we’ll do to our food resources, to the point of possibly causing extinction of some species.
Is this dramatic? Yes – but so is immortality.
Now, simple life extension, letting us live beyond 100 years, beyond 200 years, that seems more feasible, but there’s certainly many questions of how.
Human lifespans haven’t drastically changed. Yes, most of us have a longer life expectancy than we have had in the past, but these ages were achievable in the past, as well. There were people in the BCE era living to 70s and 80s, perhaps not as many as live that long now, but nonetheless, it was possible.
Living to 200 still seems fairly impossible.
With death anxiety in play, of course I would love for them to figure all of this out, but I am going to be honest. I am 30, going on 31. I take care of myself to live as long as I can, with a healthy diet and exercise, and as holistic an understanding of my health as I can have. I am skeptical of those things which cannot be proven, so I am not about to start taking the vitamins and herbs, nor begin saving to have myself locked away in a cryonics center until goodness knows when.
I may be missing out. I may be making a mistake not to go forward with this, and I may also change my mind later as more information is released.
A lot can change in 30 years, we have seen this with the rise of the internet. Information spreads more quickly – and so, too, does misinformation.
Of all the things out there, I consider that perhaps nanotechnology and cyborg technology has the best chance of extending human life in my lifetime.
I do hope for these things – but I have no hand in them. I am not a scientist. I am not progressing this science. All I can do, on my end, is hope…and I find that too similar to hoping for an afterlife, if I focus on it too long. Yes, if I see an opportunity that is viable, I will absolutely work towards life extension for myself, but at this time, I do not see a viable opportunity, so instead I am going to work on accepting what is more likely.
And if life extension happens during that time? All the better. If not, I’ve done all I can to make my peace with death, and I’ve lived a good life in that time.
Hope for Life Extension, but since it isn’t here yet, I recommend that this be a “hope for the best, expect the worst” situation, and get comfy with the thought that death is still going to happen to you.
@purplewizard
