My problem with the Transhumanist goal of Conquering DEATH
(As explained in this two-part video collaboration: Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever? from Kurzgesagt -- In a Nutshell, and Why Die? from C.G.P Grey, uploaded to YouTube 20 October, 2017. And yes, I’ve been thinking about this for that long.)
Life cannot exist without death.
And I don’t mean in the romanticized, poetic, way of: “But life only has ~*~True Meaning~*~ if it’s fragile and finite!” No. That argument is hogwash.
I mean in the physical, biological, way. Every living thing needs to consume other things that have lived in order to be a living thing. Even Vegans have to kill plants (and fungi) in order to live. And even plants (and fungi) need the decomposing matter of former living things in order to live. Arguably, the only exceptions are those species of chemotrophs that live miles underground and in the deepest part of the ocean, who get all their nutrition from chemical reactions from sulfur and iron compounds. But even then, their own deaths feed the lives of other creatures.
Get rid of death, and that cycle ends.
“Oh, but Capri-0mni,” I imagine you saying, “They were only talking about ending death for humans, not every life-form on the planet!”
True. But there’s the rub. The ones who have the means to get the first access to Death-Conquering Science have this nasty little habit of De-Humanizing, and then excluding people, when it’s convenient for them.
And those are the last people we want to be immortal, aren’t they?