Live long and prosper?
Given the choice, would you want to live forever?
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Have you heard about Bryan Johnson, a 46-year old tech entrepreneur who thinks he can outwit death. His regime includes over 100 pills a day; a strict sleep and exercise routine; carefully monitored food intake (a lot of juices and mushy stuff) and all manner of infra red, or blue, or something, laser body zapping. He has, as described in a recent Time magazine article, outsourced the management of his body to an anti-aging algorithm.
What does this mean? There is apparently a team of doctors who tell him what he should do to optimise his longevity on a daily basis in response to a battery of data about his bodily functions. The objective? Not to die. Ever.
Time’s journalist, Charlotte Alter, shadows him for three days to observe the ‘management’ protocol. She quotes him as saying that his experiment has “proven a competent system is better at managing me than a human can.” Also, “most people assume death is inevitable. We're just basically trying to prolong the time we have before we die.” However, he has decided that death is optional.
That’s all you really need to know.
From my perspective, it instantly made me think, is it not the very inevitability of death that makes us value life? Is it not when someone recovers from serious illness or has a near-death experience that they discover renewed purpose and focus? Admittedly perhaps not great in positive motivation terms, but I’m equally sure that immortality isn’t the fast-track to living more consciously. Besides, if we were to live forever, with infinite time to travel or learn to do anything, would there not still come a what’s-the-point-of-it-all moment? To have every option available to you is surely to drown in a surfeit of choice?
Additionally, is it not what you do on this earth in the precious time that you’re given that matters, not how long you got to do it for?