Thank you Patrick for diving deep into this so us others don’t have to! As David and Joshua have also pointed out, I find this movement an articulation of the loss of belief in anything other than human exceptionalism — that even biology is something to be solved and transcended. And I suggest there’s an irresponsibility to such endeavours. Without wanting to sound too lofty, I do believe that to be human is to accept the awareness of our mortality, take responsibility for it in the face of living beings that do not have that awareness, and work towards silencing the fear of our own death.
Thank you for reading, Aki! I often find it clarifying to spend time reading perspectives which I think are pretty fundamentally misguided, and this whole longevity discourse has been no exception. It has been a helpful backboard off of which to bounce my own thoughts about the predicament of death. Glad you've found it helpful.
Excellent article, thank you. There's so much to contemplate. I'd never heard of Bryan Johnson & the Don't Die movement. But it ties in well with the continuing 'Religion of Technology' and its latest evolution in the Church of AI.
I'm guessing that the mindset behind it all is still essentially materialist, albeit hijacking 'spiritual' language (= verboklepsy) to give it greater appeal. I would say Johnson is uneducated, and hasn't experienced much of real life - for if he had, he would be aware of multiple realities which can be experienced by human consciousness - some of which are way better than continuing endlessly on material-Maya-Earth. I think he lacks imagination concerning transformation potential (limiting it to a materialist box). After all, who wants to be an eternal bigger better caterpillar when you can be a butterfly?
Thank you for reading! Your assumption is quite correct. There is an interesting angle which I didn't explore here: Johnson was a Mormon for most of his life, and it seems, without psychologizing too much, that much of what he now believes is a naturalistic substitution for his lost religious faith. This is a common theme on a personal level, and, I would argue, on a cultural level as well: technology as the means through which religious aspirations are realized.
Patrick Jordan Anderson with an elegant and learned discussion of current "transhumanist" denials of death. Best read, I think, as an instantiation of the broader problem of human embeddedness, and how to live now. I hope there is a book.
Thank you Patrick for diving deep into this so us others don’t have to! As David and Joshua have also pointed out, I find this movement an articulation of the loss of belief in anything other than human exceptionalism — that even biology is something to be solved and transcended. And I suggest there’s an irresponsibility to such endeavours. Without wanting to sound too lofty, I do believe that to be human is to accept the awareness of our mortality, take responsibility for it in the face of living beings that do not have that awareness, and work towards silencing the fear of our own death.
Thank you for reading, Aki! I often find it clarifying to spend time reading perspectives which I think are pretty fundamentally misguided, and this whole longevity discourse has been no exception. It has been a helpful backboard off of which to bounce my own thoughts about the predicament of death. Glad you've found it helpful.
Excellent article, thank you. There's so much to contemplate. I'd never heard of Bryan Johnson & the Don't Die movement. But it ties in well with the continuing 'Religion of Technology' and its latest evolution in the Church of AI.
I'm guessing that the mindset behind it all is still essentially materialist, albeit hijacking 'spiritual' language (= verboklepsy) to give it greater appeal. I would say Johnson is uneducated, and hasn't experienced much of real life - for if he had, he would be aware of multiple realities which can be experienced by human consciousness - some of which are way better than continuing endlessly on material-Maya-Earth. I think he lacks imagination concerning transformation potential (limiting it to a materialist box). After all, who wants to be an eternal bigger better caterpillar when you can be a butterfly?
Thank you for reading! Your assumption is quite correct. There is an interesting angle which I didn't explore here: Johnson was a Mormon for most of his life, and it seems, without psychologizing too much, that much of what he now believes is a naturalistic substitution for his lost religious faith. This is a common theme on a personal level, and, I would argue, on a cultural level as well: technology as the means through which religious aspirations are realized.
Patrick Jordan Anderson with an elegant and learned discussion of current "transhumanist" denials of death. Best read, I think, as an instantiation of the broader problem of human embeddedness, and how to live now. I hope there is a book.
Thank you, David! You're right, human embeddedness is precisely the larger issue here.