Fight Aging!

Author Damien Broderick pointed to an almost Kassian article on healthy life extension recently. After some economic commentary and sweeping misjudgements of human nature, we hit the punchline:

It is, I suppose, just conceivable that Broderick may be right about the theoretical possibility of indefinitely prolonged life. However, human nature is less malleable than human physiology and ill-adapted to immortality's challenges. I also have my doubts about whether, if offered the everlasting option, all that many of us would take it.

After all, well-adjusted people tend to develop a serene acceptance of finitude. Then again, the sense of an ending is all that makes some lives, especially very long ones, bearable in the meantime.

One would hope that it goes without saying that this is rank and outright nonsense, just like the screeds put out by the likes of Leon Kass. I have nothing against people who want to age and die - but I suspect that they haven't really thought through or otherwise correctly grasped just how much suffering and pain is involved. We humans aren't really all that good at empathy or looking ahead; if we were, you can be sure that we would be far further ahead in medical research.

People eager to inflict death and suffering on others are a different kettle of fish, however. By the standards of this writer, everyone who seeks to cure disease or relieve suffering in the world is maladjusted. I don't really have any comment to make on that - I think it stands on its own as a shining example of foolishness. I have to say that I am continually surprised by the pro-death-and-suffering contingent. It's human nature, I suppose; any set of terrible ongoing circumstances, no matter how ugly and horrific, will give rise to people who attempt to accept and justify it.