New Heights In Nonsense

I've seen a lot of nonsensical, willfully obtuse objections to living a longer, healthier life through technology in the past five years. I think this Wall Street Journal piece tops them all, however. "As for recurrent rejuvenation [it] it fares poorly in a comparison with reincarnation, its closest analogue. According to a basic Hindu understanding, reincarnation involves a succession of new bodies - human, perhaps, but also animal or insect - for the same soul, one that has not yet improved sufficiently to break out of the cycle of life and death and enter the realm of enlightenment. Recurrent rejuvenation, though [keeps] the same body in a continuous loop from youth to age and back again, while the mind is free to accumulate and store all its successive experiences. So a question: Wouldn't [you] be a bit of a wreck after the preserved pain (physical and psychological) of having lived so many years and gone through the aging process 10 or 20 times? A soul in the Hindu reincarnation cycle might not have attained Nirvana, but at least the bad karma carried over from one life can be expunged in the next." Some people are just never going to get it - which is fine, a choice on their part. It's somewhat saddening to see so many slow and painful suicides in the making, however, when compared to the alternative of enhanced healthy longevity that researchers are working towards.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121574024132244741.html

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