How much life is too much? What is the limit we should reach to in extending our lifespans? How long would you like to live if you could be healthy and active for as long as you would like?
These are philosophical rather than hard scientific questions, pehaps better answered by bioethicists than the average human...or perhaps even the average human has some insight. It might be, and to this view I adhere, that this question has already been answered in the genes of every single living human and organism on this planet. It all comes to this simple statement.
Life will find a way.
Throughout evolutionary history, life has inexorably moved forward using the chemistry of the physical world as the substrate for it's advancement. Throughout evolutionary history, some force has existed that causes physical matter to arrange itself into increasingly complex self-replicating patterns. Forms are produced, which surviving the effects of the external environment, mature to perpetutate their pattern. Our intuition and experience of the natural world tells us that this force must exist.
What is this force? Why does it exist?
These fundamental questions as to our origin and the meaning of our existence have challenged humanity since the moment we became aware of the passage of time. We have been asking these questions since we became aware of how that passage will eventually bring about, through our death, a future in which we no longer play a part. Since then, our more developed and inquiring human brain, although conferring many survival advantages over our less intelligent bretheren, have left us with a legacy of wondering WHY? Why do we live, only to die?
These are questions that only temporally conscious beings can ask. Lesser life forms are unconcerned with the future and live in an ever present now. They exist in a cycle of life which involves little beyond the immediate; they care little for memories of the past and neither do they worry in anticipation of the future. Such is not the lot of humanity. Blessed or cursed as we are with an awareness of time, we concern ourselves greatly with history as well as events yet to come. We can remember in detail, we can learn, we can process new information and with reference to our previous experience, rework it in order to provide us with projections of a future which maximizes our comfort and survival. An awareness of time has been essential for the advancement of our species to become the dominant lifeform on our planet. An awareness of time is a however a constant reminder of our eventual demise and thus in a very real sense, with the 'dawn of time' came the realization of our mortality.
From the very beginning, faced with death as a fact of life, our ancestors sought to find some way around it. It was the rare individual indeed who survived external forces such as starvation, accidents, war and disease long enough to procreate let alone experience ageing and actually grow 'old'. But those who lived long enough to be witnesses to the inevitable decay and submission of even the strongest of their tribe to the aging process, knew that ultimately, there was no obvious escape from death.
So they manufactured one, and in fact they manufactured many.
Religions the world over provide an escape route from the reality of death by proposing the existence of an immortal soul. Requiring the continuance of the individual consciousness past death was of paramount importance to early man, and I believe this is still the single most important factor shaping our species today. Given the popularity of spiritual immortality it may seem strange that when one professes an interest in physical immortality they are usually subject to criticism if not outright ridicule. It is understandable that this attitude towards 'living forever' exists however because, until very recently in our civilization, there has been no alternative to 'spiritual immortality'. Although not yet realized, advances in science promise to be able to drastically change our attitudes towards the idea of 'physical immortality' and the inevitability of death due to ageing. When true advances in retarding ageing begin to arise, the idea that life necessarily must have an expiration date will seem as ludicrous as 'physical immortality' seems now. I wonder how many may forgo the promise of heaven for the reality of a healthy life on this plane of existence if it were possible. There would not be many I think who would opt for the unknown if offered continued space here.
This points to the simple fact that no matter how much we sugar coat death, nobody of sound mind and body wants to die. In fact we go to huge effort and expense in avoiding the degradation brought on by disease and ageing. Death is anathema to life and the bane of existence, to be pushed as far away as possible for as long as possible.
Within every cell of every organism on this planet are instructions for life, not death. There is no nobility in death, no redeeming quality that makes it desirable over life, no meaning beyond the recycling of resources. For someone to assert that there is some value in death flies in the face of everything we know to be true about life. We suffer because we are aware that death approaches as we watch time chip away at our bodies. We suffer with the knowledge that we are finite beings struggling in vain towards infinity. This is what life is and what the force that drives us forward means. We are not meant to accept our bounds and live within them. Rather we are meant to reach beyond our limits with whatever means is at our disposal. We fly in the sky and swim the deeps of the ocean. We travel at supersonic speeds and reach beyond our atmosphere to outer space. We have come up against the limits of our expiration date, our mortality, and we will most certainly find a way past it as well. Humankind will be allowed to mature and acquire the wisdom that only an increased amount of time in this universe will allow. Life-extension and the abolishment of death due to ageing is not only desirable on moral grounds, but necessary on social grounds if we are to see progress that only longer term perspectives can provide.
It may be that I will not live to see the rebirth of humanity and that I will be among the many of the last to die by nature’s decree. I cannot predict my individual future. It doesn't take a fortune teller however to predict that death due to ageing has itself a very limited lifespan. The glass ceiling will be broken with the force of our technology and the gifts of our minds. It is happening now. Humanity will be free of their collective death sentence and can move forward to experience a whole new level of freedom. History is a great teacher and yes, I am convinced that history is ever doomed to repeat itself. As in the past, life will find a way, and perhaps with us it already has.