Poll(s) Of The Month: If you could live to any age, how long would you want to live? Why would you want to? and what would you be willing to do to live that long?

December, 2024's poll in the Mirrors For The Mind, Heart and Soul series

Immortality might seem like the stuff of science fiction, yet it’s increasingly becoming the focus of serious funding and lab experiments. In 2013, Google launched Calico, a biotech firm whose objective is to “solve” death. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, meanwhile, has pledged to “fight” death. And last year, it was reported Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos had invested in Altos Labs, a company that plans to “rejuvenate” cells in order to “reverse disease.”.

Immortality tech and drugs— is the next big thing for people with way too much money and little to no moral integrity. Estimates put the industry’s worth at a staggering $610 billion by 2025.

In order to give you an idea of what people have been willing to do in the hopes of living forever in the past here is…

A Brief History On The Quest For Immortality:

We’ve been trying forever to live forever. Our species’ oldest story, “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” is about that very longing.

Several legendary figures embarked on insatiable quests for immortality – and Alexander the Great and Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk beind are among them. These ancient rulers, separated by centuries and continents, shared a common desire to transcend the limits of mortal existence and attain eternal life.

The legendary city of Babylon fell under Alexander’s control. However, during this period, whispers of immortality began to surround the young conqueror.

In the heart of the Egyptian desert, Alexander sought guidance from the Oracle at Siwa, a revered sanctuary dedicated to the god Amun. Legend has it that the oracle confirmed Alexander's divine parentage, claiming he was the son of Zeus-Ammon. This declaration fueled the young king's belief in his exceptional destiny and sparked the idea that perhaps he was destined for immortality. He went on a bloodied futile quest into India in search of Yogis that could make his dream come true and threatened to chop anyone’s head off that refused to tell him what he wanted to hear.

“I don't know why he is called “Great.” What is great about the man? From the age of sixteen till he was thirty-two when he died, for sixteen years non-stop, the man fought, killing thousands of people – people he never knew. He would just come to a new country, kill the people and say “I have conquered.” What has he done that is of any consequence or any good to any other human being? What has he done of any consequence or any good to himself? He lived an utterly idiotic life and died a miserable man. He is called “Alexander the Great” but they forgot his last name – it should be “Alexander the Great Idiot.”.. “ (source)

Another story of an ancient warlord seeking immortality was Etched on clay tablets four millennia ago in Mesopotamia, it concerns King Gilgamesh, a “wild bull of a man” with gigantic muscles and an even more gigantic ego. After the death of his best friend, Gilgamesh is forced to confront his own mortality. “Must I die too?” he cries to the heavens.

He heard that the once mighty and lush temperate cedar forest of Lebanon held the key to everlasting life and he set out to carve his way through the forests in search of his prize. I was said that the Cedars of Lebanon are guarded by the demigod Humbaba. Gilgamesh and his men cut down (clearcut) the cedar forests during his quest for immortality.

Some consider the tale as the earliest record of major anthropogenic deforestation of a climax ecosystem.

In his grief, he transforms into a Mesopotamian Peter Thiel and sets out on a mission to “overcome” death. He fails, but uncovers the meaning of life along the way:

Humans are born, they live, then they die,

this is the order that the gods have decreed.

But until the end comes, enjoy your life,

spend it in happiness, not despair.

… Love the child who holds you by the hand,

and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.

That is the best way for a man to live.

But the rest of humanity didn’t get the memo. Take the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who ruled in the 3rd century B.C. and was hellbent on living forever.

Like Gilgamesh, Qin was terrified of death. So much so that he outlawed any discussion of the topic at court under penalty of — you guessed it — death.

According to Stephen Cave’s book “Immortality,” when Qin learned of a graffiti prophesying that he too would eventually die, he ordered his troops to kill whomever was responsible for this affront. But the miscreant eluded capture. So the emperor had everyone in the area slain. (For someone with such a neurotic fear of death, Qin was pretty casual about slaughtering his subjects.)

One day, an enigmatic sorcerer named Xu Fu claimed he knew how to grant the emperor immortality. All the latter had to do was imbibe the “elixir of life.” This special beverage could be found on a magical island of the East China Sea. Qin, ever credulous, funded Xu’s expedition there.

But, of course, there was no island. Xu was a con man.

Still, the emperor remained obsessed with prolonging his existence. To that effect, he took to drinking a weird concoction; he died at 49 of mercury poisoning.

Qin was not the only historical figure convinced a cocktail could bestow immortality. Diane de Poitiers, reputedly the most beautiful woman in 16th-century France, drank gold to preserve her good looks.

Poitiers didn’t arbitrarily pick gold as her panacea. The element was associated with immortality thanks to alchemy, the biotech of the Middle Ages, which centered on the search for the Philosophers’ Stone. It was believed to transmute base metals into gold and bestow eternal life.

Throughout history, blood has been a popular anti-aging remedy. In 1492, the moribund Pope Innocent VIII was injected with the blood of children, putting into practice the Italian polymath Marsilio Ficino’s recommendation that the elderly suck the blood of the young “like leeches” to turn back their biological clock. (Should that be too gross, Ficino advised mixing the blood with hot water and sugar.) And guess what, it is still going on, crazy people and billionaires that are afraid of death are still doing it today.

And then a few centuries ago, Spanish “explorer” (Conquistador) Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth, a spring that restores youth to whoever drinks from, or bathes in it. He had no moral issues with exploiting/enslaving the indigenous population and murdering anyone else that got in his way.

The quest for immortality even extended into the darkest hour of the 20th century. At the height of World War II, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler embarked on a quest to locate the Holy Grail. The SS chief, steeped in the dark arts, believed the Grail would grant him superhuman abilities, including eternal life. Since the Middle Ages, it’s been said that drinking from the Grail would annul death. (Himmler never did find the Grail; he died in 1945 when he took a cyanide pill upon capture by the British.)

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So, surely, people would have learned the lesson by now and stopped doing crazy, duplicitous, murderous and morally sketchy stuff to try and live forever right? Nope, think again.

Today, some modern day neo-nazi/conquistador transhumanists and their mad scientist minions are keeping the dream alive.

These people believe genetic engineering, brain machine interface with AI, cybernetic augmentation and/or the discovery of anti-ageing drugs, could extend human life far beyond its natural course.

(for more on this read: “The billionaire-led quest for immortality: What if Jeff Bezos or Peter Thiel (and Musk) could live forever?”

I don’t know what group they polled to get this result but it certainly does not represent the prevailing attitudes towards this kind of tech that people express in my personal circles, still, if there is this much of a demand for said types of mutilation in come circles, we certainly have an interesting next few decades ahead of us.

Many of us love life, want to explore this beautiful world, create and share wonderous things delve diverse pathways of learning. Naturally, this motivates us to learn about how to take good care of our earthly temple and we take steps to educate ourselves about extending longevity through studying blue zones, anti-aging foods and natural stimulus so we can live long and full life.

(there are more than 5 blue zones, the additional zones do not get mainstream recognition for a number of reasons, and a main reason is the very existence of people such as the Hunza shatters many of the fallacies pushed by big pharma).

Others see the human being as nothing more than a bio-molecular electromagnetic machine and they seek to attain immortality through uploading their brain’s contents into a cyborg body.

After asking the question “Are We Accidental Bio-Molecular Machines or Eternal Spiritual Beings Inhabiting Human Bodies?” in a past poll, I shared my own thoughts on the topic in another post titled “Dispelling the Most Detrimental Myth in Modern Western Civilization” I shared my view that the irrational fear of death (which many billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Musk, Larry Fink or Peter Thiel are steeped in) is IMO, also the root of the degenerative belief system and technological movement called Transhumanism.

Or as As Joe Allen puts it in his book titled Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity

“Fearing the black void of death, transhumanists want to achieve immortality in this world. Whether they achieve bio-longevity through genetic engineering, digital immortality by uploading the mind, or a gradual bionic transition from meat brains to silicon, they demand to live forever by any means necessary.”

Whether or not brain-machine interface tech can do that and whether or not a natural (non-cybernetically augmented, non-GMO-ed) human body can live a thousand years I think asking ourselves these questions is still worth while.

Thus, I would like to now I invite you to consider, how long you would actually want to live, if it was up to you? And what exactly would you be willing to do to live to that age?

Just to be clear, I am talking about continuing to live as the person you are now in this life (not some kind of re-incarnation deal).

Just for fun, I would also like to ask you, regardless of what you would be willing to do to live to the age you chose in the poll above, what would you do with your time on Earth?

(For the sake of context and sparking fun and constructive discussion, please comment below stating what amount of years you chose in the poll above, and if you chose other, in the poll below, why)

Okay now, lets switch up the hypothetical a bit and say that the only ways you could “live” to be 1000 years or more is via genetic engineering, brain machine interface with AI and/or cybernetic augmentation. Which one of those methods (if any) would you be willing to use and apply to your body/brain, in order to live 1000 years plus, and why?

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I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on your reason for voting for what ever options you chose in the comments section to promote constructive discussion.

Perhaps you feel that I am being way too harsh in my descriptions of the transhumanist billionaires listed above or that I should be more open minded about transhumanism? If so, I welcome you to convince me and others why that is the case.

Thank you in advance to those who are taking the time to vote and comment to promote constructive discussion and hold up a candle to the mirror.

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