From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 04:21:01 MST
I think you're on to something here. Not the prevelance of the Tithonus meme
in particular, but the fun, sexy, extended youth (and all that goes with it)
part of life extension. After all, a lot of health consumables are sold,
sitting on the back of these concepts. Hmm. I'll have to weave that one into
my efforts.
In fact, I'm of a mind to make it the topic of my next Longevity Meme
newsletter, with a big credit at the base saying "thank you Damien and Spike
for all ideas about youth and sex" :) (Heh).
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 10:00 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: Good article on Alcor in Men's Health Magazine
>
>
> At 08:28 PM 3/17/03 -0800, Spike wrote:
>
> >After talking to a lot of people about life extension,
> >and occasionally about cryonics, I see a disturbing
> >pattern. Few are interested in either, but not
> >because they believe methods will not work, but
> >rather because they generally aren't having enough *fun*.
>
> That's *exactly* right. People seem by and large to be having a fairly
> awful time, especially as the aches and poor vision and bad sleep and poor
> digestion of later years start to seep in. `What, more of *this*?'
>
> The world gets murky. Doing the simplest thing becomes a hassle, and the
> joys to be had from it are lessened.
>
> Many of the posters on this list are too young to know from the inside how
> tedious and dispiriting that is. Trust me. If older people get the idea
> (mistakenly in the longer term but valid right now) that life extension
> means *more of this crap*, it isn't at all like a healthy young adult
> foreseeing decades or centuries more of raves, waves, delirious sex, mind
> bending transmitteri, movies and books you haven't already seen in essence
> a hundred times... It's like going to grey work on a Monday morning in
> smog, with aching teeth and a cold, for the rest of eternity. That's on a
> good day. Luckily I'm not at that point yet (except on a *bad* day), but I
> can empathize all too readily.
>
> We have to sell the idea of extended or recovered *youthfulness*. On the
> face of it, that's about as plausible as Jesus Saves or Qi Energy
> Saves--less, though, because it lacks the misty supernatural
> pizzazz escape
> clauses of faith. To the extent that we sincerely expect scientific
> advances to produce these benefits, we have to back up our
> good-times-are-coming spiel with sober evidence. That's hard.
>
> Damien Broderick
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