From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 09:55:00 MST
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:
> 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.
What's the quote - "millions long for immortality who don't know what to
do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon"...
> 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.
Neoteny: basic mental health (cognitive style), a dash of Zen to clear the
brain, etc. Maybe I'm one of those people who are too young, but I know
people who are very old and have youthful minds/happy spirits. So to know
it is possible is to simply need to look for the method. Reminds me of the
Anne Rice vampires who get bored with their immortal lives every oncein a
while, go into a lethargic funk or catatonic stupor every couple
centuries, then reinvent themselves and reinvigorate themselves ina new
world.
gej
resourcesoftheworld.org
jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu
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