Biotechnology: On "Don't Die"
Human longevity is gaining popularity and is a booming sector...
In the past few years, American entrepreneur and businessman Bryan Johnson founded a biotechnology company called Blueprint. It began selling supplements, including pills, olive oil, cacao, and powder mixes that would improve biomarkers.
Johnson’s ideology of death, “Don’t Die,” gained traction. His endeavor has been marked by his celebrity-driven narrative. Though it seems only normal, perhaps even a biological instinct, that humans with good mental health would want to live healthily and longer, what philosophical perspectives result from a “Don’t Die” attitude towards death?
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We could say that behind a “Don’t Die” ideology is an extreme love towards life, but in reality, there’s a radical attachment.
We can love living fully and still be open to dying naturally. Bryan Johnson’s tag line incites an attachment to life, and the adoption of radical behaviors and habits to fuel it, which can paradoxically deteriorate the enjoyment of life itself.
Such radical attachment underlies a fear of death, which is only expected as it is present in varying degrees in everyone.
Looking back at the history of humanity and all the wisdom embedded in our ancient civilizations across millennia, death is not the cessation of life, but the continuation of it in a different form. The concepts, ceremonies, and words for death in many cultures reveal this understanding of it — it’s a marked transformation of our being.
Death is viewed similarly across all spiritual traditions spanning millennia as a way of living, of living as a spirit.
Considered in light of our ancestors’ wisdom, then, “Don’t Die” becomes really, “Don’t Live” because the full experience of existence includes being a spirit as well.
Stay tuned,
Eva Sky Wymm