Via Betterhumans, Anne C.'s essay on attitudes towards fundamental truths and our ability to enact change: "Given the current (nascent) state of true longevity research, it remains to be seen whether tangible advances in life extension medicine will result in the depopularization of the 'death is natural' argument. Either people will decide that their sense of identity requires the 'aging into death' story lest they risk profound existential confusion, or they will concede that, now that we can actually 'do something' about aging, they're not actually all that keen on undergoing senescence. From the standpoint of longevity advocacy, the second outcome is certainly the preferred one -- for the same reason that most of us would consider it better for a friend contemplating suicide to determine that life is worth living after all and not go through with the act of killing himself. When a person has spent enough time in the healthy life extension community, it is quite likely that even poetic-sounding arguments like 'death is natural, it's part of the circle of life' will start to sound indistinguishable from statements like, 'I have a death wish for myself and everyone else in the world.'"

View the Article Under Discussion: http://betterhumans.com/blogs/anne/archive/2007/05/20/trends-in-attitudes-toward-life-death-and-progress.aspx
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