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Culture and Humans Living Forever
Have you ever heard of a supercentenarian? It is a human who has lived over 110 years. The only documented person to do so, for now, is Jeanne Clement. She died in 1997 at the amazing age of 122 years and 164 days. Our search for immortality stretches back over centuries and is deeply rooted across many cultures.
Science on this front is advancing rapidly. There are a group of determined working to solve this issue. They include philosophers, engineers, geneticists, software engineers, futurists and more. Most of whom follow the ideology of post-humanism.
Many have been using the term Longevity Escape Velocity (ELV), a tidy little acronym for an issue that is very untidy indeed. It was coined by one of the leading post-humanity thinkers, Aubrey De Grey in 1994. When exactly humans will reach this is much debated.
The topic of living forever or at least a very long time, as in hundreds of years certainly begs the question of, just because we can, should we? And then goes off madly in all directions on topics such as religion, ancestor worship, ethics, morality and so on. Heady stuff.
In cultural terms this topic raises concerns as well. While it would likely take a book, perhaps two, to cover the topic and all its vast multitude of issues, I’m trying to sum up a lot of complex ideas into a decidedly short…
