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Rise to Meet the Enemies at the Gates: Join the Battle against Disease and Death – Article by Eric Schulke

Rise to Meet the Enemies at the Gates: Join the Battle against Disease and Death – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance HatEric Schulke
June 25, 2015
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A lot of your great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers have prepared and gone through the fire of war. This happened time and time again over the centuries. It was nearly routine.

The video “World Battleground, 1000 Years of War in 5 Minutes” adds some good perspective to the frequency of larger-scale conflicts.

If you didn’t have the genes for it, didn’t have it in you to put up a staunch defense or go on a successful offense when necessary, then you and your people didn’t survive as often. It is unfortunate that such a terrible trait has played such a fundamental role in shaping who we are, but that seems to be the way it is.

It is in us to adrenalize in the face of battle and do what it takes to find victory. Most of us don’t directly chase it, and we shy away from it when necessary, but when cornered or challenged, when our towns are burned down or our family and neighbors are murdered on the trails, we draw our weapons and pursue the enemy to the corners of the lands, taking them dead or alive.

Aging and diseases have us cornered. So what are we to do? Should we approach it like it is peacetime? Should we get up in the morning and think of aging and disease as another day at the office or another bill to pay, another fish to be caught for supper or another window to be boarded up for a storm?

When an adjacent empire marches in and demands allegiance to expand its power, with the alternative of impalement or crucifixion for everybody you’ve ever known, you churn out ramparts, build your defenses, get the trenches dug, get the spit and sweat out, and make a stand for life against a bunch of killing scum-bags like you’re supposed to do. There is a time for the industry of peacetime, and there is a time for war.

It is like wartime right now.

In this war against aging, other diseases, and death in general, we don’t need guns, and – it’s incredibly lucky for us – we don’t even need to spill guts. Our enemy causes our guts to be spilled, but these gutless intruders don’t even have them to spill. They are microscopic misalignments, cellular maladjustment, biological disrepair, but they are terrible opponents nonetheless. They snatch our lives away from us. That’s why we put up staunch defenses, and beyond that, prepare a fierce, forceful, battering offense in the form of a worldwide expedition in support of the philosophy and research of indefinite life extension – of extended healthy longevity.

If winning a war involves spilling forth solutions from your head and not guts from people’s bodies, and you won’t do it, then we can only be left to assume that winning isn’t worth it for you unless you can dismantle flesh. That’s not the case, is it? It is catastrophic to the outcome of an urgent fight for life if we can’t recognize that a deadly enemy that doesn’t bleed is still an enemy.

Comanches on the warpath had a lot less to lose than you do, and yet they put up a lot more of a fight. Match them, at the least. You have it in you, and we desperately need you at these front lines of the diseases of aging and general death.

We can’t win this unless we expedite, instill energy, move fast, work hard – work wartime hard. And why shouldn’t we get serious if it means a great shot at winning this? Indifference is one of our biggest obstacles here, and that indifference comes in large part from this phenomenon of the children of warriors not recognizing war without enemy blood. As more battle cries go up around the world, those centuries-old frequencies of battle will begin to ring in the DNA of more brave new life-extension advocate centurions and soldiers like you. With a little time, a great army can be raised up in this showdown with the Grim Reaper and its despicable harbingers of aging, and other forms of diseases and death.

Attack disease and death with this attitude. Get pumped up: it’s the only way to accelerate the pace and save life. Join the battle.

You weren’t bred to back down and wimp out. You are the sum total of the survivors of thousands of years of constant brutal wartime. Respect your ancestors by harnessing that fury and stepping up to this call of duty. Report to your nearest life-extension organization or project. Fight for the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension with everything you’ve got.

Pick your legion, be it Fight Aging, the Methuselah Foundation, Longecity, the SENS Research Foundation, Foresight Nanotech Institute, the California Life Company (Calico), the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Longevity Party, the Transhumanist Party, the Buck Institute, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the Life Extension Foundation, or another, and report.

The Movement for Indefinite Life Extension supports and lists as many of the core, main organizations as possible on this page.

The world is at stake. We all need you.

This song, not affiliated with this movement (yet. Call us, Rammstein), illustrates the concept well.

Translated lyrics:

Even on the waves there is fighting
Where fish and flesh are woven into sea
One stabs the lance while in the army
Another throws it into the ocean

Ahoy

Arise, arise seaman arise
Each does it in his own way
One thrusts the spear into a man
Another then into the fish

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their blood a spear is lodged
They bleed softly into the ocean

The lance must be drowned in flesh
Fish and man sink to the depths
Where the black soul dwells
There is no light on the horizon

Ahoy

Arise, arise seaman arise
Each does it in his own way
One thrusts the spear into a man
Another then into the fish

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their blood a spear is lodged
They bleed softly into the ocean

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their heart a spear is lodged
They bleed themselves dry on the shore

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 15 years.

Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) Demonstration – March 21, 2015

Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) Demonstration – March 21, 2015

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Segment 1

On Saturday, March 21, 2015, Gennady Stolyarov II and Wendy Stolyarov co-hosted the first segment of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) Demonstration between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Segment 2

The second MILE Demonstration segment, hosted by Roen Horn and Desiree Duffy, is available here.

Description: “We are for awareness that bio-sciences and technologies have opened up the option of expediting a world effort to make gains toward eradicating the roots and diseases of aging, and other forms of involuntary death. Our lives are in our hands, and we must act with urgency.”

Find out more on the MILE Demonstration Facebook page.

Resources
– “Paul Sandford McGlothin” – Wikipedia
– Living the CR Way – Website
– Death is Wrong – Illustrated children’s book on indefinite life extension by Gennady Stolyarov II and Wendy Stolyarov –
– “The Aristotelian Golden Mean as Conducive to Good Health in the Pursuit of Life Extension” – Article by Gennady Stolyarov II
– A History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century by Ilia Stambler
– “Ending Aging” Song by Paul Steven Thompson – Noelternative
– Art by Elitanna (Valentinia Korshunakova)
– Roy Carl Stanley – US House Candidate – Green Party of Texas
– Roy Carl Stanley on Twitter

Final Level – 1 Life Left – Big Boss Man: Grim Reaper – Article by Eric Schulke

Final Level – 1 Life Left – Big Boss Man: Grim Reaper – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
September 24, 2014
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The grim reapers of the world are like metaphorical big boss men. It’s like fighting a dragon that lives at the end of a great pass, or a King Koopa at the end of the last level. If you don’t destroy the grim reaper within your 90 years or so of “free lives”, then you never get to play the game of life again. We can choose to put our intellectual, problem-solving, level-navigating skills to the test to see if we can do it.

We do that by supporting the research that is working to do it. Play the game of life. The controls are completely integrated into your surroundings, and it comes with a fully immersive virtual reality option. It’s like Mario can navigate areas where he can choose from levels like, teleconferencing with the World Health Organization to help problem-solve the orchestration of a beneficial convention, or navigating the 5 largest cities of a small map to pin up enough fliers to get at least 100 people to show up at an organization’s life-extension rally.

Reaper_MILE_Ad“Beat the Reaper” ad developed by Wendy Stolyarov.

After you spend some time going through the routines of the levels, it becomes easier, and your controller speed and dexterity increases. It is the same with support of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension. Bio-technology, lab equipment, and the political, social, commercial, and other contributions that go into it, are your controllers. After you’ve spent some time going through various levels in the chambers of the game, you’ll have more confidence in helping the growing collective of us to continue getting to and entering that final level, to work on beating the grim reaper.  We go in independent missions and through various united efforts, sometimes with slingshots, sometimes with Battle Ship fleets; sometimes with tested, comprehensive, long-term strategies, and the backing of nations of focused, practiced, fervent supporters.

There is a lot of good practical and theoretical research on ending aging, diseases, and other forms of death, and a lot more that can be completed and dreamt up by the new minds entering in on this great mission. There are small, growing pockets of students, activists, researchers and others around the world that are already doing things like chipping away at the roots of aging, working on preserving consciousness, and finding more algorithms that can help crunch data for cures.

Play “Beat the Reaper” with us. It’s an epic game.

MILE_Logo

When most people understand the importance of integrating this into their lives, they will be compelled to, and want to, and find satisfaction in helping to beat these levels. People will think about all resources available to them as being of potential assistance to this cause, in even small capacities, like pinning up a life-extension post card in their office.

This requires world support, which will not arrive until your example leads the thoughts of the people you come in contact with to notice how valuable this is, and gives them ideas to mull over on what they might decide to do to contribute. The goal of indefinite life extension gets here after we all join in and do what it takes to get the work done to make it happen. Help the people, projects, and organizations that are working on indefinite life extension to succeed by talking about their breakthroughs, reading about conference reports, suggesting books about it to people, encouraging your friends to team up with the various projects and events related to it, and most importantly, by leading the way for more of the people around you. Play the game. We can beat the reaper. Make time for indefinite life extension so that indefinite life extension can make time for you.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Indefinite Life Extension: The Pay is $Infinity – Article by Eric Schulke

Indefinite Life Extension: The Pay is $Infinity – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
September 22, 2014
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World awareness of indefinite-life-extension research increases the percentage of people who will then want to contribute to its success. When we inform the mainstream of most of the industrialized world and beyond, about the people, projects, and organizations working directly and indirectly toward indefinite life extension, then a percentage of that world – which is a lot of people at even a fraction of 1% – will be helping to execute the projects that need to be completed to see if we can make this happen.

It looks like we can make indefinite life extension happen, and in more of our lifetimes. All arrows point to the probability of this occurring. We can stop a lot of things that are like the diseases and damages that cause aging already. There are ways to move genes around to cure some diseases; other diseases have been fixed by delivery of proteins in ingenious ways. We can move material between various nuclei, tag specific neurons, custom-make enzymes, do intricate work on the nano-scale, create amazing new methods and mechanisms for working in our cells, and there are countless other inventions. The numbers of them are increasing in fields across the spectrum by the day.

There are also dozens of organizations with countless projects that are working directly toward indefinite life extension every day. Begin contributing to the research and the support structures that help this all excel. Stand up for your life by getting involved. There is seriously way too much to know and experience in this universe to be laying around in a graveyard for eternity.

Everything that humans do is about striving for sustainability and development. Our elders are among the most important capital that we have. Humans, are as far as we can see, among the universe’s most important capital. We can’t afford to “let the universe down”, so to speak, by letting our negligence cause it to lose any of the extraordinary phenomena of sentience that it has produced.  Do you know how long it took it to do that? Do you know how many times it failed to do that across the universe?

You are an important asset to reality, and you are dying, being killed by aging, disease, and biological frailty, and so are all the people around you. You are under attack by mechanisms that are working to kill you at all times. There is not a day that goes by that they don’t drag you closer to your grave. Some of us aren’t able to help ourselves, because those people are dead now. You are still alive, you can still help yourself. There is still a chance for you. You are still able to continue taking part in the marvels and wonders of the universe. Seize the opportunity. Seriously, what more do you want? How much is enough to entice you to stay? What more could you ask for? How much can a person voluntarily throw away? The journey, work, and fun are profoundly fulfilling, and the pay is $infinity.

Come on, let’s get going. We want you on our teams. Be a leader to your peers on this issue. Don’t procrastinate or let your anxiety about talking to people about it let them down. All you have to do is lead them to the extensive networks of indefinite-life-extension projects and organizations. We have the tools and insights to convince people over time, if you would only give them that first chance. A new thought opens a person’s mind more by allowing that person to collect, think about and sort through more insights related to it. Every wave of people that joins us makes it that much easier to get the next and bigger wave to join in. This is critical. Get the people around you to read and think about the various facets of this life-and-death reality, and join its groups and websites. Subscribe to the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension page here to get a lot of core information about organizations, events, activism opportunities, and related topics.

Remember now: when the percentage of world awareness of this cause goes up, then indefinite life extension, if it is possible, will get here faster.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Over 1,000 Kids Will Indeed Be Taught That Death is Wrong – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Over 1,000 Kids Will Indeed Be Taught That Death is Wrong – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 7, 2014
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At least 1,029 children in at least 14 countries will be taught that death is wrong as a result of the successful provision of Death is Wrong books to 50 longevity activists throughout the world. On August 7, 2014, the last book shipment, free for all recipients, was made, paid for by the funds raised through the Indiegogo campaign I ran in coordination with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) from February 22 through April 23, 2014. (Read Eric Schulke’s earlier article about the success of the fundraiser and the tremendous efforts and publicity that made it possible.) While some of my critics, such as Slate’s Joelle Renstrom, preemptively proclaimed that the funds raised would fall well short of the goal, we actually not only reached the goal in time but even exceeded it – and we have already spent all the money raised on providing free books to children.

I am triumphantly proud to report that the fundraiser’s target of providing a book for every $5 raised has been strictly adhered to. In repeated postings to various social-media outlets – conducted at least once weekly – I did not stop seeking out new dedicated recipients until 1,029 books were provided. My persistence paid off, as every posting made new people aware of the book and its promise in spreading the message of indefinite longevity to children.

I have created a table displaying the numbers of books sent to longevity activists in each of 14 countries, the total cost of shipments in each country, the costs per book by country, and the total project costs.

DIW_Distribution_Summary Our Indiegogo campaign raised $5,141.00 in total. Printing and shipping the books cost slightly more than this amount – $5,259.23 – largely because international shipments are often more expensive than domestic shipments within the United States. An additional amount of $453.05 was paid in fees to Indiegogo, PayPal, and the payment processor used by Indiegogo to make transfers to my bank account. However, all of the cost overruns were covered out of my personal funds – and therefore I consider myself to have made an additional $571.28 donation to this distribution effort. This is certainly a worthwhile expenditure for facilitating the spread of life-extensionist ideas among the next generation of scientists, technologists, doctors, philosophers, and activists – people whom we will need to join us in the struggle against death, so that we might have any hope of personally achieving indefinite lifespans.

While some shipments are still en route, many of the ones that have reached their destinations have already begun to have significant impacts.

Some activists have sent us videos and pictures of children responding to Death is Wrong and its message.

Watch this brief, charming video of Aleksander Kelley interviewing his sister Hanna, who has been giving out Death is Wrong books to kids she knows. Thanks go to David J Kelley for making this possible.

Here is Hanna again, handing a book to a friend. This is a wonderful and inspiring vignette of what can happen as a result of our dedicated and persistent activism in support of indefinite life extension.

DIW_Hanna

Roen Horn of the Eternal Life Fan Club has begun a strongly publicized series of book giveaways, the first of which he captured on camera. Here is his video featuring two kids who know that death is wrong.

Accompanying Roen’s video are excellent graphics like this one.

Children_Know_That_Death_is_WrongThe books were enthusiastically received at the Church of Perpetual Life in Hollywood, FL, a science-based Transhumanist church, whose primary focus is on ending death and reversing aging. Here is a picture kindly provided by Officiator Neal VanDeRee, where he presents a copy of Death is Wrong to the music teacher Dr. Angie Cook Wong and one of her students, who sang at the service.

DIW_IMG_0687Some of the book recipients have been librarians throughout the United States. Jameson Rohrer, the Transhumanist Librarian, has connected me with fellow librarians who have placed the books in libraries near them. Here are images of Death is Wrong books on display.

DIW_Rohrer_2DIW_Rohrer_3Successes like this one and many others have been chronicled on The Rational Argumentator, on a dedicated page that I continually update, informing readers of new developments in this unprecedented distribution effort. The updates are not finished. As the remaining book shipments arrive and books are given out to children, there will be more pictures, videos, and promising news to share. Indeed, even these impacts will just be the beginning. The true effects of this effort will be seen years and decades in the future – as the young readers of the books grow up and are hopefully motivated to develop their lives and pursuits in directions that will aid us all in overcoming the greatest enemy – death. I will know that my success is complete once even one young researcher or activist informs me, “I read Death is Wrong all those years ago, and it was this book that nudged me onto the path of discovery and development toward who I am today.” We supporters of indefinite life extension still have tremendous obstacles to overcome in achieving our vision. I hope that this effort to distribute over 1,000 Death is Wrong books will erode those obstacles at least somewhat – gradually injecting the ideas of indefinite life extension into the cultural mainstream and nurturing the next generation of advocates for this most worthwhile of endeavors.

DIW_World_MapPhotograph Courtesy of Eric Schulke

Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Year Two Goal Advertisement Fundraiser – Article by Eric Schulke

Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Year Two Goal Advertisement Fundraiser – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
June 3, 2014
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We are collecting $100 pledges for this Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Year Two Goal Advertisement Fundraiser (MILE y2 Fund). At this time there is a total of $600 pledged. If you want to get in on this, then send us a message at the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Facebook page. The deadline for making pledges is 20:00 CST, June 15th 2014. You can either have us place the ads for you by sending the money in via PayPal, or you can request to place your own, and we will set you up with the basics.

The Movement for Indefinite Life Extension, which is more like a group spirit that promotes everybody, rather than something like a Foundation or Corporation, is pushing a 5-year goal to inform 8 million people about the individuals, projects, and organizations that are working directly or indirectly toward the goal of indefinite life extension. It is executed in 5 progressive steps.

mile_year_2_goal_fund_movement_for_indefinite_life_extension_year_two_goal_july_17_2014_8000_likes_facebook_dot_com_slash_movement_for_indefinite_life_extensionYear One, which was completed on July 17th of last year, 2013, had the goal of reaching 800 “likes” in this awareness driving campaign.

We are now on our way to the Year Two goal of 8,000 “likes”, with the goal’s deadline coming up soon on July 17, 2014. We are right on schedule with saturation of organic likes and are confident that we can come in on time with the goal of 8,000, and probably exceed it, by the deadline, with around $1,000 in Facebook ads that are targeted to like-minded people and groups. (Of course, the more donations, the better. We’re all working to drive awareness to a critical mass of at least 8 million people for the final goal.)

Millions of people are hearing and learning about the work that is going on to make indefinite healthy life spans a reality, through all the press, events, projects, and endeavors that people around the world have been working on over the decades. With advertisements, we can find more of them and get them to consider putting their weight behind the general movements of transhumanism and indefinite life extension. The rate at which we grow to critical mass, and generate awareness, matters. The clock is ticking.

The important cause of life is the incentive. In addition to that, there is the small incentive that the group of people that pledges to this Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Year Two Goal Fundraiser, will be written about as instrumental leaders in the success of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension Year Two Goal, and in the movement in general.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Motivated Time Prospectors – Article by Eric Schulke

Motivated Time Prospectors – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
May 16, 2014
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Think of all the people’s lots in life that you don’t have. You will regret not having more chances to stand here as you are now. It is said that if everybody put their worries into a pile and then took an equal share from the pile, then most people would be content to take back their own share of them. I was reading an article that said,

“To be sick and dying in Vegas has its own existential horror. Not only do you realize that you are going to die and that you don’t matter to the world, but you also realize that much of the world is awful and yet you still would do anything to live.”

Struggling to survive on this planet can be miserable, and yet we continue to stick with it. Why? Because we know that with life there is a chance to engage in more experience. It seems that a person can live, in part, on the desire for continued experience. That chance drives us to keep reaching for achievement and progress.

What does one want to experience in life? What does that honest-to-life list look like? If you had to draw up a complete list, could you do it, or describe the nature of it? The active wanting of experience, it seems, is a major cure to indifference toward death. It seems that it might be a life-or-death question.

We have become really good at being indifferent to the most widespread forms of death, in order to spare ourselves from stressing out on futilely trying to do something about it. Now that we have the tools and techniques, and the times have changed, we have to change that way of thinking from indifference back toward letting that horror affect us. Horror benefits us in that it is our cue to be driven to action to make sure that the horror can’t happen again. If a poltergeist starts ravaging your house, that’s your signal to get out of there, in the same way that the horror that general death, aging, and other diseases are your signal to get death, aging, and other diseases away from you and out of your cells.

Carl Sagan’s daughter once related his words that “there was nothing he would like more in the world than to see his mother and father again.” I was thinking about what an insult added to injury he must have felt in his final days, to have the paralyzing misery of impending death heaped on top of crushing pain. Let that kind of pain course through your mind, face it, bring it to a steaming rage, and let the energy power you to help execute any of the various assaults on aging and disease that are underway in laboratories in various places around the world.

In another article, I was reading about a guy whose daughter went missing in 1971, and was never found. He lived to be 102 and died in the fall of 2013. He had stated that one of the hardest burdens for him was never knowing what happened to his daughter. What misery, for all those years… Think of that… Then five days after he died, his daughter’s car was found upside down in a river; she was the apparent victim of a decades-old car crash.

I can’t fathom that life could inflict such a bitter spite upon somebody. That story stirs up the kind of despair and anguish that each death seems to deserve. It’s the kind of anguish you need to figure out how to allow in, in order to have the right kinds of drive to help pull the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension forward with us.

So once we get there, back to that place where we stand amidst realization of the horror of death, how do we face it? One good basic and natural way to do so, it seems, is to purposefully enjoy the good parts of life, and strategize and take action in helping to fix the worst of the broken things. It’s fun and fulfilling. Life isn’t bad, it’s an adventure. A tough challenge is like a choppy sea, like two armies clashing, or mountain climbers fighting the elements. The implementation of the solution of each challenge is like a Renaissance of scale, some miniature, some very large, like Caesar vs. Vercingetorix, or Charlemagne vs. the Vikings. It’s like the writings of Caesar, the writing-resurgence work of the Carolingians, Vercingetorix and the fate of an entire Celtic confederation, or the first times the Vikings set sail out beyond Greenland.

A few days ago I was thinking about a typical farm hand of Medieval times, walking outside to smell the heavy wet grass and earth of a cold wet spring day. How did they remember the great Lombard migrations, or Scandinavian raiders docking at Pisa? Who was Charlemagne to people before negationists took hold? What did they think might become of the future? Many of them must have felt lost at that kind of thought.

Focus on your heartbeat, feel it pulsing. Theirs pulsed like that. They thought of their hearts stopping and of how it couldn’t possibly be lost to the dust of history anytime soon. You think that, too. Their hearts are lost to the dust of history. Yours is next.

What does every year, and every moment mean to the history of everything? I read recently that if you throw a pebble, it could be offsetting the center of gravity of the universe. Every moment means everything, every moment is everything. Every moment is a world in itself, a great painting, a great work of art, a great burning torch, a water well built in inhospitable lands. Think of how many heartbeats have come to a stop, how many paintings have been burned… So many tangled groves in forests have had the wind blowing through them for all of these years, without one person, without one spoken word, in a place near a stream, where there was once a mighty, crackling stone fireplace that warmed multiple generations of families across the 6th through 8th centuries. It was a place that hosted countless memories which later tormented the souls of dying, now long-dead grandfathers.

They don’t deserve to be dead. They deserve what they earned: the world that is paying exponentially exciting, satiating, and fullfillingly valuable dividends today. This is an incredibly motivating and driving factor in what pushes me to pursue indefinite life extension. People take on a variety of diverse augmentations over time, becoming unique collections of intriguing insight – dynamic power tools for slicing and dicing the elements. We can’t afford for these wealths of rare and powerful abilities and resources to be pillaged and killed off. Sometimes it seems as if life-extensionists like me have to explain to people why it’s bad to let people be killed before we can get down to business in a worldwide effort to reach the goals that can get this done.

We are like the union for the people that make a profession out of being human. We are creating better and better pay, and we demand longer hours. I want every feasible remedy that can restore and maintain life to be a permanent fixture in this reality, for it to be harvested like air. There is no reason a heart has to give out. There is no reason we cannot prevent tangles from forming in the brain. Our organs and cells don’t have to degrade. We have tools, techniques, and brains. We will make it through these obstacles.

How long will it be before our times are old, before 2015 cars look like old classics, and thoughts of our times are most often associated with the smell of the pages of books that have been moved from their years of service on shelves, to boxes of outdated material in back rooms? Many experiences and voyages that could have happened, and could have been chronicled in those boxes, can never exist.

That’s the problem, it seems: There are experiences that could have existed, but that now never can. Thoughtful experience – there is no reason to forgo it or allow it to be lost – hence the basic, inherent reasoning for supporting indefinite life extension, it seems.

Every moment is the gold, the thing to be mined, the thing to be in awe of, to seek, pursue, and strategize toward, to work for, to feel victorious for possessing. Let’s mine more time: support the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension. Don’t be distracted by fool’s gold while the most valuable gold, time, slips through your fingers.

One of these days, we will put funeral homes across the world out of business, and it will be a great victory. We will celebrate, and the festivities will be grand. But we must get a move on now, because our chances are turning into sand.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

“Death is Wrong” Fundraiser: Another Ship Returns to Harbor after Braving the Seas for the Cause – Article by Eric Schulke

“Death is Wrong” Fundraiser: Another Ship Returns to Harbor after Braving the Seas for the Cause – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
April 26, 2014
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On December 2nd of 2013, the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension began a contest for people to send in their ideas on how to spend money on outreach for the cause. The following question was asked:

If you were to receive a check in the mail with $5,000 to inform as many people as possible about the desirability and the prospects for indefinite life extension, to get them interested in the people, projects and organizations working directly or indirectly toward indefinite life extension, then how might you spend it?

Six entries were entered into a poll.

The entry with the most votes was Gennady Stolyarov’s entry to distribute 1,000 copies of his and his wife Wendy’s great new children’s book Death is Wrong. Their winning entry won them one of four books that were given away for the contest: a signed copy of The Transhumanist Wager, which was generously contributed to the project by its author, Zoltan Istvan.

A group of us put our heads together and came up with a plan to raise the money. The fundraiser was launched on February 23rd of 2014 and successfully completed on April 23rd of 2014.

It is a great success on multiple levels for the Death is Wrong book and vision in itself, which supports indefinite-life-extension research and philosophy in general, and which is written by one of the many Movement for Indefinite Life Extension leaders, Gennady Stolyarov.

It is also a great success for the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension in general on many levels. It is one of the first major projects the MILE has executed in its upcoming series of projects to work to reach 80,000 “likes” at MILE Facebook page for the Year 3 goal, which begins on July 17th 2014, and tasks us with collectively helping to achieve the group victory of moving from 8,000 likes, to 80,000 likes by the July 17th of the following year, 2015.

Rodney Ashby and Jason Shields helped us get the momentum rolling and did fundraising throughout, and Tonya Scholz gave the project a big hand. Gennady Stolyarov made an amazing media tour for the project, finding himself talking about it in interviews and getting mentions and reports from a variety of sources. Most of them are of his own arranging, some of these outlets picked the story up on their own, and there are some opportunities that I arranged. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

There were 92 contributions from over 80 individuals and one group, including, but not limited to:

There were also at least 13 anonymous donations. I did a count of all of the donors that I brought in. A close, conservative estimate is that I brought in around 70% of them.

We ended up raising $5,141, compounding on the success by $141. That means that we raised enough to distribute 29 more books than projected. Those of us that worked with this didn’t take a single dime as a cut of this. I put a hundred dollars or so in ads into it, and Wendy and Gennady have given countless hours of their time to rewarding donors. Countless others, like general activists and reporters, have put their time and resources into this. The Life Extension Foundation made an inspiring and generous $1,255 dollar donation to close the deal.

Gennady and I have already secured the distribution of 140 copies, and there are now over 1,000 total available for distribution. An order even went out to Aubrey de Grey, whose work is one of the many topics that is talked about in the book. Gennady Stolyarov writes in the Indiegogo update page that,

Update of April 16, 2014: I am delighted to announce that a shipment of 10 Death is Wrong books was made yesterday to Dr. Aubrey de Grey himself at the SENS Research Foundation. Since Dr. de Grey’s work is a crucial inspiration for Death is Wrong and my longevity activism more generally, I am immensely pleased that he has agreed to receive this shipment and make the books available for distribution.

We encourage the distribution of Death is Wrong books to places like schools, libraries, and directly to parents and children. We ask people to order as many copies as they think they may be able to give away to kids and people with kids, at Transhuman and health events, rallies, and similar events. Gennady has instructions on how to order them free of charge:

Instructions for Longevity Activists to Request Copies of Death is Wrong

– Send an e-mail to gennadystolyarovii@gmail.com

– Provide your name, your mailing address, a statement of your support for indefinite life extension, and a brief description of your plan to spread the book to children in your local area. Remember that all copies received pursuant to this initiative would need to be offered to children free of charge (as gifts or reading opportunities) and may not be resold.

– Provide the number of copies of Death is Wrong that you are requesting.

– Preferably, provide an indication that you would be willing to send photographs of the books that have been delivered to you as well as events where you will be distributing the books.

The project has been a great community effort. The Movement for Indefinite Life extension is our collective spirit, not an organization. Together we collect supporters for all of the constructive projects and organizations. There must have been over 150 people involved. More activists flexed their life-extension muscles, and we helped more people that want to get involved to take the first step. If you’ve ever saved money, then you know how incremental change adds up. You cannot achieve the saving of $8,000 unless you first get to $2,000, and $6,000, and so forth.

It’s an example of elements coming together for a movement, like this article says:

A movement occurs when, one, a large number of people have a need that, two, lines up with the necessary ingredients to make it happen, and those two things are sparked by, three, a catalyst.

The need to survive has always been here. The ingredients have been getting added to the mix since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. The element of the love for life is in the air, thick with explosive properties, fueled by indefinite-life-extension research and outreach from around the world and across time. People are busy working on rallies, conferences, events, interviews, getting the message out, and all the rest. The tools and the ability to make this happen are ripe, and growing more and better yields of produce by the month. Every time you put a match to it, it erupts in indefinite-life-extension activism. Be that spark today and get in on this movement.

We have more projects like this ahead, and there are plenty of others to choose from in the communities, pages, groups, organizations, sites, and other venues, around the world, growing here toward that tipping point where we can have the opportunity to spill across the ticker tapes of screens and the minds of the young and old alike, lighting hearts and minds on fire with desire to chip in together to make this happen. This is an incredible opportunity, this time here, fertile with tools and insights, unleashed capabilities beyond our wildest dreams. People are already capable of tons of incredible things that you don’t even know about yet.

Columbus went on a fantastic voyage. When you think of those times, and how fulfilling and enthralling it must have been for them to be able to be part of that, realize that indefinite life extension, all this Transhumanism, is an even greater frontier, and you are in an even more incredible and glorious position than people like Columbus and his crew. It’s a position here where anybody, where you, can help sail out into these incredible frontiers that are opened up through the ever-expanding fields of science and technology.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Death is Wrong - by Gennady Stolyarov II, Illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov

Those Critical of Indefinite Life Extension Fear Life – Article by Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska

Those Critical of Indefinite Life Extension Fear Life – Article by Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska
March 23, 2014
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What a repugnant, disdainful, knee-jerk flippancy to flop out of one’s mouth to mock anybody for being afraid of death.

If death doesn’t arouse fear, then what is fear?

We know what fear is. It’s having the sense to understand the level of loss that something imposes upon a person. It’s a no-brainer to understand that life provides value that would diminish to an extensive level if it were to be lost.

Let’s make this even clearer by spelling out what the dictionary tells us about fear.

fear

verb \ˈfir\

: to be afraid of (something or someone)

: to expect or worry about (something bad or unpleasant)

: to be afraid and worried

…

a :  an unpleasant often strong thought caused by anticipation or awareness of danger

b (1) :  an instance of this (2) :  a state marked by this

:  anxious concern :  solicitude

:  reason for alarm :  danger

I don’t have the courage to be robbed or run over; nor should I, or anyone. I have the emotional maturity to understand what my fear is telling me and to equip myself with the courage to join in on the assault on the terrible beast of aging. Watching incredible things unfold in the universe and world, seeing that it is all just the tip of an inconceivably large iceberg, and then seeing that it will be arbitrarily terminated in another of endless, terrible, horrific events for all involved, is alarming. It should concern you that you are standing on the deck of this great star-ship called Earth, and that you might fall off. You should be able to be aware of, and anticipate danger that is ahead. Your stake in the universe is at stake. Your DNA crawled out of your mother’s womb, drove a spike into the universe, asserting a claim in this realm, and death comes along like a miscreant walking up to a land-claim stake, and rips it out and throws it in the river.

“What are you, afraid of death?” They say.

“Don’t be a coward.”

“Because you’re too cowardly to accept death, the rest of us have to help you with your stupid little excursions?”

It’s as though they are saying, “What are you, afraid of cancer? You sissy, your mother and brother have cancer? So what? Don’t act like a wimp. Cancer is what happens. People live, people get cancer. Don’t accept the ice cream and the music if you’re going to whine about the cancer, it’s part of the package. If I could lift a finger to stop people from dying, then I wouldn’t do it.”

Or, it’s like that jerk that you know urging people to walk into woods where there are predators with humans as prey.

“Come on man, walk forty miles through the jungle there. Don’t worry about the lions, mosquitoes, and rhinos. You’ll get through fine, just goooo.” What terrible advice, and what a terrible kind of advice to condone and not discourage!

They are like the trash-talkers on the rodeo machine, where a round of people sit at a teeter-tottering table in the middle of a bull pen while they play cards and talk smack to each other for not continuing to sit in the bull’s eye of imminent death.

Pretending to be fearless in the face of death isn’t some form of heroism. It isn’t reasonable or courageous. It is quite the opposite. It is taking the easy way out.

What’s more is, that although being afraid is a sensible, logical part of it, the overriding part of it is that most of the people that I talk to that want to live long into the future, do it first and foremost because of their love for life. Most of the people that I know have been thwamped over the head with passion bugs of various kinds by flipping over galactic rocks like philosophy stones, quantum particles, history books and science boulders.

Fighting death has been for ages treated as a battle destined to be lost. How many times, when faced with a loss of a loved one, have we heard “Well, that’s the way of life”? How can one NOT notice the bitter irony and hypocrisy of that statement? How can death EVER be called an element of life, something to accept? It’s the very OPPOSITE of life, NOT part of it, and it is high time we should start seeing it as such. Let the blinders fall from our eyes, once and for all.

We appreciate our opportunity. We appreciate the rarity of humanity and the mind-blowing mysteries we have the privilege to continue to be submersed in. We understand that culture and tradition do not govern the big picture of what it means to exist here.

What it means to exist here is that we are the rare opportunities to know existence. What kind of extremely rare miracle would spring out of the mud after eons of nothingness and then declare that fleeting, flippant, empty cultural traditions of intellectually straitjacketed ancestors of itself are the best dictates for how it should face the big picture of the rapidly unfolding, multifaceted, and to-be-unfettered dreams-come-true (multi?)universe? Would you say that your grandmother’s old typewriter manual is the best guide for figuring out how to fix and program your computer?

What kind of jaw-dropping, paradigm-quaking miracle would spring out of the mud, find science and technology, industry and physics, communications superhighways and knowledge warehouses at the ends of high-speed trails, and all the rest – in many cases at its disposal or within reach of it – and then decide that the best thing for this miracle of the universe to do would be to return to the mud? I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to realize that many of our fellow human beings still think that. It’s also hard to understand exactly how they could think that in a world that emphasizes the value in good, positive critical thinking. They know better than that.

Accepting death is in fact choosing it. In the face of recent discoveries and progress in science, medicine, technology – it is a matter of choice.

Some people will smugly respond with the assertion that quality is obviously better than quantity. They say that acquiring more happiness now in exchange for taking away their chance to live for continued decades and centuries, is not irresponsible and wrong.

To them we say, our ancestors toiled and struggled through untold and long-lasting hardships to deliver their progeny, you, here to where you are so you can have the opportunities and the ever-brighter futures the generations of your ancestors hoped for, worked for, and achieved. You and your opportunities are their achievement, and I urge you to keep in mind thoughts of not wanting to let them down. You don’t live it up now and then throw away the chance your ancestors gave you. Your job is to survive first, and build empires later. You accept the tough times so that you may continue to earn opportunities to work to build more and more goodness into your life – be that through the completion of more dreams, the building up of more enterprises, the satiation of more curiosity, the fulfillment of more adventure, etc. The tough times help you to savor the good times more. When the ship is on choppy seas and might go down, you hold on tight and work twice as hard. Our ancestors didn’t raise us to throw in the towel. As far as I have ever seen, modern-day Homo sapiens did not evolve with a gene for quitting.

You are set for all the challenges that fighting for life brings. Let’s repeat it – death really is the easy way out. You fall asleep; you get a bullet; cancer kills you; some choose suicide; some accept aging and its effects as an inexorable given. The hard truth here that we should be prepared to acknowledge is: accepting death is the true cowardice, no matter the circumstances. Fighting it and choosing life is the true courage.

Critics of indefinite life extension, don’t put on a snide, condescending face and tell me that you aren’t afraid of death, because you are, too.

By your own knee-jerk flippancy, reactionary admission, you are also afraid of life. You’re afraid of death, and you’re afraid of life. You say, right to us, all the time, that you don’t want to bear to deal with the drastic changes, you don’t want to live without all your friends and family around, you don’t want to live with war still being a reality anywhere. You can’t stand all the jerks and the dangerous people, and rich people, or tyrants, controlling you for one decade longer than a traditional lifespan. The thought of it makes you want to jump into your grave right now to get away from this big, bad, scary life.

You, my friend, are afraid of life. Living scares you. You think of life and you cower. You see the challenges of life and you’re too scared to face them. You wouldn’t dare form and join teams and initiatives to meet those challenges on the intellectual combat fields of dialectics and action. You don’t have what it takes. Life isn’t for you. It’s not your thing. So love your death, fear your life. Do that if that’s what you want.

I am afraid of death. It scares me to think of losing my life. I value my life. I have no shame in that. That is the reasonable thing to do. What I have shame for is that anybody would think that being afraid of death might possibly be something to mock.

You mock us for being afraid of death. We are afraid of death; it’s a logical and positive thing to be afraid in the face of it. It reminds a person to take action against danger. It’s your being afraid of life that is to be mocked. So stand up and tell us how afraid you are of living. We promise not to look upon you with too much shame, and we promise to lend you a hand if you need help crossing over to the land of reason.

We once thought the Earth was flat or that all planets revolved around Earth. Many people who have threatened to disrupt tradition and the ways things have been at given times in the world’s history, have faced persecution and shunning for their discoveries. The life of helping move the world forward was hard because the work didn’t often ride forward in a parade of activism and public cheer and action. It would ride forward one hard-fought campaign at a time, one shovel-full at a time, at the hands of small groups of dedicated people working hard to ring the bell of freedom at each new level as humanity continued to expand out into the big picture of the universe and existence. They kept their minds fine-tuned and well-oiled with awareness and focus on what it means to be alive, gathered information, moved humanity forward in various ways, and proved the huge number of skeptics wrong. Life must have felt like hell for them, but they held on and won.

They chose to be courageous in their LIVES. Are you ready to open your mind and face some difficulties in the struggle for life? Would you rather fall asleep and miss out on miracles or stay wide awake and live them?

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Wioletta Karkucińska is an author and longevity activist in Warsaw, Poland.

Slate is Wrong about “Death is Wrong” – Article by Eric Schulke

Slate is Wrong about “Death is Wrong” – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
March 16, 2014
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There is an article at Slate that talks about the children’s book Death is Wrong and the fundraiser to distribute 1,000 copies of it to children.

The article’s author, Joelle Renstrom, writes,

“In late February, Stolyarov and the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension started an Indiegogo campaign to raise $5,000 to distribute 1,000 free copies to kids. The campaign ends on April 23, and so far the funds fall well short of the goal.”

The goal is 33% funded after 33% of the days. That seems right on track to me. I don’t know why Slate would feel the need to exaggerate that point to make it seem like our funding progress was not favorable to us.

“But there’s a difference between curing grave diseases, which would increase our lifespans, and ‘solving’ death. Stolyarov sells kids an updated myth of pharaohs, the fountain of youth, and Gilgamesh cloaked in the singularity, the theorized point at which technology and superior artificial intelligence fundamentally alter life. He implies that death is the Problem and that solving it will ensure smooth sailing, which is irresponsible at best and disastrous at worst.”

To imply that death isn’t the problem, that you can go through deaths of people you know and then yourself, and that it is not worth smoothing out those parts of the seas of life, and to call it irresponsible and possibly disastrous to do so, is unfounded, self-back-patting – assertive flippancy at its finest. No offense. I’m sure Ms. Renstrom has plenty of redeeming qualities, but that statement is not one of them.

Sure, we fight to keep death at bay indefinitely, but we will be happy if the world’s collective efforts help lead to 500-year lifespans, or 200-year lifespans, or indefinite life spans with 77% of people dying by accident within the first 800 years anyways, etc. We support a variety of potential pathways that could bring about more good futures for more people. We support anti-aging research initiatives like SENS and many others. The critics at Slate think they’re clever for associating what we aim for with the negative image of immortality as portrayed by book and film sensationalists that make up immorality-themed stories. In the movies, it is the unspoken word that Zombies are only supposed to move slowly, but that is irrelevant to life and death causes, too.

Having a trendy, knee-jerk, cynical, superficial response to this life-and-death topic is not acceptable. Think this through more. It is, “life is good; make it work”, not, “life could be bad; justify why it’s good before making it work”.

“Stolyarov rails against acceptance, even when unaccompanied by belief in the afterlife; he rejects the Buddhist position of experiencing pain caused by death while knowing death has released a loved one from suffering. Instead, he targets an audience that could conceivably solve death before he has to stare it down, which is neither braver nor better.”

He is working on one of the most intellectually forward moving projects of our times, and he does it in a world where primary and secondary schools don’t put a lot of critical-thinking coursework into their curricula, and where it shows. It’s a world where 85% of the people claim that they know an invisible pal in the clouds can be telepathically begged to bend the laws of physics for them. Of course what he is doing is great and brave; he stands up in the face of and helps the as-of-yet ungrateful, often antagonistic masses.

“Death Is Wrong makes immortality seem within reach, describing doubling a roundworm’s life via genetic mutation and the cell-rejuvenating Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence proposed by bio-gerontologist and anti-aging crusader Aubrey de Grey.”

The tools to do it are here now. It is within reach. For example, diseases that are like the forms of damage that accumulate in and around the cells of our bodies and that cause us to age to death, have already been worked on with success in laboratories around the world. Also, some gene recombination has already stopped some diseases. We know how to work on this kind of stuff. We just have to determine to get it done now. So let’s rally people to this cause rather than directing them away from it.

“Representing a legitimate problem as a solution invites disaster, especially if it means ignoring issues such as overpopulation.”

Population is on a decline in many industrialized countries when you subtract immigration. So there is one of many solutions to a potential overpopulation crisis.

I often have to wonder why life-extensionists have to be the bearers of facts like these to people who use these concepts to try to discredit projects and organizations of life-and-death significance. It’s one thing to work to discredit people; it’s another thing to do it without having your facts straight, and it’s yet another messed-up thing altogether to do all that, but not even inquiringly or half-jestingly, but assertively.

What about the potential underpopulation crisis?

But it doesn’t even matter in this context; death comes first. If you’ve got two problems, and impending death of you and people you know is one of them, then you work on the death as the top priority. Death is definitely not the hands-down, go-to solution when you think about a may-be/could-be population challenge of an unknown form. It’s way down at the bottom of that list, if it’s even on there at all. In the meantime, many groups and organizations continue to work on forecasting for and planning for scenarios like those. It’s a nearly moot alarmist point to say that transhumanists and supporters of indefinite life extension can’t and don’t think of the big picture of things. I like Joelle Renstrom’s concern for it, though, and I encourage her to get involved with one of those organizations, too, and help plan ahead.

“The transhumanist declaration acknowledges technology’s double-edges: “humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. … Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.” This consideration is missing from the book. Part of preparing kids for a technological future is teaching them that not all technology is necessary or beneficial, and that we can make technological mistakes.  Putting all our eggs in the “technology will fix everything” basket is even more dangerous than putting them all in the “death is wrong” basket. What if technology doesn’t cure death? What if it, or the rush to develop it, actually causes death?”

What if, in our rush to quadruple-check every “what if”, we forgot to move forward toward the cures, and we all died needlessly? People like me, Gennady Stolyarov, and many others work with projects that help advance our understanding in those regards, too. Why would we even be accused of neglecting those considerations? We don’t support pioneering of new ground by putting on blindfolds and running at full speed through the jungle swinging a machete. Hey wait, I think I just described a straw-man that the author of this article created. I’m calling “straw man” on that point.

The presentations at the conferences we support, the authors of the books we help promote, the organizations we choose to associate with — they talk about, monitor, work with, and report on risks, ethics, sustainability, and related matters all of the time. We or people that we know, work with places like Longecity, SENS Foundation, Methuselah Foundation, Fight Aging, Campaign Against Aging, Coalition to Extend Life, Longevity Alliance, Maximum Life Foundation, Humanity+, Lifeboat Foundation, IEET, Singularity Network, Foresight Institute, Cryonics Network, and many others.

“Stolyarov might argue he’s advocating adaptation, and thus survival, but curing death would constitute artificial selection—a drastic and deliberate change in our own evolution. Inherent in that argument is a troubling notion of human exceptionalism—that we shouldn’t have to play by evolution’s rules. Stolyarov suggests we select ourselves (those who can afford it, anyway), rather than leave it to nature.”

Artificial is a kind of natural. It is natural for humans to use their tools and abilities to do what they can do with them. Human beings are exceptional. The universe didn’t (seemingly) sit empty for millions of years, with dust balls whistling in the wind, comets and cosmic gas flying by, no sentience or record of such, and then have the miraculous occurrence of sentience through human form spring up from that dust—just so that this intellectual power-tool in a land of endless wonder, potential, and mystery, could decide itself to be less significant than the ducks and the trees and allow itself to disassemble from its miraculous, universe-control-potential form, back into inanimate dust and vapor trails. It is important to use our human opportunity to leverage resources to uncover as many of the mysteries of the big picture of existence as possible.

“Kids could grow up not just afraid of death, but also afraid of failing to fix it. Stolyarov makes death a powerful nemesis that could rule their lives—just as it’s ruled his.”

What an insulting and baseless speculation to assert. If you’re going to insult somebody, at least add enough fallacy-free substance to it to hold it up.

People like the author of the Slate article want children to continue growing up afraid of life. They want death to continue to drag down their spirits and traumatize them. They want children to think that wars and the greedy people make death an appealing and noble exit. They tell people that it’s better to be intellectually lazy and forget about working on their challenges, that it’s better to lay down and die, that life is too hard and dreary. They don’t want children to think about fixing death, because they can’t conceive of having a spine when it comes to standing up to tough danger. They want indifference to remain a powerful nemesis that rules children’s minds, so they can’t see the true dangers in death and respond appropriately.

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Death is Wrong - by Gennady Stolyarov II, Illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov