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.
Year 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.
Mr. Stolyarov provides an update regarding the effort to distribute over 1,000 free, paperback copies of Death is Wrong to children.
As of May 28, 2014, 644 books have been sent out, and 385 remain to be distributed, out of an eventual goal of 1,029 books provided to children, free of cost to them.
Instructions for Longevity Activists to Request Copies of “Death is Wrong”
– Provide (i) your name, (ii) your mailing address, (iii) a statement of your support for indefinite life extension, and (iv) 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.
At some point in the next ten to twenty years the public at large, consisting of people who pay little attention to the ins and outs of progress in medicine, will start to wake up to realize that much longer healthy lives have become a possibility for the near future. The preliminaries to this grand awakening have been underway for a while, gradually, and will continue that way for a while longer. A few people every day in ordinary walks of life notice that, hey, a lot of scientists are talking about greatly extending human life spans these days, and, oh look, large sums of money are floating around to back this aim. There will be a slow dawning of realization, one floating light bulb at a time, as the concept of radical life extension is shifted in another brain from the “science fiction” bucket to the “science fact” bucket.
Some folk will then go back to what they were doing. Others will catch the fever and become advocates. A tiny few will donate funds in support of research or pressure politicians to do the same. Since we live in an age of pervasive communication, we see this process as it occurs. Many people are all to happy to share their realizations on a regular basis, and in this brave new world everyone can be a publisher in their own right.
Here is an example that I stumbled over today; a fellow with a day-to-day focus in a completely unrelated industry took notice and thought enough of what is going on in aging research to talk about it. He is still skeptical, but not to the point of dismissing the current state and prospects for longevity science out of hand: he can see that this is actionable, important knowledge.
I think these guys – and the whole movement to conquer aging – is fascinating. I am highly skeptical of the claims, however. Optimism is all well and good, and I have no off-hand holes to poke in their (very) well-articulated arguments. But at the same time, biology is fiendishly complex, the expectations beyond fantastical.
Still though, I have to wonder: What if guys like de Grey and Kurzweil are half right, or even just partially right? What if, 30 years from now, it becomes physically impossible to tell a 30-year-old from a 70-year-old by physical appearance alone? It sounds nutty. But it’s a lot less nuttier, and a lot closer to the realm of possibility, than living to 1,000 – which, again, some very smart people have taken into their heads as an achievable thing.
People who don’t take care of themselves are insane. Ok, not actually “insane.” But seriously, given the potential rewards AND the risks, not taking care of your body and mind – not treating both with the utmost respect and care – seems absolutely nuts. At the poker table I see these young kids whose bodies are already turning to mush, and a part of me just wants to grab them by the shirt collar and say “Dudes! What the hell is WRONG with you!!!”
If it is possible – just realistically possible, mind you – that I could still be kicking ass and taking names at 125 years old, then I want to be working as hard as I can to preserve and maintain my equipment here and now. No matter what miracles medical science will achieve in future, working from the strongest, healthiest base possible will always improve the potential results, perhaps by an order of magnitude. Individuals who go into old age with fit, healthy bodies and sound minds, and longstanding habits to maintain both, may find potential for extended performance at truly high quality of life that was never before imaginable.
As the foundations of rejuvenation biotechnology are assembled and institutions like the SENS Research Foundation continue to win allies in the research community and beyond, the number of people experiencing this sort of epiphany will grow. The more the better and the sooner the better, as widespread support for the cause of defeating aging through medical science is necessary for more rapid progress: large scale funding always arrives late to the game, attracted by popular sentiment. The faster we get to that point, the greater our chances of living to benefit from the first working rejuvenation treatments.
Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries.
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This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license. It was originally published on FightAging.org.
Motivated Time Prospectors – Article by Eric Schulke
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.
This review was originally posted on the Facebook page of the Eternal Life Fan Club, a community created by Roen Horn to share philosophy, research, and strategies to help humans increase their chances of living forever.
I finally got around to reading the new transhumanist children’s book Death is Wrong. I was impressed with the simplicity and clarity of the message, and my impression was that children could easily digest the information. It’s about time there was a children’s book promoting the message of indefinite life-extension. This book should be mandatory reading in elementary schools. I was pleased to see that the book gave mention to Aubrey de Grey and SENS Research Foundation. Besides explaining the logical reasons for why death is wrong, I was delighted that the book spoke about the frailness of life and the overwhelming sadness of death. The book also specified the importance of vigilantly avoiding dangerous behaviors which would endanger one’s life, and the importance of taking care of one’s health. I think that message is especially important for young children to hear. The book leaves the reader with the optimistic outlook that death does not have to be inevitable. If we know that death is wrong, then we must wage war on death and never give up until we have won this fight. You can find the book on Amazon here.
Wendy Stolyarov, Illustrator of Death is Wrong, at the Transhuman Visions 2.0 Conference – March 1, 2014
“Death is Wrong” Fundraiser: Another Ship Returns to Harbor after Braving the Seas for the Cause – Article by Eric Schulke
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?
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:
This new fundraiser, started today, to distribute copies of the important book Death is Wrong, is a project that can go a long way. A thousand books might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it can make a big difference.
Stolyarov is hoping to kindle a small spark of hope into an eternal flame. “What I think is necessary right now is a determined push to dramatically accelerate the pace of technological progress,” he says. “We have a fighting chance right now, but in order to make it happen we have to be the agents of change.”
I like to see advocates setting forth to create small scale initiatives like the children’s book Death is Wrong and the associated fundraiser to distribute copies. At the large scale a broad advocacy movement for a cause in medical research isn’t a monolithic thing; it is made up thousands of such efforts, a tapestry of individual who each thought enough of the cause to stand up and do something about it. More of this is always a good thing, and working towards a cure for degenerative aging is the most worthy of causes that I know of.
Parents who share his philosophy would therefore be wise to inoculate their children against “death acceptance” early, Stolyarov says. “Ideally, they would walk away with a motivation to do something about this dragon tyrant in the room, this problem of death. I don’t want these vestigial forms of thinking to essentially cause mass suffering and death. We need to push for these [life-extending] technologies to be invented as early as possible, as effectively as possible.”
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
– 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.
A compounded victory! We have raised enough funds through Indiegogo to provide at least 1029 free paperback copies of Death is Wrong to children throughout the world.
Please watch my video announcement of the fundraiser’s success! (The number of available books has increased since I mentioned being able to provide 1024 books in the video.)
140 copies have been distributed; 159 are immediately ready to go upon request. Within 15 days, we will have the funds to distribute all of the remaining books to activists who ask for them.
Extensive thanks go to Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation and Tonya Scholz, who persuaded Mr. Faloon to provide the Life Extension Foundation’s support. They have my eternal gratitude for their generous willingness to step in and get us the rest of the way to our goal. Thank you, also, to every single one of our 92 funders and hundreds of supporters throughout the world!
Earlier today I was interviewed by Tonya Scholz and Sandra Lopez on their Social Chats livestreamed radio program. We had a delightful conversation about Death is Wrong and the amazing reach it has had thus far. You can listen to the recording of the interview here.
Also, I am happy to announce that the five-day window for free downloads of the Kindle version has resulted in 318 downloads – an additional way in which the book has spread significantly!
Instructions for Longevity Activists to Request Copies of Death is Wrong
– 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.
Mr. Stolyarov’s Article “Indefinite Lifespans Are Possible in Our Lifetimes” Published by Viral Global News
I was pleased to contribute a guest article to Viral Global News, titled “Indefinite Lifespans Are Possible in Our Lifetimes”. The article discusses my illustrated children’s book Death is Wrong, my effort to spread 1000 paperback copies to children, free of cost to them,as well as the basics of Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s research program of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), through whose realization the reversal of senescence and the achievement of indefinite longevity would be possible within the next several decades. Read the article here.
Here is the list of references accompanying my article. Please refer to these sources if you would like a more in-depth look at the topics I briefly discuss.
Two days remain until the April 23, 2014, deadline for fundraising for the effort to spread 1000 paperback copies of Death is Wrong to children, free of cost to them. Contribute today to help broaden the reach of this culturally transformative illustrated children’s book on indefinite life extension.
As of April 21, 2014, $3,620 have been raised in this flexible-funding campaign, and $1,380 remain to reach the $5,000 target.
At least 725 books will be shipped in total.
140 have been shipped already to longevity activists in the US, UK, Mexico, Poland, India, and Indonesia.
133 books are ready to be shipped upon request.
The Kindle version of “Death is Wrong” is free to download through April 22, 2014. Get it here.
Get your copy today and refer as many children as you can to the link.
The impact of Death is Wrong is just beginning to occur!
References
BBC Future – “How to live forever” – Article by Frank Swain – April 21, 2014
Starting April 18 and continuing through April 22, the Kindle version of Death is Wrong will be available for free on Amazon. Those who have not yet read the book will be able to obtain it here. One does not need to own a Kindle in order to be able to read the Kindle e-books from Amazon.
Amazon allows a 5-day time window for free Kindle distribution at most, but this is another opportunity for the book to spread as widely as possible. If you obtain a free version and like what you read, please consider donating to our effort to spread 1000 paperback copies to children whose Internet access may not be as continuous and unfettered as ours. On the other hand, if you happen to know some children who do have sufficient Internet access to obtain the Kindle version, I ask that you link them to the Amazon page during the time the e-book is available for free.
Year One, which was completed on July 17th of last year, 2013, had the goal of reaching 800 “likes” in this awareness driving campaign.
