Inundated with an Ideology of Death-Acceptance

Is it a challenge to advocate for greater funding for rejuvenation research, a challenge to persuade people that significantly extending healthy human life spans is possible, plausible, and potentially imminent, because we are all relentlessly taught from an early age that death is to be accepted? Our myths, our ever-rewoven heritage of stories modern and ancient, propagandize for aging and death. Our cultures are replete with tales in which longevity is a punishment, and heroes are castigated for even trying to seek a longer life. This is an interesting question: to what degree are we controlled and constrained by the expectations taught to us, directly and indirectly, by the stories that wind their way through life around us?

I suggest that we have been culturally conditioned to think that it is virtuous to accept aging and death. We are taught to believe that although aging and death seem gruesome, they are what is best for us, all things considered. This is what we are supposed to think, and the majority accept it. I call this the Wise View because death acceptance has been the dominant view of philosophers since the beginning. Socrates compared our earthly life to an illness and a prison and described death as a healer and a liberator. The Buddha taught that life is suffering and that the way to escape suffering is to end the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Stoic philosophers from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius believed that everything that happens in accordance wit...

Source: Fight Aging! - July 28, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs