And, with respect, with eight billion and counting, just imagine a world where we are all, and all of our progeny, and all of THEIR progeny and THEIRS and THEIRS and THEIRs into infinity with all our shit and our ugly prejudices and our religious righteousness and our hates and insecurities and viciousness and wars and woman hating and a world without any animals at all because after all, with the humans we already have, we’re wiping out what we’ve got, while this is mildly interesting, it is also monumentally foolish. What, now we’re going to populate all the other planets and do there what we’ve done so very well here? Treat our bodies like shit, shit in our oceans, shit in our lands, burn our forests, shit in our air, even shit in the space above us?

I am quite sure the InterGalactic Commission can’t wait for US to show up and shit on their planets, their lovely galaxies, leave space garbage all through their near space just like we’ve done here.

No. At some point, and again, Brenda, while this is intriguing science, we all need to die. Just, get the hell out of the way and off the planet.

I owe my Mother a body. We all do. I can’t speak for anyone else but the older I get, and I am doing it exceedingly well, the more I realize that I do NOT have the right to hang around forever.

At some point, and it takes far more courage, it is much more an issue of aging well rather than not aging at all. Or living forever which is ludicrous. All things alive today have to die. All things that ever lived, with the exception of a few long-lived organisms like certain trees, will die, and they will too. Stars and planets and galaxies all die. We ALL do. Because life has to replicate itself in all forms.

It is the supreme hubris of the human to try to outsmart the Universe, just for a little more time on a planet we are very effectively killing off. While I can only speak for myself, knowing that I have a due date does a nice job of forcing me to appreciate what I have now in the limited time I have available to me. Given more time, most of humanity will just continue to avoid the deep work, and shit all over what they have, because there is no end point. Then it will, like now, always be tomorrow.

That’s just me. I want to think, and I am likely wrong, that the sweetness of aging well is far more attractive than the idea of being around so very long that we vastly outstay our welcome with every generation to come. I might posit that there’s a fair bit of that going around already.

There’s a great deal of grace in knowing, and respecting, that we have limited time. Of course we fear death. But you and I have no clue what amazing adventures await us after we move on. Wanting to live forever to me is simply an expression of a paucity of faith, and I am no believer in any religion. I do believe in Nature. And She is a shitload smarter than we are.

For my part, it strikes me as monumentally selfish and self-serving to even think of such a thing. Because imagine, should a way become available, imagine what it would cost, because it WILL be monetized. Then, imagine the very very every few who could afford it. For my money, and there isn’t much of it, I think we have to be very careful. We have enough monsters as it is. I vote that we don’t make them immortal.