During the last week of class, we have discussed about the concern revolving around the development of the anti-aging world of technology and perspectives, that have shifted the common view of natural death into an abnormality, or a disease, or something that’s completely unnatural. After reading Celine Lafontaine’s “The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity” and Melinda Cooper’s “Resuscitations: Stem Cells and the Crisis of Old Age,” I am left with nothing but fear for humanity’s future and what we will redefine to be considered “natural” in our world. What I’ve begun to notice from the ongoing research in life extension and the topic of global health, is that there seems to be a clear sign of delineation of what it means to live and die between the third world and the more developed and prosperous societies and populations across the globe, especially in the United States. There will perhaps be even bigger gaps and disparities between these two cultures as far as prolonging life and confronting death goes. For example, “the logic of the commodification of health care, individuals must make a financial investment in order to ensure their longevity,” so how would someone in the rural villages of East Africa make such an investment to ensure their longevity? (Lafontaine 298). What is the most common take on death today? After years and years later with advancement in technology and producing “solutions” for life extension, what would be the common take on death then? I think it’s important to realize anti-aging fronts in medicine are usually led by teams of researchers and doctors who are at least middle-aged. Not often do you see a fresh graduate in their mid-twenties go on to research about stagnant remedies for aging people. We are labeling death and old age as a pathological disease because drugs and techniques are being produced and invented to counteract against them. But why prolong life to avoid death? I believe this has to do with the human obsession with power; to have power over nature, and to have control over one’s own fate. To have control of your own fate means to have control over your own mortality, and in turn become a God-like being. If having control over your body’s limits means defeating nature’s tendencies, could this unnatural balance/imbalance remind us of what we are meant to be, and possibly help us revert back to the way life was originally designed for?
Lafontaine helps us realize that in this era of highly sophisticated technology, where possibilities are endless and life (in the developed regions of the world) has nothing to fear. She says that “according to philosopher Christine Overall, from an individualistic point of view, there is no valid reason to die to make room for a new generation” (Lafontaine 309). What are we to do if we can live as long as we choose? What happens to the meaning of life if there is no limit? Lafontaine answers this by stating “the linear vision of a theoretical unlimited life leads not only to the devaluation of old age, but to meaninglessness” (Lafontaine 309). Yet, the perceived notion in today’s society believes that signs of aging at an old age represents meaninglessness, as Melinda Cooper puts it: “The aged and aging itself – as a limit to growth that could and should be overcome at all costs” (Cooper 5). There is such a high demand in our society for efficiency and productivity to meet the demands of the people and markets and consumers, that we feel like those who can’t contribute as much need to revitalize themselves or just step their foot out the door (as in, just die). Cooper suggests the society believes that “more precisely, perhaps, the idea is that waste can be continuously re-enlivened, invested with a speculative surplus of life" (Cooper 8).
So let’s envision this social fantasy. In 50 or 60 years, we can live as long as we choose to. Technology and science defeats nature’s routines, and we begin to live somewhat of an artificial extension of our lives, as if we are robots. We could say we are like the servant robot, Andrew, from the film Bicentennial Man. In this movie, the servant robot is bought by a family and caters to their every whim. Andrew, never showed signs of aging, but he had emotion. As the robot continued to live on, he would see generations of the family (that had bought him) to pass on. Gradually, the robot was taking steps to become more “human” by receiving organs, nervous systems, skin, and ways to show human expression. Andrew was finally showing signs of aging, and he was happy because he was able to be human. Eventually, Andrew dies alongside a granddaughter of the parents who originally bought him (IMDb). What we see here is a reversed ideology about aging and death, in which a long-living thing desires to become a more natural being which can age and die. Now if humans one day have the capacity to live and live and barely age just like a robot, and still retain human emotion, would there be a natural tendency to live a more natural and shorter life? If we imagine Andrew as the next generation human being, who has received countless drugs and treatments that slow down the aging process, could that human choose to not want to live that way anymore? In the last half-century, foods and goods corporations made huge made a lot of consumers happy with efficiency and convenience, but with a lot of chemicals on the side. Nowadays, a lot of people are turning back to organic foods and more natural things with fewer preservatives. Could this history foreshadow the same thing when humans choose to prolong their lives?
Celine Lafontaine, 2009. The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity. Science as Culture 18(3): 297-312.
"Bicentennial Man (1999) - Plot Summary." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 11 Mar. 2011. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182789/plotsummary>.
Melinda Cooper. 2006. “Resuscitations: Stem Cells and the Crisis of Old Age.” Body and Society 12 (1): 1-23.
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