According to a story in the Province this week, a Vancouver entrepreneur is trying to raise $8 million through crowd-sourcing site Indiegogo to fund an anti-aging research lab in India. The goal is to halt or reverse the aging process so we can elude mortality’s icy hand tapping us on the shoulder and live for 1,000-plus years, or a millennia as the kids like to call it.
“I want to live, I like living,” an age-phobic Jason Timmins told the Province. “I want to enjoy life for as long as possible… I do this because I have a self-interest.” No kidding.
Disregarding the fact that science is not on Timmins’ side and he more or less pulled the figure of $8 million out of his 44-year-old ass, we think living until you’re 1,000 is a terrible idea.
Don’t get us wrong. Death and getting old don’t always feel great and it can be downright sad, but it’s a necessary part of the cycle of life.
Besides the tremendous drain on the world’s resources, there are other problems with having an immortal population. First of all, imagine all the junk you would accumulate in 1,000 years — all those unfashionable clothes, outdated phones, useless computers, Beanie Babies that still haven’t appreciated in value despite what we were led to believe.
Then there would be the widening generation gaps. We still have a hard time relating to co-workers who don’t get our daily references to Weekend at Bernie’s and Mitsou’s “Bye Bye Mon Cowboy.” And that disconnect would only get bigger when we’re approaching 900 and our vast pop culture knowledge is met with the stony silence of a 23-year-old who probably doesn’t understand us anyway because they speak a hybrid digital language involving coded eye flutters, hashtags, incomprehensible slang and sighs.
But arguably the worst part of living forever would be how boring it would get. Sure, culture is constantly evolving, but it’s also constantly borrowing from the past. That means we would likely hear BTO’s “Taking Care of Business” and the Eagles’ “Hotel California” for hundreds and hundreds of years to come. Simply agonizing.
Television would also be problematic. We’ve already grown weary of The Big Bang Theory, and we’ve never seen an episode. Compound that weariness over another 75 or 300 seasons, and that weariness would likely turn into psychotic rage.
We’re even bored of Vancouver’s artisanal pizza craze and it’s only two years old.
Same goes for tapas, walking the seawall, the view of the North Shore mountains and the Canucks new GM Jim Benning. Seriously, what has that guy done in the past week?
So we’re going to embrace the finiteness of life. Sure it will be sad when friends and loved ones pass on, and we’re left alone in our room full of Beanie Babies, barely able to walk to No Frills or go to our weekly zumba class. But it will make us appreciate life more — at least the part of it that doesn’t include tapas, The Big Bang Theory and “Hotel California.”
