Super-Aging: The Moral Dangers of Seeking Immortality

Let’s assume that science, through genetic and social engineering, will allow us to live a hundred or more years in reasonably good health, but with the burden of minor chronic disease. If life goes on for that long, however, will nature, God, or some faction of ourselves, bolster death to restore balance to the world? Will the super-elderly want to live that long? Because of the potential burdens, will only the elites enjoy the opportunity to super-age—and if so, will democracy and freedom suffer? Will the population weaken physically, mentally, and spiritually as it ages? Will the young, pushed out by a flood of geezers, revolt? We can’t help but view our existence through the many frameworks of life and death, regardless of whether we call them aging, science, naturalism, religion, spiritualism, or super-naturalism. Where does human life begin and end? At the level of the gene, the cell, the individual human, or society—or the unknown? If we super-age—as it appears we will—what will happen to the balances we strike?