Silicon Valley's Latest Lifehack: Death

There is a problem with conceiving of death as something you can protect against through behavioral changes. There are certain things that do correlate, but if you’re living in a place where you’re exposed to various toxic chemicals, if you’re a worker at a plant where you’re exposed to carcinogens, you lack control. Transhumanists’vision of life e... See more

We must live out our lives, to whatever extent we can, in clear-eyed acknowledgment of our limitations, in the undeluded mode of existence that Heidegger calls “Being-towards-death,” aware that this is it, that life is not a dress rehearsal, that every choice requires myriad sacrifices, and that time is always already running out—indeed, that it ma

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All of this comes down to the capitalist belief that life should be a straight line that keeps going up. Every month, my Apple Watch entices me with a shiny badge if I exercise more than I did in the previous month, despite the inevita

bility of me eventually getting ill or tired or needing to take a break. So much corporate gamification sees that i

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Try to unlearn the obsessive fear of death (and the anxious quest for death avoidance) that pervades linear thinking in nearly every modern society. The ancients knew that, without periodic decay and death, nature cannot complete its full round of biological and social change. Without plant death, weeds would strangle the forest. Without human deat... See more