Ever since my late teens I wished to find a book which explained what my generation’s view on life is, or should be, given how far human civilization has come. I wished to find a book which let me figure out my place in the world. I wished to find a book which let me figure out how far I should aim, and what I could realistically expect from my life. But instead I found no such singular book.
I found tidbits of relevant information and concepts across the internet. I found no way to find the words to use in the search engines to find the knowledge I didn’t know the name of. I didn’t know there was vital unknown-to-me knowledge out there which would drastically change my expectations for my life. I didn’t know what was important knowledge and what wasn’t, so I was forced to wander the internet aimlessly, scouring through everything I found which appeared to be cutting-edge science. I was “blessed” in a way with a sufficient setback which postponed my plans for my life long enough to discover that there was indeed a few really really important areas of science which were crucial to my future. If I had not gotten that setback, I would have copied my peers actions and had enough money and work to not have time to ever scour a large enough portion of the web to find this crucial information.
As an example; Rejuvenation biotechnology advances since the completion of the human genome project that make it clear that aging will become a thing of the past in this century. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia and the rest of the diseases caused by the aging processes will be eradicated. Yet I found that my generation does not know about this. They take their parent’s life view and smoke, drink and eat unhealthily and even spend unhealthily, all in the name of short-term enjoyment. Even though this means they risk being among the last handful of people to die of non-externally caused diseases (infections, parasites, etc), in human history. They spend every dime they make on a lavish standard of living, the best that they can afford, even though this means they may risk dying right before achieving eternal youth in the future. All rejuvenation treatments will drop in price very fast in just a couple decades, so much so that most treatments will be included in socialized healthcare plans because it will be cheaper than the alternative of letting people grow old and sick. The human genome project cost over 5 billion dollars and took 15 years but just 13 years after completion getting your genome read costs between 1300 and 3500 dollars depending on accuracy, and takes a couple hours. That is how fast biotech costs drop because its largely an automated process where only the efficiency of the machines and availability of machines compared to customers decide the price. But if those that can afford it don’t save up money they may risk dying from a disease of aging that will be cured by a treatment that has yet to become sufficiently cheap to become universal. Furthermore, even if they survive without problems without buying a few of their own treatments, they then end up with a youthful healthy body and mind at age 80+, but with no saved up resources. So they must continue working equally hard as they have done so far. As opposed to being able to work less and supplement their expenses with some return on long-term investments. Even minor saved up funds per year adds up to a significant sum in forty odd years. Even a small sum you get some annual interest on will significantly decrease the annual necessary work burden for all those of my generation that have a “job” instead of something so fulfilling that it can be called a “career”.
Yet my generation knows nothing of this future that certain scientific fields are making a reality as we speak.
My generation also knows nothing about how the future will change. They do not know that four decades or so is plenty of time to make yourself financially independent. You could use your current income to become independent in energy, food, housing, standard of living, transportation, but only if you spend the time to make long term plans and start taking the steps to reach those goals. Not many (if any) cars are easily serviceable for centuries. Not many (if any) home appliances will last more than a couple decades at most. Not many (if any) housing solutions available today to the masses can go more than a few years without regular maintenance expenses. Even something as simple as shoes wear out quicker than you realize. So if you want financial freedom in the future you need to find or create a way to provide yourself with footwear and all other needs independently forever, or at a minimum recurring cost. You would benefit from a certain reliable supply of energy so that you don’t have to pay the electric bill every month for the rest of eternity, and thus work to pay that bill for the rest of eternity. Instead you want to be able to minimize expenses and maximize income so that you can save up.
But why would we want to become financially independent? Why would we want to save up for centuries as opposed to spend it for present-biased enjoyment every day? Because there are a lot more to spend money on than the measly products we surround ourselves with when we say we have accomplished a very high standard of living. At some point in the future, with eternal youth, you will be bored of having worked a thousand different jobs, having owned a thousand different homes and cars, having owned a thousand different versions of every product you own and want to own. But what else is there? Well I suggest space travel.
Those of us with the most wealth will be the first to have bought every product version year after year for centuries until they find it pointless and mundane. They will spend their entire net worth on rather spartan-looking spaceships with a relatively low standard of living not much different than the standard of living on the International Space Station. And inside the spaceship each of them buys for themselves, they will have the rather primitive tools and equipment needed to extract some resources from some dwarf planet, asteroid, moon or comet. So that when they land and extract resources they then send some of that off to others in the same situation with auto-pilot equipped rockets who in return fill it up with the resources the others collected and refined to send back. And over time they will use these resources in 3D printing machines they brought with them and machining equipment made on the spot from resources they collectively harvested from the solar system, to make additions to their spaceship and their base. Small mining equipment eventually gathers enough resources to make larger mining equipment and small tools eventually make larger tools. Larger tools make larger rocket parts, larger solar panels, larger radiation shielding and larger fuel tanks. Engineered organisms skip the Earth process where a series of many organisms convert human waste back into human nutrients, into a one-step process. So instead of having a very heavy farm with you to space, you just bring a small machine which contains some organisms that convert the CO2, H2O and solid waste you put out, into nutrients like sucrose (C12H22O11) and vitamin C (C6H8O6), using solar energy from solar panels that are converted into the one wavelength of light the organisms use most effectively inside that closed machine. Hence eventually making interstellar travel possible without generational ships or flying space farms. And having gathered from other solar systems eventually the spaceships are capable of traveling (at slower than light speed of course) to distant galaxies, because you print the latest rejuvenation treatments in your bioprinters on the way. Radio waves containing the new science from Earth and other spaceships travel at the speed of light, whereas you travel at perhaps not more than 1% the speed of light because you have all the time in the world. Each time a wealthy elite generation uses their money to buy this initial bare-bones spaceship needed to set out on this series of events, the money is spent here on Earth and that results in that people have jobs and new wealthy people arise. Who in return also spend their money like this eventually. Eventually when the Earth is swallowed up by the sun that turns into a red giant a billion or so years from now, there will be no one left here. Humans will spread throughout the galaxy, indeed many other galaxies. And then a portion of them will gather resources and send it all to one pre-determined time and place so that we can use all the science we have learned so far to use our vast amount of gathered resources to survive the end of the universe. Be that by making a new universe, traveling to a new universe, or simply surviving with the resources gathered for as long as possible by traveling close to the speed of light, so that hopefully a new universe arises and we survive that event. Or more probably, we decide to do something else entirely to survive based on scientific experiments that involve trillions of times the energy we can put into physics experiments on Earth today.
Yet, while I now know this is a scientifically feasible outcome for my generation because I studied the rejuvenation biotechnology field, few others study it. Few others even bother to learn about it sufficiently to understand it and understand how it is feasible, even after reading such a text as this. I know my generation will be the one that survives to see aging reversed, but I still know of almost no person in my generation (or even other generations) that know about it. And even fewer that seem to give a damn about it. They press on with the expectation from life that all they can do is maximize enjoyment in their forty adult years of decent health until they spend twenty years in bad health and finally kick the bucket. Even if the odds for my generation making it isn’t 100% for everyone alive today, it rather seems like a monumentally short-sighted, stupid, lazy idea to not bother trying to help the process along. Rejuvenation biotechnology only has to intervene in seven aging processes. One of which being loss of cells, which are reversed by replacing those lost cells with stem-cell treatments. And this is already in human trials to treat Parkinson’s Disease! Another aging process is senescent cells, which are cells that don’t function properly that should be made lost via programmed cell death (apoptosis). That has recently been shown to work in significantly improving health and lowering apparent biological age in mice. Yet apart from stem-cell treatments, rejuvenation biotechnology is probably one of the least funded areas of biomedical science today. And my generation don’t know, don’t care. And my parent’s generation who could really benefit from speeding up the research before they have no hope in hell, don’t know, don’t care. It even seems like people shy away from learning about it even when prompted to by an article or video which suggests they should do it. I mean, if you suffered from a lethal disease and had 25 years to cure it and someone said some area of medical science is trying to use a certain promising approach to cure your disease, would you not then spend at least SOME effort investigating it? Would you not help the effort with a few bucks every month just in case they succeed, even in the event you thought it was unlikely to succeed? To this day none of my own social group has spent a penny helping this research, and it appears they don’t really care to try to influence others to contribute in any way shape or form. I can only imagine young adults are completely incapable of thinking ahead farther than they have a past. Or I could be completely useless at swaying people’s behavior.
I fear my generation will be known as the last generation that died. And the first generation to die from something we could have prevented. I can only feel more depressed that my parent’s generation may be the last generation that let their children die from something that could have been cured in the time available (from the time science knew it was feasible (around 2005 or so that’s when Aubrey de Grey PhD realized it was feasible), until my generation begins dying in droves, is about 40-50 years).
Well, at least you can buy my book. Tomorrow I will go to work loading a few dozen tons of fish on drying racks with no intention of wasting a penny of my hard-earned money. Because I don’t want to be here drying fish when the sun gradually changes and the fish fossils will be dry even where the Atlantic used to be. Good day to you, and if I don’t see you again, good evening, good night and good eternity.
How To Human 