What's Wrong With Bryan Johnson

Death isn't the problem. Living in fear of death is.

In my essay “Barbie’s Irrepressible Thoughts of Death”, I used this quote from psychiatrist Ronald Laing: “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” Our painful consciousness about mortality is why eternal life is such an ancient myth. From youth elixirs to Horcruxes, we’re so fascinated by the search for immortality that we often forget that death isn’t the biggest challenge; living well is. Spending our lives cheating the uncheatable is the biggest waste of it.

Now, Bryan Johnson is a stunt, but the longevity cult that has been created around “not dying” is ludicrous. I think a lot of people who wish to cheat death are just too afraid to live. The time you spend plotting ways to live longer might be better spent doing things that actually matter, because life isn’t meant to have a mission, it’s meant to become one. Living just for the sake of being alive is…pointless.

More like “DON’T LIVE”

Think of it this way: a car uses gas, but you wouldn’t get a car just so you can put gas in it. Gas is just for the car to get somewhere. You might learn ways to maximize fuel efficiency and save money, but the reason you buy the car isn’t so you can practice maximizing fuel efficiency and saving gas money.

Because the best way to save gas money is to not get a car at all. The best way to never die is to not be born at all¹ — but then, nothing would matter at all, would it? Bryan Johnson isn’t living at all. He’s just existing. An obsession with longevity is a submission to death: when you let death dictate your entire life — what you eat, when you eat, how many steps you can take per day, what position you can sleep in — you reduce yourself down to an organism merely breathing.

Anyone who has an eating disorder knows what I mean: are you living life to the fullest when you’re a slave to your calories counter? When you’re controlled by the fear of how your body is going to be changed by a cup of orange juice?

The fundamental perspective behind this kind of “health-hacking” is that it makes death the problem. But death isn’t the problem. In fact, it isn’t a problem at all. Death doesn’t need a solution; it needs acceptance. Instead, living in fear of death and spending your precious seconds being controlled by the thought of it — that’s the problem.

What is death?

There is no one answer. Your cells are constantly dying and being replaced, yet you keep on living. Even a stopped heart (once a dependable medical definition for death) is now frequently reversible. Also, energy can not be destroyed — one animal’s death is another’s life. Think of one zebra dying to feed a pride of young lions, or one whale dying to birth an entire ecosystem (see: whale fall). Some people choose to have a green burial, where their flesh is returned to nature in a more organic way.

These examples should satisfy the materialists’ (only) worldview, which is that we turn into worm food after death. Beyond this, religion explains that people go somewhere after they die, whether it’s purgatory or inside the body of another organism via karmic reincarnation. The philosophers say that you’re actually dying this very moment because every second is the oldest you’ve ever been and the youngest you’ll ever be.² The point is, everyone agrees that death is part of a process, not a fixed point. We may change from what we are now but in that change we become something else.

The secrets of evolution are time and death. There’s an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us. — Carl Sagan

They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them. — St. Augustine

The case against health-hacking

Nature is not something that needs to be hacked. Health-hacking is an oxymoron because when we say that something is natural, we mean that it is not manipulated by human efforts.

Do trees “hack” themselves to grow? Do caterpillars “hack” themselves to turn into butterflies? No. Why should we be “hacking” what our bodies know best? Instead of being data-obsessed (hormone levels, muscle mass, timed meditation, etc.), why can’t we grow the way a flower blooms when it hears the aria of spring?

Trees fulfill their purpose in the ecosystem without even having to try. How happy a tree must be, to follow nature with perfect obedience and end up perfectly fine without having to make a single decision. It achieves without ambition, it balances without effort, and it moves forward without thoughts. (continue reading)

Conclusion

It’ll be awesome to live a long and healthy life, but the purpose of life isn’t to have as much of it as possible. The purpose is to know what to do with what you have. Without something worthy of dying for (dedicating yourself to), you can live 900 lifetimes and still feel like it’s not long enough.³

Bryan Johnson’s experiment feels wrong precisely because it’s the ultimate case of the tail wagging the dog. At the end of 2023, I wrote about quitting my job and following my passion, and one main conclusion from that piece is that the purpose of having freedom is to choose what or who you want to give up that freedom for. Similarly, the gift of life is so you can choose what you want to live for and what hill you’d die on.

1. “I wish I was never born” is a sentiment you often hear among nihilists. Reagan once said, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born,” and regardless of your stance on abortion (or Reagan), the message here is to reframe the way we see life from being a burden to being a privilege. What a privilege it is to wake up alive again so we can have opinions, complain about rainy weather, and argue with strangers on the Internet. Nihilism is a gripping topic because it’s so hideous yet so easy to slip into. I think Eric Harris’s journal (Columbine shooter) is worth a skim if you wish to examine a nihilist’s descent into hell.

2. “We move as a rower propels his boat: facing backwards. We can always see where we’ve been, but not where we’re going.” continue reading this piece

3. I recommend “Life is Short”. This is the first Paul Graham essay I’ve ever read and it’s still my favorite.