Sunday, February 13, 2005
Living Forever
There have been a couple of pieces in recent days about the concept of living forever (or at least dramatically longer than we did a century ago). Inventor and wiseguy Ray Kurzweil was interviewed all over the place as part of the promo tour for his new book, Fantastic Voyage, describing his own attempts for longevity. Hell, the man even drives slower and no longer tailgates as an extra precaution for self-preservation. Apparently, Kurzweil thinks we may discover the secret to immortality in the next 20 years so we need to preserve our aging bodies long enough to get there in decent shape. Here's the Yahoo article on Kurzweil's thoughts. And here's a past interview from Wired with Kurzweil. Geez, 10 glasses of alkaline water a day? Hey, Ray -- if your ticket's up, it's your time to go, man! Get over it and live a little! And here's a video clip from Business Week's Catherine Arnst talking about how scientists are exploring ways to extend life and slow aging.
While I do agree that we'll make some incredible advances in medical science over the next 20 years, I personally believe we'll unlock some basic secret that ties all the theories together into one big meaning of life idea. Right now, we're getting too detailed in our science and focusing so much on the minutiae that the scientists (left-brain thinkers most of them!) have lost the view of the big picture for the most part. Think about this: in the past 20+ years, we keep raising more and more money for cancer research. The researchers keep slicing-and-dicing and finding even more different kinds of cancer. And NO cure yet! Same with AIDS and arthritis and on and on and on. In my personal foray into arthritis testing, I learned all about the different variations of arthritis and related ailments (I was eventually told I didn't have any indications of arthritis so I'm back at square one with my aches and pains). But I did learn that many of the types of arthritis have surprisingly similar symptoms with other diseases such as lupus. I have to believe that if one were to dig deeper into the root causes of the disease rather than simply trying to treat the surface ailments, we're more likely to discover common threads among each of these diseases. For example, understanding and incorporating traditional Chinese medicine and the concept of Yin and Yang balance might lead us to understand organ imbalances as they might relate to lupus or arthritis. When we can balance those things properly, I think everything else will fall into place.
We've made what look to be exponential gains in the past 10 years. The knowledge will continue to expand for a little while longer and then it will finally all implode into that one big discovery. For now though, we seem so close yet still so far away... But we just might make it in 20 years.
While I do agree that we'll make some incredible advances in medical science over the next 20 years, I personally believe we'll unlock some basic secret that ties all the theories together into one big meaning of life idea. Right now, we're getting too detailed in our science and focusing so much on the minutiae that the scientists (left-brain thinkers most of them!) have lost the view of the big picture for the most part. Think about this: in the past 20+ years, we keep raising more and more money for cancer research. The researchers keep slicing-and-dicing and finding even more different kinds of cancer. And NO cure yet! Same with AIDS and arthritis and on and on and on. In my personal foray into arthritis testing, I learned all about the different variations of arthritis and related ailments (I was eventually told I didn't have any indications of arthritis so I'm back at square one with my aches and pains). But I did learn that many of the types of arthritis have surprisingly similar symptoms with other diseases such as lupus. I have to believe that if one were to dig deeper into the root causes of the disease rather than simply trying to treat the surface ailments, we're more likely to discover common threads among each of these diseases. For example, understanding and incorporating traditional Chinese medicine and the concept of Yin and Yang balance might lead us to understand organ imbalances as they might relate to lupus or arthritis. When we can balance those things properly, I think everything else will fall into place.
We've made what look to be exponential gains in the past 10 years. The knowledge will continue to expand for a little while longer and then it will finally all implode into that one big discovery. For now though, we seem so close yet still so far away... But we just might make it in 20 years.
