Michael Kingsley on competitive, bitter, boomer longevity

Michael Kingsley – diagnosed with Parkinson disease at the age 42 – wrote an utterly fatalist, sad&straight and death conscious essay entitled Mine Is Longer than Yours on the last boomer game he calls competitive longevity published in the New Yorker. This piece is the dark counterpart of the recent Wired Kurzweil coverage on Mr. K.’s enormous efforts of being prospectively healthy as long as to reach next generation life extension technologies.

In contrast to that, Mr Kingsley, who underwent deep brain stimulation and lives with wires in the brain and batteries in the chest, seems to be somewhat restricted in the age of web to “switching your subscription from Newsweek to Time”. Still, “longevity is not a zero-sum game” – he admits.

Mr. Kingsley is pretty ignorant about any non-selfish motivation behind life extension (he is a political journalist by profession):

No kidding, I am a cum laude philosopher, and so can you!

My mom’s acquired this diploma 3 weeks ago back in Budapest and it has an English translation so I can share it with you:

36 Life extension idea killers: mental practice for the pros!

Today’s meditation is for serious healthy life extension supporters to consider the following 36 – general and sometimes corporate – idea killers concerning our little project:

1. We tried that already
2. We’ve never done anything like that before.
3. Has anyone ever done anything like that before?
4. That never works
5. You’re fired
6. We will actively work against you
7. Laughter
8. Not in our budget
9. Not an interesting problem
10. We don’t have time/We’ll never find the time to do it. (I specially liked this one.)
11. Execs will never go for it
12. Out of scope/Not in our business
13. But its the law
14. Too blue sky / Holy grail
15. Wont make enough $$
16. That isn’t what people want