The Imposition of Death

If
you are reading this article, you probably do not deserve the death penalty.
You probably have not murdered, raped, or tortured anybody. In all likelihood,
you probably have not even committed petty theft. The most elementary understanding
of justice requires that only the guilty should suffer, and only in proportion
to their guilt. If a person willfully
inflicts harm on an innocent human being, this is widely recognized as a
heinous injustice. But only the worst offenders deserve death.
And
yet, you have been sentenced to death,
and all too few people lament or object. Certainly, you might have the benefit
of a drawn-out appeals process, for some of you perhaps as long as eighty or ninety
years. During your appeals you can employ various maneuvers – diet, exercise,
medical treatments, avoidance of risk – to slow down the sequence of events that
threaten to destroy you, collectively known as senescence. But with the scant few tools presently
available to you, the verdict is foreordained. You will lose. The system has presumed you guilty in advance, and it
will dispose of you in the same callous, merciless way that it has dispatched
billions before you. There is no cosmic justice, and, to survive, you will need
to help create such justice.
The
desire to achieve indefinite life is simply the logical extension of the basic
principle of justice – for why should only events caused by humans be judged as
just or unjust? If the preservation of innocent human life is desirable, it
should be desirable even when the threat does not come from another human
being. The suffering and deaths of human beings due to accidents and natural
disasters are rightly lamented and combated using the most advanced methods
available. There is no controversy about the desirability of reducing the
impact of these calamities. Neither should there be any controversy about
reducing human suffering and death by combating senescence. The closer we come
to a world where only moral transgressions bring about suffering and only the
most heinous evils conceivable bring about death, the more our lives could be
said to resemble anything like justice.
Death
is an imposition you did not ask for. You would not wish it on yourself
directly, and you would not wish to bring it about indirectly by committing a
crime so terrible as to deserve it. Yet many people today would find your death
to be normal, inevitable, and somehow even desirable – a part of their own
misguided conception of the natural order of things – despite your innocence
and your desire to live. Of course, if another human murdered you, most of
these people would condemn the murderer, and rightly so. But if senescence robs
you of your life in your sleep at the age of ninety, these same people would
shrug and say that this is just the way things are, have always been, and
always ought to be. Why the double standard?
Fortunately,
with the astonishing advances in medical science and technology that are
occurring in our time, your appeals against the verdict of the harsh court of
senescence need not be lost. Already, dedicated researchers and activists are
working on ways to defeat the greatest enemy humankind – including you – has
ever faced. You can inform yourself about their efforts and the most
cutting-edge longevity science by visiting the following websites:
If
you would prefer not to be deprived
of everything you are and have – of your very existence – without your consent,
then exploring these resources and many others on the subject of indefinite life
extension should be your first step. If you are not yet persuaded that lifting
your death sentence is both feasible and desirable, then I urge you: give this
literature an honest, thorough examination. You might just change your mind,
and if not, then at least you will learn much that will intrigue, fascinate, and
develop you. You have nothing to lose and a potentially unlimited lifespan to
gain. And if you are already persuaded, then learn as much as you can about the
promise of indefinite life and about the many ways in which you can help.
Click here to return to TRA's Issue CCLXVII Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.Read Mr. Stolyarov's comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.