Our Trial of Free Will

So here’s an article by ME on Solzhentisyn, technolog y, purpose, and our future. A taste:

People are more concerned than ever with doing what’s required to stay alive, even as they do everything they can to divert themselves from real thoughts about love and death. They’re increasingly convinced they’re stuck with securing their free or contingent beings on their own. So they’re sure to be increasingly anxious consumers of the biotechnology that aims to break ever more completely the natural life cycle, to achieve indefinite longevity for each particular individual. Those who claim we should do as nature intends and not make a big effort to keep people alive beyond a certain age—say, 75 or 80—aren’t facing the fact that there’s no natural limit that free individuals can’t challenge with considerable success . . . .We’re going to end up living as long as we can . . . .

Being so death-haunted explains our birth dearth to some extent; we get little solace from thinking about the children who live after us. Nor do we get much satisfaction from producing any accomplishments that will stand the test of time much better than we can as biological beings, and that’s why there’s so little building or writing for the ages these days. Being so death-haunted also helps to explain the extreme measures taken by the old to look young, not to remind us that they’re dying. It’s one reason why the old are increasingly separated from the rest of society, and their care turned over to workers. It might even have something to do with why physicians have less time for their dying patients, and why the best and the brightest medical students are choosing dermatology—which, as medical specialties go, has very little to do with either birth or death . . . .