Trying To Hack Death and Gilgamesh
I read the Epic of Gilgamesh recently and was surprised that even the oldest surviving epic was about immortality, the same thing I’m writing about. Go figure. Even as writing was just beginning about 4,000 years ago, the specter of death dangled over the human consciousness. In the epic, King Gilgamesh watches his friend Enkidu die and is struck by a visceral, unshakeable horror. He abandons his throne, puts on animal skins, and wanders the world in search of immortality. The story ends with the realization that we are born and must die.
But that was then, this is now. With enough research, perhaps death itself can be officially canceled. The refusal to accept the annihilation of the self has left Gilgamesh’s world and landed in Silicon Valley. Today’s masters of the universe aren't going on road trips searching out immortality; they’re writing checks for billions of dollars in an attempt to cheat death. Good luck with that.
As is obvious to all, the problem with life is that you can earn a lot of money, but we all get the same amount of time on this planet. Death is the great equalizer, right? So figures like Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Larry Page find themselves in the same boat as the rest of us mortality-wise. Well, almost. They do have that thing called wealth, and instead of the phrase “time is money,” we can adjust it a little to read “money makes time.”
But I’m not really beating up on the wealthy. After all, what they find can be commoditized later for us to extend our lives. They’re seeking something called Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV). This is the hypothetical point where, for every year you live, science extends your life expectancy by more than one year. Yes, immortality without the impertinent multiverse making an appearance, as it did for my character Matthew Sella.
Current predictions from futurists like Ray Kurzweil suggest we could hit this threshold between 2029 and 2035. This timeline explains the current push. The billionaires aren't trying to live forever today; they’re just trying to survive long enough to be able to benefit from LEV, if it ever gets here.
For me, I’m not holding my breath—not because holding my breath would be a rather direct way to not achieve immortality, but because I’ve seen predictions like this come and go. Fusion, anyone? But what’s going on is quite interesting, and I’ll have more on this in later posts.