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Also, recommend Baudrillard's Symbollic Exchange and Death for how this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society. Seeing that you'

Also, recommend Baudrillard's Symbollic Exchange and Death for how this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society. Seeing that you've mentioned Taylor's A Secular Age, maybe I should start reading it (it's been on my reading list for some time, but this renewed my curiosity as his studies seem to be closely related to what thinkers like Bataille and Baudrillard has problematized in political economy)

keiferski 5y ago
Thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t know Baudrillard wrote about this. > this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society. Absolutely. While I agree with the other commenter that basically no one is against life extension research in principle, the energy that leads to deifying it (which is the vibe I get from a lot of longevity materials) might be better served learning to understand and accept death as a natural phenomenon. I’ve found Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life to be an excellent work on this topic. Then again, one might characterize the technological successes of the West in the last ±500 years as deliberately ignoring cyclical time in favor of linear “Progress.” > Seeing that you've mentioned Taylor's A Secular Age, maybe I should start reading it I really do recommend it. It’s a bit dense but I’ve found the concepts he uses (the immanent frame and the Nova Effect to name a couple) to be extremely useful in understanding the modern world.