Can the rich really live forever? – Dunya News

I read an article on The Guardian newspaper about how the rich are investing in science and technology to enable them to live forever.

This article is well-written by a respected British journalist, who is named as John Harris. It seems to me that this article maybe his best work.

He argued that the billions being blown in anti-ageing techniques by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezoswho else could afford these projects?would be better spent on community projects like education centres for mature students, housing units for poor people and retirement facilities for the old.

I think he is right; the money could have much more productive uses than immortality. His reference of Andrew Carnegie brought back memories of the countless self-help and personal finance books that I have read right next to grandmas open fireplace.

Religion has a historical monopoly on the question of immortality and according to the Abrahamic faiths immortality is possible only by humans when we die: either in hell or heaven. So is there any chance of living here forever or until the end of time? The answer is certainly not if the rabbi, imam and the priest are to be believed.

And again I would agree that there is no reason to think humans can live forever, folks may disagree with whether there is an eternal life waiting for humans after we dieand atheists, agnostics and scientists regularly dobut I think the scientific consensus is that much the Philosophers stone, a human incapable of dying is another mythic concept that has no reality apart from the imagination of some tech-types whose minds have lost their rationality from excessive video-games and computer coding.

I hate to admit it, but human nature is still the same: in the past we wanted to live forever and in the present the billionaires are actually trying to live forever! The tech-guys are even less rational than the ones from past despite years of coding experience!

Why is greed greater today than in the past?

I suspect the simple truth is that the billionaires of today have far more money than any of the rich of the past and with much more fun gadgets to play with. And so they want to live forever to play with their toys and enjoy their money. The equation is really more money equals more machines and more greed. So to add all of that up we get rich guys with machines who want to make more machines and need more time to do that.

From my own experience humans want a share of everything: they want a share of all pleasure, health, happiness, wealth, life and anything that can be valued and considered with something of worth. And this instinct whether survival or simply modern greedI cannot fully make up my mind. I suspect it is a combination of both and this insatiable desire for more is responsible for family problems, health problems, toxic-office politics and all manner of ailments. Surely these negative things adversely impact the longevity of any person more than any potential positives derived fromto use the technical termbio-hacking.

In the end I am inclined to the view that it is far better to enjoy whatever we have in our limited time without too much bickering and fighting. There is no such thing as immortality for the rich and death for the poor, though the health-care is superior for a better-off person. And the Quran makes clear the claim that, Every soul has to taste death. It is on the Day of Judgement that you shall be paid your rewards in full. So, whoever has been kept away from the Fire and admitted to Paradise has really succeeded. The worldly life is nothing but an illusionary enjoyment.

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Can the rich really live forever? - Dunya News