A dream about death and titans

Without addressing the extensive time past, making no future commitments, and under the influence of a now long-submerged poetic and reflective mood; I want to draw upon an old but documented dream, who’s uncertain importance has just reoccurred to me. 
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From Journal, 12.02.2013 - Edited

I had a strange dream last night. It came out of a strange jumble where I was, for some reason, in a changing room with a crowd of half-naked people and obliged to dress under the not unwelcome eyes of a girl I think I knew from class.

The dream was this. I was facing sentencing for a terrible crime, but one I didn’t seem to have committed, as I had no feelings of either guilt or regret. I did not even know what the crime was, but it wasn’t a concern in the dream. This dream was not self-accusatory -I’m sure of this- I simply seemed to have taken the role of the convicted out of pure curiosity and a desire to experience the poetic last moments of the caught-yet-never-defeated man, proud and resolute even to the end.
In the dream, I had been given a choice of sentence; either life-imprisonment with no chance of release, or more simply, death.  To this, I had complacently chosen death; presumably reasoning that life-in-prison was no life at all, which, on the face of it, is a sentiment I would still agree to. The decision was made, I would bow-out and retain my dignity and spite my accusers. At this point, the the dream really started, and I began to freely think and feel as the condemned. I have never experienced such a vivid dream. Usually there is a ‘dullness’ to my dreams so that they only seem half-real; convincing enough to stimulate basic emotions, though never truly and wholly immersive. Yet this dream was. 

I was alone in a small, clinically-white room, sitting freely in a chair, haughty but comfortable. There was a door into the room that was closed and locked and a two-way mirror in the wall facing me. I seemed to be waiting. The dream gave me no more information than that. Presumably I was waiting for the procedure. It was to be a modern, clean death. Lethal injection or similar; I would feel nothing, and my body would not be violated after death. As easy as you could wish.

But I was alone. It was silent. And I was facing my imminent death. There was now no future, no freedom to make any choices, and no option to quit if I suddenly changed my mind. I was going to die, and I became afraid. The fear came from deep inside, but was not a product of my thought. I could understand the terrible loss and bitterness of death, the waste, but that would make me angry, not afraid. This fear came from somewhere else, and I couldn’t suppress it. It was becoming real. The only way I can explain it is to suggest that what I was feeling wasn’t part of the dream. The room and the impending execution was a creation of the dream, but the emotion was as powerful and consuming as anything I’d ever felt while awake. And yet, I have never felt this particular emotion -the fear of death- as I have never before faced death. This dream gave me that experience, or a simulation so real, I could not know the difference. I’ve never been truly terrified before, but now I was experiencing a total, mind-consuming terror that I could not have before imagined. I truly believed I was going to die. 

It sounds stupid now; how many times do you make jokes about death? And how often do we even see it in film? A gunshot or explosion and someone is killed, never to return, never to see another sunrise, but so what? We feel nothing more than a sense of waste or disappointment, and I had, at first, casually accepted my own execution in the dream. I had calmed my anxieties with cold reason and bitter satisfaction, and just as a movie-villain, I would slowly close my eyes and relax my limbs and allow the death to wash over me. 

But as I sat there, this new fear grew and my resolve began to waver. I didn’t understand it, nor could I control it any longer. Where was my cool, superior logic? What had my rationale been? I had been so confident before, but now all my ideas seemed vague and empty. I began to doubt; have I amde a mistake? My conscience began to dissolve and my mind to collapse; I could no longer suppress this fear, this dumb, primal fear of death. What was it? It had no description. It was beyond rationalisation. I had already accepted the inconvenience of death, but what was there to be afraid of in death? 

It was not rational. It was an animal thing. And now I perceived the true horror of the dream, I was for the first time in my life, introduced to the true custodian of my body. It is a primitive being, but much older and stronger than I, who arose suddenly from slumber, wild-eyed and panting, like a feral and slavering dog cornered and desperate and it now possessed my body. It was a revelation. I was the alien. An evolutionary phenomenon, but nothing more than the semblance of intellect and free will that was in truth the complex sum of the myriad basic bodily reactions to everyday stimulus. Where I had arrogantly assumed myself to be the master, I was unnecessary, and when the whole came under threat, I was swept away in the wake of that blind titan. My logic and reason was proven worthless. I was like a child, pulled away from the wheel only when the car is already plummeting, and who can then only watch horrified with his parent. All I have now is this terror. It is beyond belief. My control is now completely gone. Slowly, as I being to sweat and shake, I recognise dimly, with the last semblance of my imagined humanity, the shame and humiliation of tears and pleading. But I now have no power to control this. When the door opens, what will I do? The animal has taken over completely. Will I beg before the end?

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This dream confronted me with death, and I believed it so absolutely, that it spoke to what I believe is my primal-being, what we all must have, and what makes people forget reason and do terrible or shameful things. This was something I had never appreciated before; I was partly under the belief that fear must be deliberately, though foolishly expressed, and if it was humiliating, it was still no different than a person stuttering or falling down. A woman screaming in fear, a man lashing out in anger, this is the animal in all of us revealing itself, though briefly, until the mind can reassert its dominance. We have been civilised for a very long time, and can make decisions rationally, but the animal is still there.

Howl

They walked arm-in-arm down the long tree-lined drive, their feet crushing and scattering the dry gravel and kicking up red dust. The homestead was still far off, and even without the cover of hedges and towering trees, it would be invisible in the descending gloom. Their walk had been slower tonight, the warm summer air with its sweet grassy scent and the rustling of leaves lulling them toward a sleepy malaise. It had taken an hour to reach the end of the drive, Isaac almost dragging his heals as he turned his head dazedly from side-to-side, looking through the flanking trees across the old fields. The grass, no longer cut, had become overgrown and now swept about the trunks of trees, baked to yellow husks from days of blistering summer sun. They had slowed to a stop when they finally reached the highway, where the drive broadened to a gravel turn-around beyond the bleached wooden gate. They had just stood there, the breeze continuing to hiss as it threaded through the timber rails and dry grass. Nothing moved on the highway anymore, even during the day. The drive met it at a perfect right angle, and from where they stood, they could look down both lengths of the cracked and blackened asphalt until it blurred in the distance with the fading horizon. Ahead of them, the sun had finally touched the earth and its sluggish red light saturated the plain, turning everything to gold. Isaac had wanted to watch the sun go down and pulling Esther across with him, had leaned against the red-brick gate post, where the black-branded letters of the title could be read, burnt deep into the tarnished board. He had held her close, surprised to find her fingers already chilled as at once the wind begun to sweep away the day’s heat. Long slender fingers belonging to this tall slender girl, with her sleeves pulled up into her palms and knuckles pressed into his chest as she sheltered against him. He watched as the burning sun liquefied the horizon, turning it into molten waves that shimmered and tumbled continually, but she turned her head away and pressed her face against his neck. He gripped her tighter.

Their return was faster. Esther walking steadily, her eyes on the road even as Isaac continued to gaze around. The wind had picked up. All around, the trees and grasses began to stir and murmur. A wild and mischievous energy seemed to have crept back into the world at the withdrawal of the sun’s glare, and with unseen feet and hands it ran coltish across the fields, kicking up grass husks, stamping on branches and rattling trees. The road ahead began to snake and writhe along its length as the parallel lines of trees were tossed to-and-fro, rippling away into the darkness. The grasses bent and heaved like seaweed, and reflected the pale sky in shining waves that sped across the fields. Clouds appeared above them, mountainous white forms racing overhead, contorting and cascading without sound as they expanded over the sky. The night had come alive.

Isaac began to feel that energy within himself. A slow charge beginning to electrify his muscles and awaken his senses. He felt a wild excitement, a pure mania within him as he gazed around, wide-eyed, at the escalating concert. His muscles tensed, his mind sharpened, he watched all the movement around him, the swirling colour, the cacophonous noise, faster and ever louder. He waited for the explosion -or the collapse- a burst of thunder, a crash of timber, or a cry in the night, but the energies just continued to mass. And then he felt the call, an invitation to join the fury, to throw his hands in the air and dash off into the night, shouting and dancing amid maelstrom. His walk began to falter as he tensed, his limbs coiling for an outburst and Esther began to pull at him, her bent elbow still locked around his. Isaac stopped suddenly and she was pulled around in front of him, hair tossing, her pale face staring up into his dancing eyes, far away and changed.

“Isaac…?”

The tide broke, and the sweeping madness finally overwhelmed Isaac’s senses. His arms rose up, sliding from Esther’s grasp, his chest expanded, his head rolled back and his jaw opened wide. Directing the fury upward and outward, he howled into the night sky. The sound broke out violently and suddenly above the now roaring wind and rang in their ears. Esther jumped back from him, her white face stricken. It went on and on, a long drawn out howl and Esther grasped at him fiercely and senselessly, frantically searching him for meaning. His voice cracked and then went out, Esther braced him as he wavered, breathless and shrunken, but before she could recover, Isaac had drawn in another breath, expanded his lungs further, and straightening, he loosed another shattering howl, louder and more unbearable. The sound felt liquid in his throat, as though his stomach was well of black water that was bursting forth, leaving him and flooding the air and sky around him. He was alive, uplifted by the raw energy and naked violence that he conducted. His mind reeled at the horror and wonder he felt, only dimly aware of the pale and deadened figure of Esther in front of him. As he howled, eyes shut tight; he reached out and seized her arms, trying to bring her into this feeling, into his mania, to pull her across the void that had suddenly separated them. And through her love, her trust, or through other senses, she saw through the madness and her spirit found his. Her wet eyes began to glisten and sparkle as her terror turned to passion and she felt her wooden body warm, her chest inflate and fingers dig into Isaac's own hard grip. When his howl began to fade, her own erupted outward, higher and constricted, but with eyes shut tight and head thrown back as he did. Isaac stared at her through streaming eyes as he drew in more of the desert air, feeling in his ears her piercing vernal scream. He roared again, silencing her and she rallied for another, her face alight and eyes frenzied as she stared up. She howled again, louder and more violently, her voice passing into and through his, and they merged, the wolven bay and vixen scream, even as their two bodies were wrapped together. Two lovers entwined amid the swirling night.

The Guard

I sometimes spend time here, up atop the wide stone ramparts of the great watchtower, guarding the passes to the world outside. Those far-off mountains form an endless, broken-topped silhouette against a pale glow that ever-looms over the dread cities and foul hands of the hateful realm beyond. The malignant light creeps across the wastes before the wall, and infuses the ancient stone with a sickly yellow hue, boldly irradiating the fence designed to ward off poisonous intrusion. The glow alights the dark clouds racing overhead, yellow and monstrous under a pitch-sky, which swirl and tumble in grotesque mime, climbing over the mountains and storming over the walls. Stale, tainted winds hurtle across the plain, driving the clouds, and crashing against the stone, whirling and churning at the base of the wall and then toppling over, whistling through castellation and tower eyelets, dragging dust and sand from old mortar and passing on. Rains fall, and the wind whips the rain, and the frantic, icy splinters form dense grey sheets, speeding across the plain and pounding the keep like the tide, rising and then falling away. I shelter atop the wall, leaning under dripping eaves in shadowed doors, watching, but this is not my place, the watch is kept by others.

Standing about the walls, unmoving and unseen, tall men wrapped in darks cloaks that are blenched and dulled, clasped at the collars with white, cracked fingers. They tense, then relax as the wind mounts, then relents endlessly, clawing at limb, tearing through hair and blasting the glazed and crusted eyes of the watchers. The night will not pass, but the watch on the boarder-land will not fail, not until all else has ended and there no need to watch. I come here seldom, only when restless or under threat, and I will pass on, inspecting the guard at other places, to ensure my realm, my sanctum, is secure.

The Worm

One of the most incredible spectacles in a movie that loves spectacle, is the brief but mind-bending scene of the colossal, deep-space worm. The galaxy in which Star Wars is set is vast beyond imagining and is so successfully portrayed in the films by the extreme diversity of worlds and peoples; ranging wildly across deserts, iceland wastes or floating cities, all inhabited variously by industrious pigmy’s, tyrannical slugs or neurotic machines.

But this scene captures something else; briefly, as the narrative collects itself, we encounter the ‘wilderness.’ On the edge of civilised space, of the things known familiar within the fictional world of the film, we look out over an expanse alien to the heroes, and we become suddenly aware of a world older and greater than the setting of the film, and more unnerving still, a world unaffected and unconcerned with the events of the story. It is an odd inclusion- does it diminish the tale, or does it enrich its context? The wonder and fantasy of the ‘space opera’ is described in the epic naval conflicts, clustered shipyards and space-stations and long inter-planetary journeys, but here, a bit of strange, uncertain horror intrudes- a moment where wonder is chilled, and wide-eyes quiver. The scene with the titanic and blind worm, sunk within a lightless and silent asteroid, introduces a vague and unnerving glimpse of a dismal eternity, of appalling scale, and of a grotesque and abominable consciousness awake in the furthest corners of the galaxy. 

The worm is not part of the narrative- is seen in its horrid entirety for only a moment and is not even directly referred to. It may have been created as an uncertain and overblown ‘environmental threat,’ unbiased and unintelligent, to remind us of the wonder of the exotic setting. The sequence skilfully paces the action, giving the crew and audience time to rest and reflect while the tension builds for the next development. After the Millennium Falcon escapes the Imperial attack on the ice-planet Hoth, it attempts to evade the pursuing warships by negotiating a swarming asteroid cluster and setting down within the monumental caverns of one of the floating derelicts. When the moment is right, the threat is there to drive them out and kick the story onward; the worm is revealed, the crew are driven onward and in that moment, we are incidentally exposed to the frightening setting beyond. Even more disturbing in the surprise and dismay of the heroes, who belong to this world, and their reluctance to describe or even acknowledge what they have seen;

Han; jaw-clenched and cagey, desperately races the Falcon out of the asteroid, in stoic comprehension of the magnitude of the horror:
“This is no cave.”
Leia; wide-eyed and briefly maidenly in her terror of the descending jaws, whirls on the grim pilot:
“What?!”

What is this thing? What is it doing here? How can this be possible? In the remotest and most inhospitable place imaginable, this monster lives, but it is not a familiar monster, not a slashing insect, or a shuffling cyborg that are so commonly found within the galaxy- but a worm. A worm; the eternal symbol of decay, of coming death, destruction, and forgetfulness, the consumption of all things, slow and faceless, the attendant of graves, persistent and meticulous. The worm is here –eating- sunk within its meal- feeding blindly and insatiably and eternally, grown to ghastly size by endless gluttony. In a dark corner, buried, hidden from the light even in this lightless realm, it finds sustenance, consuming dust and ancient rock, gnawing on the galaxy's old bones, nibbling at the very fabric of space itself. 

Is this literally Poe’s Conqueror? The metaphor for not only human mortality- that these advanced people are not yet immune to, or the mortality of all things? Or space and time itself? What have the heroes stumbled upon? The slow destruction and dissolution of the galaxy begun in this dark corner? Or a manifestation of a primordial element of the universe itself- like the deep-space gods of Lovecraft- a god of decay or un-doing- patient, eternal, with a mind that count only eons, eyes that see only galaxies- quietly adrift out here, awaiting a change. 

Had the crew stopped to consider this thing- the primordial connotation of rock and worm, of the immensity of time that shifts asteroids, or the impossible patience of a creature adrift in the void- if they had contemplated the mind of such a being, how would it have affected them? Being suddenly presented with a tangible slither of the true vastness of the universe, would they have had the spirit to continue? What is one brief war between indistinct creatures in the entirety of all conflict? What is the point of saving and safeguarding mortal lives when death is assured? What is the motivation of acting at all when the knowledge of any deeds will be lost and so thoroughly forgotten that it might never have happened? What it the purpose of any happening at all when the universe itself is mortal, and so with it- time, space and the totality of existence?

Shall the Worm be the only witness at the end of existence? In the last moments- at the end of time- when its size now fills all space, and what remains- merely dust and energies- are contained within its insides, shall the Worm turn and devour itself, tail first in stupid insatiable gluttony? 


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Image credit; (images cropped as needed)
1. http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080201041921/starwars/images/8/85/Hothslug.JPG;  
2. http://spaceships.30doradus.org/main.php?g2_itemId=576
3. http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/ep5/sslug2.jpg; 
4. http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/25200000/Star-Wars-Episode-V-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-star-wars-25222428-1280-720.jpg;

Escape To - part one - The Island Hashima

There’s an island-

-small -maybe 500 meters long- located about five kilometres off the Japanese coast- fortified with grey walls and grey towers, and completely empty of people. It sits out there, a brooding fortress,  a stealthy battleship, its silhouette hovering black on the horizon, a wraith and a ruin, menacing the city of Nagasaki.

It was once the heart of a brief and frantic industry, a small city constructed out there on the sea-beaten rock, but when the industry left, its people vanished and the island, its buildings, its memories was given up to the sea. Used-up, barren and abandoned it slowly crumbles away, concrete cracks, wood rots- eroded by the endless blasting sea-wind with it salted touch, and the dark waters wait to devour all.


 ...landing.

Vast and empty it is, a silent place and a lonely place, cataclysmic in its ruin, but tranquil in its stillness. The sea-wind threads endless tendrils through the narrow streets, the walls parched and bare, taking up the disturbed dust and ashes and winging it out to sea in gentle erosion. Timbers creak and crack, stones skip and tumble, and on all sides, the low rumble of the titanic grey sea pressing upon the walls.
All around the frail towers cluster together -life-leeched and skeletal- their skin blasted away and their innards spewed out to form grisly mounds of splinter and shrapnel at their shrunken feet. Iron-grey, rust-red and charred black paints a desolate canvas with here and there splashes of green shooting upward,  strangled and subdued. Empty-eyed, and gaping-mouthed are the silent towers, horror-struck and appalled, withered and feeble.


But they stand still.

A journey alone through the ruin -shaking steps on sliding footing- clambering and clamourous, an island to discover, a history to witness, a place lost and forgotten, unoccupied and unclaimed...

The stillness is unwilling to break, the silence returns wholly and immediately at any pause, the fervent unyielding quiet restored, as reverential as a graveyard, a weight pressing upon the spirit.

But more than this, more than the blasted landscape, the unconquerable quiet, is the slow awareness of the time that is trapped here. A bustling metropolis was here once, people living out complex and interconnected lives, families, friends, a concentration of activity, toil and struggle, love and hope- all vanished, all dispersed. Only the ghosts remain; crumbling homes with rotted furnishing, the abandoned classrooms with mouldering books, and everywhere, overturned chairs, open drawers... dropped toys.

In the silence, the numbing vastness of the life that was once here is seen, both at immediately present, and infinitely distance. Time itself is made manifest here in this vision of the past, the passing of the ages revealed in the depth of dust and decay and the frailty of wood and concrete, the remnants of a time lost since past, and unable to fade.

But peace can be found here. The anxiety that is felt is from a fear of the very large. Of scale. A fear of vast buildings reaching up to the sky, of the great black sea outside, the enormous wet sky overhead and of course, of time.

One just needs to find shelter from this scale; to carve out a little piece of space to own, to control, and thereby reinstating control. If that could be achieved, this place would become a sanctuary, a refuge, and a retreat from the broad and bustling cities over on the coast, a place to come -swiftly and discreetly- to rest, centre oneself, and to contemplate, while the world outside continues to spiral.

This cannot be a transformation of the island. The island is too great to be changed easily, and if this was achieved, it would just become an extension of the city, and outpost, a resort, and suddenly, disappointingly accessible, locatable and enterable- a destination for all but a refuge for none. As it exists now, it is a borderland, residing outside the living world, but not yet incorporeal, this realm is not desirable for the many, it could not comfort the many, but it could house a few, or a single person. If that person embraced the silence; saw vacancy as peace, and desolation as cloak to the world.

One need only a shelter from the elements and from scale. To keep the rain off, the sun in check, as well as keeping out the infinity, the anonymity and vacuousness.


There is just a need for shelter....

A small place, a human place, with doors to close, but not to be trapped, with windows to look out from, but not to be watched. A canopy from the towering heights and a wall to the silent expanse. Not just space, but place; intimate, personal, a place all your own, that is within your own control and design where you might create identity within anonymity, a place in placelessness, a shelter in the desolation. It is a manifestation of self, of spirit made physical which can only exist in realm such as this that already exists partly outside the mundane world, that known and familiar place. 

Locate it anywhere, the quality of place within the void could be orchestrated in any location, it needs only the definition of space within the desolation;  an island within an island. The value in this site is its very inhospitality, which demands the creation of place and which will continually counterpoint it, making the occupant dependent to the shelter, intimate with the shelter, as you would a life-raft after days at sea or a mountain cabin after being lost in the snow.
This is a retreat, a refuge from the world that can only exist here. Here in this realm a person can reaffirm self, desire and purpose. It is a break from the world, a private resort, on an abandoned island, avoided like a graveyard, ringed by walls, surrounded by the sea.


This is sanctuary...


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Photo credit (without additions); Jordy Meow, a French-born photographer, adventurer and urban explorer living in Japan who has published his extensive experience within Gunkanjima amongst other projects on his website, which has been the source of the excellent, moody and emotional photography that has helped tell this story within the project.

Found here;
http://www.haikyo.org
http://www.totorotimes.com

Neglect

The struggle becomes too great. The constant toiling strain to keep above the rising, rushing tide of a life’s cares, concerns and petty things. Gasping jaws, flailing arms -rocked and buffeted- dragged under- clamouring above- keeping at bay the sucking, pulling darkness all around, fighting for the brilliant light and sweet breath. But ever present is that cold; the creeping fatigue, the suffocating hopelessness, the drain of mind and will and the slow erosion of self.

Companions fail, each according to their own private undoing and the union of mind is undone. Your teacher, Reason- noble and erect in the sunlight, stutters and trembles in the dark. Your lover, Passion- bold and impetuous in the charge, soon tires and recants his extravagant vows. Your mistress Truth, haughty and beautiful in form, is impossible to appease and is hated and abused.

But it is not a malign and cunning thing that conquers, not cold rationale, or bitter realisation, it is just the worm. The decay, the rot, the slow cancer of the mind; without face or presentation, a power blind and dumb and without motive or strategy, but ancient, dreadfully powerful, and eternal. The worm conquerors, he is the master of death; and the silence, the peace, the unknowing of final death is present in life; it is lethargy, hopelessness and despair, and they foreshadow that death. The worm conquers; but brief, uncertain life can be won -beaten, strangled and eventually recalled- this small happy thing can exist for time, so long as a will is there to safeguard it.

Escaping death

Death is at once the most terrible and most natural thing in the world. Although we can take measures to avoid mortal trauma or lethal violence, we cannot escape biological mortality, and we will one day succumb to frailty, decay and death. We dread it, loath it, resent it, but we also accept it as a reality in a way that we don’t accept a violent death, an accident or a fatal illness. It is seen as a part of the natural order, but I have never understood how death can be reconciled with our treatment of life.

We live in society that values and encourages personal growth and betterment. We are conditioned to live for our future, to plan, to prepare, to act in a way that will best help our future selves. When we are young, we are readied in schools for the lives we will live, we are apprenticed and interned and our careers begin, where we encounter phrases like ‘the career ladder’ and ‘opportunities for growth’ and ‘long term goals.’ But all the while, we quietly accept that this future will inevitably come to an end and no amount of development or goal-fulfilment will prevent this. This seems like an impossible contradiction to me; how can we possibly invest in something we know will fail? Or how can we still accept death once we have become so invested in life?

It seems to me that biological mortality is an aspect of our animal heritage. Biology guarantees us just enough time to procreate, raise and protect our successors and then reclaims its gift of life. But modern man wants more than this. As intelligent, self-aware and creative animals, we now have pursuits and labours to occupy multiple lifetimes, maybe hundreds, but we are forced to specialise, to learn a certain skill, develop a particular hobby as we have no chance to do it all. But the concern of biology is only the survival of the species, which does not require immortal individuals. If we produce sufficient offspring to replace us, and they do likewise and through all generations, the species endures and so in a way, we are already immortality, at the species-level.

This is, however, little consolation to those who form the many tiny hands that perpetuate the species along its grand journey, and yet see only a slim fraction of it. Think of all the great minds and far-thinkers that never saw the results of their work and or the futures they predicted. Yet still think of the things that we will not see. Whether the first lunar colonies, or Martian? Or the discovery of the twin to our own planet to which we dispatch the noble pioneers on long cryogenic voyages never to return. Or artificial life? Thinking machines or the recreation of lost species in real-life Jurassic Park’s within vast designer ecosystems

Aubrey de Grey is an author and theoretician in the field of gerontology and a leading proponent of extended human life. As chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation (Strategies for Negligible Senescence) his work seeks to develop a range of regenerative medical therapies to periodically repair age-related damage to postpone the correlated diseases in humans. [i] He describes aging simply as a disease rather than cosmic law or “the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us.” [ii]

De Grey believes that the first people who could live to be 1000 are already alive today, and could even be as old as 40 or 50 already. [iii] It is important to clarify that the SENS strategies do not refer to a single ‘immortality’ treatment, but rather the on-going bodily rejuvenation provided by constantly improving medical treatments. The 1000 year figure is cumulative, so as long as you live to see the first generation of these treatments, predicted to be as little as 20-25 years away, you will gain enough time to see the next medical breakthrough, further postponing senescence. In a TED talk in 2005 de Grey describes this as ‘Longevity Escape Velocity,’ as although individuals aged 80+ today may have too much age-related damage already to be helped by the first generation of treatments, those aged 40-50 may be pulled out of “the dive” and regain lost youth. [iv] It is important to point out that SENS is describing the postponement of aging, not the prolonging of aging as is often assumed, or the ‘Tithonus error’ de Grey calls it, recalling Eos’ torturous gift of immortality that neglected to prevent the Trojan’s aging. Indeed de Grey believes that the science far ahead of the funding as the work struggles against a general social “pro-aging trance;” described as a psychological strategy people employ to deal with the inevitability of death which explains society’s general ambivalence with death. [v]

Biological immortality, however, isn’t inherently impossible, in fact the term ‘negligible senescence’ was in use in the 1990’s, long before the SENS Foundation, to describe living organisms like lobsters and Hydras who were found to show no signs of aging. This is a subject that is seemingly still debated, but the work of Daniel Martinez in 1998 on the ‘Biological Immortality of Hydra’ is generally considered to be evidence of non-senescing organisms generally. [vi]

If the living world permits immortality in other organisms, why should humans be so accepting of death? How could the pursuit of deathlessness possibly be ‘unnatural,’ when modern medicine is already doing this by preventing disease, injury and organ-failure? It seems we need to change our perception of aging altogether. If we treat aging as Aubrey de Grey does, as just a disease, why should we not seek to cure it?


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[i] SENS Research Foundation, “A Reimagined Research Strategy for Aging | SENS Research Foundation,” accessed May 4, 2013, http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research.
[ii] Aubrey de Grey, “Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality | LiveScience,” accessed May 4, 2013, http://www.livescience.com/6967-hang-25-year-wait-immortality.html.
[iii] Aubrey de Grey, “Aubrey De Grey: A Roadmap to End Aging | Video on TED.com,” July 2005, http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Aubrey de Grey, “Combating the Tithonus Error: What Works?,” Rejuvenation Research 11 (August 2008): 713–715.
[vi] D. E. Martinez, “Mortality Patterns Suggest Lack of Senescence in Hydra,” Experimental Gerontology 33 (May 1998): 217–225.