Three quarters of people report having had a transcendental experience. Many say that, though it was the best moment of their lives, they did not wish to have it again. Perhaps this is a heartening aberration in a culture of excess. After all, even transcendence can be gluttonized. Our life expectancy has, in recent years, been ever expanding. There are men of science, taken quite seriously, why say we can conquer death, through medicine, replication, or by becoming androids. This only proves that science does not make one wise nor cure the existential fear of death. I will only briefly mention the so called revolution that brought us the hand held computers we call phones. These ever-present miracles of design keep us forever in the future. We are alienated from the present and ignore the past. The future has no room for thought or nuance. The future has only room for desire and envy. Now the most recent magic offered us is gene splicing. It has become incredibly efficient to design genes and moral boundaries are crumbling or ephemeral. The fear is a Gattica-like situation, a designed elite and an undesigned hoi polloi. What can't we do with the human body! never mind that each of our bodies is capable of extraordinary feats of strength, endurance, compassion, tenderness, intelligence, interconnectivity and transcendence -- extraordinary feats to which most never reach.
Life and death are integrate and compose each moment. Living and dying is hard and so is reaching. Trying to eliminate one decomposes and disintegrates the other.
When has what's promised been better than what is?
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