Science, by which I mean that episteme which states that the rational method is the sole arbiter of truth, denies Death. It denies to Death that supremacy which has been accorded to It by every previous culture in human existence. Rather than viewing Death as an ineluctable Power that cannot be defeated, it views Death as an equal adversary with which it is in contention. Medical Science wiews Death as an enemy that can be defeated. First, aging must be deferred indefinitely. Secondly, the final collapse of the human organism into  senescence and decay must be finally prevented.

This is not an article about whether this is possible; nor is it an article about how such an objective may be achieved. It is an article about what might happen to the ethical life of human beings if such an objective were ever to be achieved.

It is an article about the consequences of the demise of Death.

Suppose you are a criminal. Suppose you are captured, tried, and found guilty. And suppose your lifespan is so extensive that you can actually serve a term of 999 years and expect to survive. How would that alter your attitude to crime? How would it alter your attitude to life? How would it alter your attitude to your neighbor?

Suppose you can live beyond a handful of decades, and suppose you can do so in good health and with your faculties intact. Suppose that Death, for all practical purposes, should die.

There are practical considerations. The earth's population is already running at approximately six billion. Suppose that none of those six billion die. And that we continue to birth our descendants at the same rate that we presently introduce starving mouths into the world. The result is obvious: massive death due to over-population and the exhaustion of resources. So access to the technology which prolongs life would have to be rationed. And the only effective mechanism for global rationing of resources that we know of is the Market. So only the rich would have access to this technology. But everyone would want it. Generally, the only arbiter of how ultra-precious resources should be distributed has been the willingness to kill and to take. So the poor, who cannot afford this privilege, would war against the rich, who can afford it. And the poor infinitely outnumber the rich.

The technology, designed to prolong life, and its unavailability to all, would create war on earth on a scale that has never previously been experienced. The technology that prolongs life would produce Death on an unimaginable scale - because money and its possession is an insufficient arbiter of who should live and who should die. The successful creation of a technology to prolong life is the guarantor of universal war and universal death. Who would not kill his neighbor if by doing so he could, with certainty, live for a thousand years or more?

Now suppose that such a technology could be created; and further suppose that it could be created and introduced in such a way that social harmony and stability could be maintained. Consider the moral implications of such an advance. All our concepts of morality, the entire ethical life of humanity in the West, is predicated on the notion of the supremacy of Death, and of the reality of a judgment to be faced after death. What happens if death dies? Or at least can be postponed indefinitely?

The entire tradition of Western philosophy, which forms the foundation of every thought and opinion that you have, would at once be abrogated and nullified. There is no morality in the West without Death. Death is the one certainty we have allowed ourselves. Heaven and Hell are both alike the subject of speculation - but we all know that we will die.

What will we do, without Death?

Without Death, I would not know right from wrong. Without Death, I would not know truth from falsehood. Without Death, I would not know what crime is, or virtue, or justice. Because Death is the core of all these things. Death is the final arbiter of everything we will tolerate and everything we will not tolerate. If Death were to be removed from human experience we would have no idea of what it is to be human. Death is our defining limit, and without it we cannot know ourselves.

In order to live in a world without Death we would have to fundamentally reimagine ourselves. We would have to imagine ourselves without the desire to procreate - because in a world without Death birthing would be a privilege, not a natural function. Work, which would endure for centuries and not decades, would have to be in every case a vocation and not merely something done to ensure the availability of the necessities of life. If I were faced with the choice of working in a job I hated for centuries, or killing my employer, I'd kill my employer without hesitation. I'd torture him to death and dance on his grave.

Humanity is defined by its mortality, and any attempt to free humanity from its defining characteristic is a recipe for madness on the grand scale. I am almost fifty years old, and already the world I live in is almost unrecognizable to me. I see faint traces of what I knew all around me. But that's all they are. The language of the teenagers of the day I inhabit now is incomprehensible to me, and this is something that will only grow more and yet more unintelligible. In another fifty years, should I live that long, everything I have ever known will have passed away, and I will be as remote and antediluvian to those who come after me as I will be incomprehensible to them.

And there are fools who suggest that it might be a good thing to live for a thousand years at a time. I would sooner die now, this very minute, than survive into a time in which everything I understand to be real is challenged by the basic truths of a time in which I could not be anything but an alien and an interloper.

No. A society without Death is a society which I cannot comprehend, a society which contravenes every value I have ever held, a society which I cannot tolerate. I would kill to prevent its creation, because such a society would be an abomination.

Having said that, such a society would be an abomination only from the viewpoint of someone who could not comprehend it. And I could not. I am wedded to the idea of Death. Death is what gives my life value and I will not depart from it. I cannot. But those born into such a world, if such a world should ever exist, will think differently. And we of this age will be as alien to them as the ancient Egyptians are alien to us.

Long live Death. May we die forever. And may the Doctors and their pernicious, interfering ilk, be damned to the pits of Hell throughout all eternity. Their well meaning stupidity will be the death of everything that has ever been thought of as human.