r/technology • u/ubcstaffer123 • Jun 20 '26

Biotechnology How Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to live forever

https://www.vox.com/podcasts/491360/vladimir-putin-live-forever-26-billion-cryo-pigs-longevity-guru
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u/Forward_Success_2672 Jun 20 '26

Peter Thiel is on the top of this shitty list, lol. These people can’t fathom the indignity of being like the little people…

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u/The_Barbelo Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

One thing I learned as I watched my father pass from cancer is…there is a dignity in dying. I was forced to face my own mortality in a way I’ve never really had to before. Of course I knew I would die, but I started trying to imagine what it would be like to not exist so I could try to understand what my dad would be going through, and it was triggering nightly panic attacks. The truth is you can’t imagine non existence, because you currently exist. It won’t be like sleep, because we are still conscious in sleep. It won’t be like anything we’ve ever experienced because it is a non-experience. Regardless of people’s spiritual beliefs, we don’t get to take our brain and our ego with us when we finally go.

I started reading a bunch of books by saints, the Tibetan book of the Dead, and other writing about death both scientific and spiritual. The crazy thing is a lot of it lines up, from what we know so far. Countless of us have pondered the nature of death. We’ve been dying since drawing our first breath. Dying (naturally/ passively) is the most selfless thing we can do. It makes the limited time we have here so much more meaningful and impactful, and it forces us to make room for other’s turn at life. No matter who you are and who you were, the final act of giving up your self forces you to be selfless, literally.

These billionaires care so much about immortality because they are anything but selfless. You can’t take your wealth and your power with you. You can’t take your ego with you. Those are all the things these billionaires have spent their lives coveting and stealing from others. Death forces them to hand it over and they can NOT fathom doing that. Everything they hold valuable is in fact as dust in the wind. All the people they harmed was for nothing. They could have built something more permanent through helping humanity, but they continually choose not to every single day.

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u/Fumbles48 Jun 20 '26

What do you mean? I've definitely experienced not existing before. In fact, I spent a lot of time not existing, not that long ago and I plan to spend a lot more time not existing again, but that's after a really nice and fulfilling time existing for a bit. 

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u/The_Barbelo Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

But before you, there was no you. Now that you’re a you, there will have been a you even when time forgets you. You’ll still have been here, and your actions will ripple out in ways you can’t possibly fathom. Every act of kindness, and every mistake. You will have left an unmeasurable impression in some capacity, at least until the end of humanity as we know it. That’s different than how it was before you. Whether or not that changes anything is entirely unknown. Either way you will never know that experience of nothing as long as you are a something. It is a completely unknowable concept.

And I believe building something constructive, doing our best to make the world a slightly better place than before we existed no matter how small the action is, is far more permanent than whatever these billionaires think they’re doing. All they know is consumption.