You may never have heard of Bryan Johnson - he's a billionaire tech entrepreneur who's ongoing mission is to live forever, and he's established a movement promoting healthy lifestyles which he believes may not only prevent ageing, but which could help us age backwards...
Johnson's followers are known as "Don't Die Citizens," and are encouraged to log every living bodily metric into his app.
This app offers a gamified regimen of health in which every aspect of daily living can be recorded... steps, sleep, calorie burn, biomarkers, even plasma infusions. The app pitches users against each other, offering them algorithmic rewards for being the most compliant and "youthful."
It's tempting to dismiss Johnson as just another Silicon Valley oddball. Tech moguls have been curious about life extension for decades. Peter Thiel for example has underwritten parabiosis experiments and Google has created Calico, a biotech company committed to "solving death."
What Johnson brings to the party is a sense of the evangelical!
In this movement (some may say 'cult') health becomes not so much a way of achieving an end, but an end in itself. Human experience spontaneity, indulgence, all of these are sacrificed for the goal of living longer.
More concerning maybe is the way ageing is pathologized, being treated as something to be cured, rather than just a natural process.
Final thoughts...
If we’re going to build a healthier future, it should be one that embraces ageing—not one that tries to outrun it.
However at the end of the day, I guess no one forces anyone to sign up for this sort of stuff, so if that's the lifestyle you choose, then so be it!