Thursday, September 26, 2013

Aging In Less Than 5 Minutes

Speaking of anti-aging therapies and Google's new venture Calico, here's Anthony Cerniello's video of a girl aging before our eyes. It's not a real person but a composite using photographs of different family members at different ages. It's hard to notice changes as you watch it, but they are quite stark over time.



The Daily Mail has some screen shots.

It seems impossible that humans will ever be able to hold one of these faces constant, to halt or reverse aging. To me, there's a bit of hubris that drives that effort. Can't aging be worthy of appreciation? Can't the aged be valued? Can't the circle of life be honored? Leon Kass (Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005) said:
"The desire to prolong youthfulness ... is an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity."
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1 comment:

Bix said...

Spring is nice. Summer is nice. Isn't Fall nice? Is Winter so terrible?

Louis C.K. touched on this when he said we push away parts of our life if they are a little difficult, and then, "You never feel completely sad, or completely happy. You just feel kinda satisfied with your products. And then you die."