On the internet, YouTuber and social media influencer Bryan Johnson proclaims a message of radical life extension. Johnson, who made millions in Silicon Valley, regularly sports a t-shirt plastered with block letters reading “Don’t Die.” His goal: to slow the aging process. Or reverse it altogether.
Johnson’s fortune, social media accounts and strict daily schedule are all laser-focused on that goal. His day-to-day life includes intermittent fasting, an entirely dark sleep environment, a diet regimen with over 100 supplements a day and painful facial injections. You won’t catch him drinking a beer or bringing donuts to an early morning meeting anytime soon. Or smoking a cigar to celebrate his achievements. Or even regularly staying up too late. More controversially, Johnson receives “fresh blood” transfusions from his teenage son. Cue the metaphors about vampirism and older generations feeding off the younger.
Overall, though, things seem to be working for Johnson: He looks younger than his 46 years. He certainly looks better than me: a 40-year-old, sleep-deprived father of young children who battles rosacea and a bad lower back. Johnson, moreover, is no niche YouTuber: He has over one million followers. Comments on his channel regularly describe him as a “motivation to all of us,” and he has been featured in Fortune Magazine, MSN, the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider and Time Magazine.
Meanwhile, in my home state of Illinois, legislators have introduced the End-of-Life Options Act. The bill would add Illinois to the 10 other states (plus Washington, D.C.) in which patients can request a doctor to help them end their own lives. Other states—including my former home state of Minnesota—have recently been grappling with similar bills. Pope Francis has consistently opposed such legislation, on the grounds that “We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide.”
Why? Put simply: Because our lives are given to us by God, and not ours to take or leave. To call such acts “death with dignity” subverts what the Catholic moral tradition means by dignity—being created in the image of God—and reduces it to the Enlightenment notion of self-determination.
These two phenomena—so-called “death with dignity” legislation on the one hand, and an internet influencer marching under the banner of “Don’t Die” on the other—may seem very different sides of 21st century life. But they are, I believe, two sides of the same coin. They are united, fairly obviously, in their shared fear of and obsession with death. Johnson and his life-hacking followers attempt to flee from death, even as death with dignity legislation attempts to master death and bring it under human control. In both circumstances, humans usurp a role intended for God.
What kind of life is valuable?
Johnson and death with dignity legislation, however, share a deeper unity than the fear of death. Both are also unified in manifesting a common set of cultural values that run counter to Catholic morality, yet are widespread in contemporary culture. These values fly under the banner of transhumanism.
Transhumanism “promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology,” according to Nick Bostrom, prophet and cheerleader of transhumanism. “The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities.”
It should be obvious why Johnson’s “Don’t Die” protocols exemplify transhumanism. Bostrom’s transhumanist writings are, in some ways, Johnson’s manifesto. The intermittent fasting; the blood transfusions; the unrelenting commitment to a good night’s sleep: All are aimed at the “radical extension of human health-span.”
Death with dignity legislation is the dark flip side of Johnson’s protocols, but is equally cultivated in transhumanist values. Transhumanism, after all, sets out a certain kind of life as valuable: a long-lived, able-bodied, well-rested, physically strong and aesthetically pleasing life.
But what happens when things don’t work out? What happens when our lives are threatened to be cut short by disease or accident? When our good looks are marred? When our physical prowess is undermined? When our daily lives fall short of optimization, and are rather filled with suffering? When we (inevitably) fail at the goals transhumanism sets for us, and that Johnson aims to achieve? Well, we may as well throw in the towel. Death with dignity legislation results when transhumanist values meet the realities of human existence.
Any morality focused on basic human dignity, of course, stands deeply opposed to this outlook. Yes, a robust account of human dignity runs counter to death with dignity legislation, but it also contradicts the more basic transhumanist assumptions out of which this legislation grows—the misguided assumptions about what makes a valuable human life.
The 2024 Vatican declaration “Dignitas Infinita” summarizes this alternative outlook well: “Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may encounter.” Contra transhumanism, human worth comes not from longevity or physical ability or cognitive capacity or even so-called quality of life. Humans lives rather matter because they are human lives. Full stop. It can be difficult to recognize this idea for how radical it is, until we are confronted with cultural manifestations running in the opposite direction.
The influence of transhumanism
It would, however, be misguided for us simply to point accusatory fingers at the Bryan Johnsons of the world, or at the misguided motivations behind death with dignity legislation. Should we oppose both? Absolutely. Yet it is crucial to recognize these movements are not created ex nihilo. They are rather distillations of wider cultural values, values that you and I are in part responsible for cultivating.
Put differently: transhumanism is not merely some stuffy academic theory. Nor is its influence felt only among those who advocate for death with dignity and the latest life hacks of Silicon Valley. Transhumanism rather finds its power in the everyday habits, values and assumptions of 21st century lives, including yours and mine.
Use an Instagram filter to optimize your selfies? Suffer through a juice cleanse every spring? Strap on a FitBit every morning to count your steps? Captivated by Elon Musk’s dreams to inhabit Mars, or Mark Zuckerberg’s push for the Metaverse? None of these cultural touch points count as full-blown transhumanism. Yet all spring from and cultivate transhumanist ideas about what makes a human life valuable and which goals we should prioritize.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with many of these practices, or the goals for which we aim in pursuing them. There’s nothing wrong—and even something genuinely good—about aiming for a well-balanced diet. Or cutting back on beer. Or tracking steps.
And you know what? It would probably serve me well to adopt some of Bryan Johnson’s tips. I’m skipping the blood transfusions, but could learn a lot from him about a good night’s sleep. Christ came so that we could have life to its fullest, and it is in part our responsibility to pursue the full life God has promised.
Yet we must take care to separate the goodness of these goals from the assumption that achieving them is what confers value on our lives. For as soon as we adopt this assumption, we also take on its nefarious inverse: the idea that a life without them fails to be valuable, and that we can request for such a life to be ended as soon as it falls short. Death with dignity legislation is one of the ultimate manifestations of the “throwaway culture” that Pope Francis has urged us to resist. A culture in which quality of life is reducible to social contribution, and the most vulnerable among us can be discarded.
Life with dignity
Yet in resisting death with dignity legislation, we must see it in its broader cultural context. First, we should see that it is the dark inverse of the life-hacking, longevity-seeking and socially-palatable attempts to nudge up the human lifespan—or even simply the cultural push towards “life optimization” and “living our best lives.” We can draw a line connecting Bryan Johnson’s futile attempts to avoid death and the increasing acceptance of legalized euthanasia.
Perhaps more importantly, however, we must see how our own practices and assumptions till the soil that allows these values to flourish. Our own lives—and our guiding assumptions about what makes life valuable—all too often reinforce the idea that human lives are not valuable for their own sake, but only to the degree that they nurture some cluster of utilitarian ideals. All too often, our practices hold up the ache-free, well-slept and socially-adept versions of our lives as intrinsically better than the grubby lives we actually live. We structure our days and thoughts around the very values and pursuits underlying the practices we are called to oppose.
Again, don’t get me wrong: The life hackers and longevity-pursuers of Silicon Valley often hold up goals that are worthy of our pursuit. But we must understand these goals as contributing to a life that is already intrinsically valuable, not as conferring value on our lives to begin with. Any defense of human dignity starts with our own practices. Any conversion of the wider culture starts with a conversion of our own hearts.
