Psychology Today | 25.04.2026 22:20
There is a tension in our attitudes toward death: On the one hand, many, perhaps most, believe that we must accept mortality with equanimity. Attempts to radically extend human life are viewed with suspicion. What kind of person, the thought appears to be, would attempt to overcome biological limitations? Someone exceedingly greedy, surely. Or worse, someone forgetting himself, like the character Braddock from Fitzgerald’s story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” who tries to bribe the Almighty with a very large diamond. Research on life extension has, for many, the flavor of a Faustian bargain. (Ultra-wealthy anti-aging champions such as Bryan Johnson seem to fit this schema and may provide support for it in the popular imagination, if unwittingly.)
