The Gilgamesh Project: The Quest to Conquer Death

Key Insight

The problem of death, historically the most vexing and interesting of mankind’s insoluble dilemmas, was largely accepted as an inevitable fate by pre-late modern religions and ideologies. These belief systems often centered life's meaning around acceptance of mortality and hopes for an afterlife, rather than seeking to overcome death itself. The ancient Sumerian Gilgamesh myth, for instance, portrays its hero's failed quest for immortality after witnessing his friend Enkidu's death, concluding with the wisdom that humans must learn to live with their inescapable destiny.

In stark contrast, the disciples of modern progress view death not as an inevitable fate but as a technical problem. Conditions like heart attacks, cancer, and infections are reframed as technical failures for which technical solutions exist, such as pacemakers, drugs, radiation, or antibiotics. Consequently, leading scientific minds are now focused on investigating the physiological, hormonal, and genetic systems responsible for disease and old age, actively developing new medicines, revolutionary treatments, and artificial organs with the explicit goal of lengthening human lives and ultimately, 'vanquishing the Grim Reaper himself' by achieving eternal life.

Remarkable progress has already been achieved, transforming once-certain death sentences into treatable conditions. In 1199, King Richard the Lionheart died in agony from an infected shoulder wound within two weeks; today, this would be a minor injury treatable with antibiotics. As recently as the 19th century, amputations for minor limb injuries were performed without anesthetics, as vividly demonstrated by the heaps of sawn-off limbs after the Battle of Waterloo (1815). Currently, average global life expectancy has risen from 25-40 years to around 67, and to 80 in developed nations, largely due to drastically reduced child mortality. Optimism for the 'Gilgamesh Project' is fueled by achievements like doubling the life expectancy of Caenorhabditis elegans worms and the development of nanobots to reverse aging, leading some scholars to suggest that by 2050, some humans could become 'a-mortal' – living indefinitely in the absence of fatal trauma.