The heavy yoke of Don’t Die

“I’m a disaster of an intelligent being,” declares Bryan Johnson in the final scene of the Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever: . He smiles and shrugs, “But you know what, “I’m trying my best.” Johnson is part of the Longevity Community. Don’t Die follows him on his journey to reverse the ravages of age and time. According to the biometrics he has posted about himself, he is much younger than his 46 years of biological age. He is turning back the clock.

Unsurprisingly, it takes a staggering amount of time to keep ahead of his body. He logs a precise amount of perfect sleep every night. As he showed off his sleep chart on camera, my post-menopausal self silently wept into my morning tea (caffeine is apparently not on the menu if you are trying not to die). I paused over my toast to watch him consume his meager ration of vegetables and then admit to always being hungry. I nestled into my comfy chair as he sweated, shirtless, in his home gym. His rigorous exercise routine includes two hours of weights and cardio. To top it off, he downs at least 54 supplements every day. The pill regimen appeared to occupy roughly the amount of time I might spend having lunch with a friend.

Johnson’s critics say he is not being properly scientific in his project to evade death. If he truly wanted to transform the field, he would only do one treatment at a time as part of a controlled group, so that each intervention could be accurately measured. But if he does not possess the methodological rigor of a biologist—he has lately abandoned certain initially promising treatments—he is at least media savvy. In one part of the documentary, he and his son exchange plasma with each other and Johnson’s father who is not, how can one say it, quite as svelte as Johnson. Johnson claims to be in “peak” physical condition so perhaps it is an unfair comparison. Later Johnson leaves the country to receive gene therapy. The cameras are always in attendance.

The documentary makes no mention of this, but those within the Longevity community have already been experimenting—N.I.C.E. style (National Institutes of Coordinated Experiments from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength)—with reinvigorating brains, first of a pig, and more recently of humans. The “specimen” is always heavily sedated, of course, because no pig or human should have the potential to become conscious through such an ordeal. As one podcaster nervously admitted, “That would be a horrible thing,” because “what would your experience of the world be if you were only a brain?”

However misguided, the burgeoning Don’t Die community is at least theologically clued in about death. We aren’t meant to die. A deep instinctual fear of death is a rational acknowledgment that something has gone horrifically wrong. There must be something a person can do, some fountain of gene therapy that will make the most inevitable occurrence in the history of humanity unnecessary. With enough technology, maybe a man can live forever. Death, we feel it in our bones, is the enemy.

But there is one Man who has trampled down death by death. Death, the awful consequence of sin, has been conquered by Him, for He did die and then He rose again. In so doing He reunited heaven with earth, the body with the soul, the spirit with the mind. The trouble is, of course, you have to go to Him and become part of his Body if you want to keep yours. You have to give up trying to live at all and admit that He is Life itself. And this is hard, for it means letting go of that which is most precious to you—yourself. But it is also very easy for it means not having to take 50 pills every day striving to undo what He has already undone. You can enjoy your buttered toast, perhaps even your vegetables in pleasurable moderation.

It is tragic to watch someone like Bryan Johnson killing himself for a life that isn’t his to command, especially when there is probably a church within driving distance where he could hear the good news about how little work he has to do because Jesus has done it all. And for anyone who might be asked to sign paperwork for some nice scientist to apply the right amount of oxygen-less blood to “reinvigorate” a brain, whether pig or human, don’t do it! Go read some Lewis first.