 Back in the day, the perceptions of trivial diseases by today's standards such as smallpox were heavily seen as primarily the punishments of the gods instead of a medical issue. There was even a smallpox god running under its low key name of Sakapata. The priests of the day were playing a key role in the relationship between God and its people, defending the almighty entity and prescribing plant-based remedies to get people back on track. And each god would have a specific set of plants that could be used to treat the disease inflicted by that specific god. This was happening in a pre-colonial Dahomi, present-day Republic of Benin. European explorers, visitors and traders were heavily impacted by Benin's climate, which was hot and having a full-of-parasite flora. And you add some smallpox into this whole equation and you end up with the nutso and transic blend. And as the belief that smallpox was part of God's judgment on the sins of its people was actually locally embedded, it was quite hard for European campaigns to start treating for such a disease. Even though there was proof there is no racial immunity and essentially everyone can get it. People like to wander and ponder on what they don't understand and often assign a mysterious meaning to something that might be simply and boringly obvious. Obvious like smallpox is bad, we can cure it, you don't have to deal with it, it's not your fault. This is called simplified humanism, where even though the obvious answer to a particular question isn't always the best choice, sometimes it really is. Life is better than death. Health, Trump's sickness, experiences involving beauty, love, love, friends and family are good and happening here and now. And you might ask the where does it all end question, but why shouldn't we ask the why should it end question instead? Why aren't we fully on board with life extension and ultimately immortality? Smallpox is irrelevant today because we don't have to deal with it anymore, we understood it and we moved on. But if this was still around we would probably start linking different meanings to it once again so that we can better accept and comprehend what we don't understand. We are doing the same with life extension and death and immortality as well, we are ascribing meaning to something we don't understand yet. We are trying to find an excuse just so we can keep it. And I believe that the reason we do it is because it's just like intellectually taxing. Trying to improve yourself and trying to understand life extension and how you can do it and how you can ultimately combat and fight death is quite a hard task. We don't want to think about how we can solve it so we just simply accept it. Rejecting life extension and immortality, outlining that the snowflake is special simply because it doesn't last, might come up with quotes on the meaning of life and also with philosophers asking questions such as what can you do with eternity? But I think that the snowflake would be as beautiful in that particular moment whether you are going to die tomorrow or not. And accepting death as a support structure for the meaning of life sounds familiar to the folks accepting smallpox as the punishment of God and searching for deeper meaning as often times the rabbit hole in which we fall. The reason why Freud was popular back in the day was thanks to his mind-blowing ideas on psychoanalysis. Even though most of them have never been tested and by looking at them through the lenses of today are wrong. But people started accepting and believing his theories because you know they are mesmerizing and complex and there's like a deeper meaning behind them. Where the answer to a problem we might think as if complex can be truly that simple. Again life is better than death. Health trumps sickness. Being happy is better than being sad. 5 plus 5 equals 10. And again people tend to start looking for deeper meaning and ask questions such as you know is 10 really the answer? And if you are following the simplified humanism structure, yeah the answer is 10. Obviously this becomes even more embedded within ourselves once we start reaching old age. As we've been telling ourselves that this is how it's supposed to be for thousands and thousands of years. And for an old person whose body is slowly decaying where the energy of life is sucked back to nature, death and acceptance is the door to eternity. And if secular people say that the soul is immortal, why can't it be immortal here and now? Why do we need the door of death to supposedly achieve a higher status? Why can't we train ourselves to be kickass 80 to 90 year olds first instead of accepting our future condition? And I believe that we are not specific enough and actually nature trained us to believe and accept that this is how we are supposed to live our life. We come to life, we live our life and we die. But starting defining how our life would look like at a more extended age considering we will have substantially better health and prepping for that can be a good tactic we can start thinking about and ultimately use. Asking questions like what do I want to do when I'm 90 and healthy? Can I pick my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-granddaughter from the floor? Can I lay on the floor? Can I take a bag full of trash out? Can I grocery shop? Can I pull myself out of bed? What type of exercise can I do today and train for a future where I'm alive at 110? What if I can start training for such future events? In changing the stories we tell ourselves about future events like that and perspectives can gradually put us on a path to life extension and ultimately immortality.