The edge we've engineered away
Bryan Johnson, immortality, and the flattening of experience
AI disclosure. No AI was used in writing this essay. The words were entirely human-crafted by me, from end to end. Claude was consulted only for title selection, cutting redundancies, and untangling my mixed metaphors. All thoughts are mine. Read my AI policy here.
The wellness world is roiled since Bryan Johnson (aka “the healthiest man alive”) announced his diagnosis with an incurable autoimmune disease. In his own words, his stomach is eating itself. But this isn’t just one biohacking extremist’s immortality quest gone sideways. It’s a celebrity-sized example of humanity’s blind hubris in the drive to dominate nature.
He’s poured millions into advanced tests, expensive treatments, and experimental supplements. The best care money can buy. All oriented around how to not die. His declared goal: immortality by 2039. Behind the personality fixated on being forever young, there’s a longer-standing cause. His story is a flaring symptom of a pathological obsession with wellness – a slow cancer, metastasized through the collective.
Not dying is the endpoint he chased down every available avenue, bypassing balance or moderation. But instead of immortality, he found the body’s defense system attacking itself from inside. Despite the sophisticated program designed to defeat nature, his system has turned against the basic nature keeping him alive.
Yet the diagnosis has barely broken his stride. There was no pivot. Not even a pause. No sign he might consider another approach. He’s so invested in the ideology of immortality — nothing will stop him from proselytizing it, not even closeness of death. If anything, he’s doubling down on his original strategy. Instead of “maybe this isn’t working,” the thought seems to be, “I will try harder.”
This dynamic is present at many registers. What do we strive towards as improvement or for optimization? Could our destination-fixation be causing destruction, despite us being utterly certain that we’re working towards anything but our demise? When we fail to achieve the desired effect, we can either redouble efforts or let the interruption of information be a checkpoint to reassess.
Inner division and self-destruction
Autoimmune disease. Spiritual dismemberment. What do these things have in common? Whether it’s a specific bodily function or an instance of human incarnation, there’s this thing that exists for a particular purpose. But then the aberration happens. There’s loss of contact with greater context. We disconnect from nature and from spirit. Forms morph and start to move (unknowingly) contrary to their designed intention.
Without ecosystem awareness, in-sight degrades into a myopic lens. This lens on reality overemphasizes one part or one participant while blurring the background sponsoring its existence. Locked in hyperfocus, we can no longer zoom out or zoom in. We become host to unconscious acts of self-harm — acts undertaken by rational actors sincerely convinced of their own helpfulness.
Bryan Johnson’s adversarial relationship with his body is well-publicized. He has referred to parts of himself that needed to be scolded, disciplined, or even fired: “Evening Bryan, you’re fired.” Because these wayward parts were in the way of his goal of perfect health, they had to be cut out. Is it any wonder that parts of his body are in-fighting amongst themselves? Or is that simply matter following the mind?
