John Gray has a new book out The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. In an article for the Guardian,( On humanity's quest for immortality, January 8 2011 ), Gray writes with his usual mordant way of dissecting the hubris and arrogance of progressive cults and creeds from Bolshevik god-builders and techno-futurists,Kurzweil tells us in Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever, we can prepare for immortality through a programme of vitamin supplementation, diet, exercise and preventive medical care, which will enhance longevity until it becomes possible for us to leave the flesh behind. For all its hi-tech novelty this is as incredible as the idea that dead scientists are at work to save the living, or a cryogenically preserved Lenin waiting to return to life and revolutionise the world.The fantasies that possessed the psychical researchers and the god-builders still have us in their grip today. Freezing our bodies or uploading our minds into a supercomputer will not deliver us from ourselves. Wars and revolutions will disturb our frozen remains, while death will stalk us in cyberspace – also a realm of mortal conflict. Science enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.
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