Green Smoothie Immortality

Nobody wants to die, but how many of us do anything about it? Well, there are the body hackers, people eyeing longevity by hacking their bodies for various health benefits. The “hack” metaphor is borrowed from computing, where it suggests circumventing the legitimate or intended purpose of a computer; how much of this illegitimacy is intended in the analogy to the human body?
Much body hacking involves radical diet and body monitoring interventions. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do my fair share of green smoothies. And I would argue that what has come to be regarded as “normal” health care is a surreptitious business partnership with disease, some kind of anti-hack brought to you by the “food-n-pharma tag-team of death.” I’m for any choice that excludes that system; some of those choices may seem obsessive or extreme but that’s more a symptom of just how perverted “normal” has become. Considering the depleted, adulterated growing environments, and the madness of genetic tinkering, even when your food appears “natural,” it’s prudent to make the extra effort at informed dietary choices and then compensate or supplement accordingly.
For those blissfully unaware of all of that, in possession of bulletproof genetics and closing-in on the century mark on a daily Twinkie habit, the question remains whether the foisters of such fare deserve your support.
All that said, my issue has more to do with the motivation behind craving immortality.
The folks reputed to have made any progress against death usually had religions named after them. At the very least, they could navigate some ancient language like Sanskrit or Aramaic, or perform walk-on-water-level miracles without hidden pulleys or electronics. Given how exaggerations accumulate into legends in the aftermath of extraordinary lives, we could even reject accounts of “miracles” as sensationalizing. What remains, more importantly, are rather specific and ennobling messages about life values and conduct, fairly consistent messages that only their so-called followers could find cause to war over. And if they left any sacred words of wisdom to be recorded, they don’t tend to be recipe books. Even considering the Last Supper, I don’t believe Jesus was considered a “foodie”; it’s difficult to envision Siddhartha Gautama or Lao-Tzu throwing a temper tantrum at an incompetent sous-chef.
The original meaning of "health" refers to wholeness... "wholeth.” What do we consider the whole individual? There was a time when this meant not only physical health, but psychic, mental, moral and spiritual health. What we now consider health, physical health, while foundational, was also seen to flow from this integrated wholeness having its origin in our higher faculties. Aside from proper eating and exercise as duties of “temple maintenance,” the efforts to circumvent that complete order with purely physical body hacks seem qualitatively akin to boosting mental faculties with microchip implants, not as severe or insane, but somewhat related in spirit. There will always be humans deeming themselves so clever that they can weasel around the rightful, universal laws without paying a price.
Trying to get it all from diet is like pedaling as fast as you can in the lowest gear—you can only get so much out of it. There's a time to shift gears beyond a good, foundational diet—into psychic, mental and moral nutriment—to complete the "wholeth" picture.
In defense of those whose life efforts and imagination run along the lines of body hacks, at least there’s initiative and effort in what they do. The opposite extreme is exemplified in a recent article entitled It’s Time to Change the Definition of ‘Health’ (statnews.com, July 17, 2019; Fallon & Karlawish). The proposed new definition would expand the tent to include those on multiple pharmaceutical drugs battling disease; the ubiquity of that scenario does not justify this brand of progressive inclusiveness, nor does it offer genuine benefit or empowerment to anyone struggling with disease. We need not ponder this lame proposal for more than a moment to realize who does gain by such redefinitions.
So here we are in some middle region between two definitions of health, the original meaning of wholeness, and a proposed future meaning of… well, it’s completely meaningless. That in-between zone is characterized by any of various dietary theories taking up mental residence alongside our indoctrinated myth of progress, the cognitive dissonance of which we can always blame on diet.
What does real Wholeness “look like”? Perhaps the very definition of this world of ours is that we rarely if ever glimpse it. But we’re not going to get any closer by tinkering with definitions, by leveling the highest peaks so we can all share equally in the dreariness of mediocrity.
Maybe we’re each the seed form of some greater, unimagined potentiality, and what we call “death” is simply the seed rotting rather than sprouting. Even seeds need certain conditions, need to be “nurtured” a certain way; absent that, ignorance and death become synonymous.
Do I believe some guy literally walked on water? I suppose anything is possible, but this story doesn’t really concern me, at least in the sense that it is nothing I particularly aspire to for its own sake. Maybe it just means he was able to wield such Self-Mastery that he didn’t drown in the psychic sea of uncontrolled emotions and desires most of us succumb to. That’s a miracle worth working toward. Or, even more so, the utterance to “let the one without sin cast the first stone” is a miraculous level of wisdom that would ennoble us all. But there’s no amount of broccoli sprouts that gets us there.
The deep desire for a long life—the secret longing for immortality expressed in socially-acceptable terms—is probably as universal as the distaste for aging and disease. If it really were an option, it could be sold on an advertising budget of zero. But let’s think this through; there’s a price for everything. Wouldn’t your sincerity, purity, effort and sacrifice have to elevate to peak levels to even approach that goal? Wouldn’t the older requirement for health, integrated wholeness, be the standard? I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that merely wanting to extend your chances at life pleasures may not meet the qualification for immortality, and there may not be a hack to get around that one.