Each word is a portable cathedral in which we clarify and sanctify our experience, a reliquary and a laboratory, holding the history of our search for meaning and the pliancy of the possible future, of there being richer and deeper dimensions of experience than those we name in our surface impressions. In the roots of words we find a portal to the... See more
The person those entries were about hasn’t crossed my mind in months. But, at the moment, it was potent. It was real to me. Now? I couldn’t even tell you what the color of their eyes were. Isn't that just the most 20-something, melodramatic moment of intensity? Where it feels like both nothing and everything matters? I live, live, live for that.
In the end, the boy discovers what we all must eventually, if we are to grow into the full bigness of the heart: that in every relationship of trust and tenderness, each is the guardian of the other’s particularity; that to love someone not for the comfort or compliance they can give you but for exactly who they are, the special and particular... See more
There has been a shift in science towards thinking about healthspan–– instead of lifespan—extension. Healthspan extension is the idea of prolonging the number of years in which you’re not disabled, dependent, or seriously ill. I’d argue that’s an admirable goal to pursue, but there’s also something deeply unsettling about the transhumanists’... See more
Let’s imagine that a radical life-extension startup succeeds at developing a product for our deeply flawed, often inaccessible healthcare market, and presumably protects the intellectual property for that product from diffusing into the wider world. What would that breakthrough mean for the rest of us?