As with many myths, the Tithonus account is adorned with symbolic technicolor. The imagery of light, dawn, life, and even cicadas (insects of the morning) illustrate how humans were not made to live on this earth forever. Our youth must set with the sun. We must die. Unless, of course, you’re Tithonus, like the transhumanist wishes to be.
Tithonus was a cursed prince. Troy’s young heir fell in love with Eos, the incarnate Dawn. The titan returned his love happily and even bore his children. As their love continued, Eos besought Zeus for a gift: grant her lover immortal life. Zeus acquiesced.
In true Grecian trickery, the god guffawed at Eos’ omission. While, as Eos asked, Tithonus would be granted eternal life, she had never requested eternal youth. Thus, he’d receive none. Tithonus grew faded. He withered. In some accounts, the poor lover morphed into a cicada. The once great prince grew frail: a tortured creature of Luciferian dawn.
Tithonus’ damned agony was immortalized by Lord Alfred Tennyson’s elegant prose. The poem, named after the immortal Trojan, begins:
“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath
And after many a summer dies the swan.“
Lord Tennyson portrays a man whose passion to escape the humiliation of death led to an even more humiliating self-destruction. But this desire to avoid death isn’t limited to the past and prose.
Today, modern transhumanist Bryan Johnson embodies the misguided Tithonus archetype. A new Netflix documentary making waves, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, follows Johnson’s life. Given the name, his goal is rather intuitive: don’t die.
Johnson’s endeavor utilizes technology, biohacking, medical surgeries, and a gross number of transfusions. He genuinely believes that he will live forever. He encourages others to join him.
Johnson is hosting a series of events titled the Don’t Die Summits. The tagline on their website reads, “What Will You Do When You Grow Younger?”
Youth is both idealized and monetized. After all, is not death our mortal enemy? Johnson claims to be making progress. But let us not misunderstand him. He is not living a simple life. His feats are “achievable” via transhumanist technology and an intensive regimen of daily medical procedures (numerous supplements, blood transfusions, plasma transfusions, hours in the gym, numerous tests which regulate his vitamins, and even a custom mattress).
Interestingly, one of Johnsons’ goals from this movement is to “align with AI.” His program, tracking his vitamins and plasma, is dubbed his “blueprint.” You can’t help but sense a mechanization of Johnson’s body as he speaks of himself.
Johnson represents a larger class of transhumanists who seek Zeus’ gift of transcendence. Their advancements are promulgated by many of the same Silicon Valley developers who stood behind President Trump during the inauguration. However, these kinds of men are summoning immortality from a dangerous, ungodly source.
Personhood becomes reconceptualized, if not eroded entirely. Machines become like us as we become like a machine. Our humanity blurs with ones and zeroes. Rather than debating gender or marriage, we debate humanity. What does it mean to be human?
These transhumanist elites would have us enter Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley’s elites held that if it’s easy and comfortable, it is the best—no matter the cost. The machine allows us to transcend geopolitical borders (phones, FaceTime, Zoom), knowledge (Google or large language models), and soon even basic driving skills (Tesla’s infamous self-driving cars).
These were all once skills that if you didn’t have, you simply didn’t have them. Tough luck. Get reading. Now, these limits of our humanity can be transcended. Ideally, to the transhumanist, we completely blend our bodies with these machines. Are we less human? Sure. But are we more comfortable? Most definitely. Utopia comes at the cost of understanding humanity. Even now, artificial intelligence developers believe it’s only a couple of years before AI surpasses our ability to keep up.
Soon, we’ll transcend our need to work and labor. Let AI work for you. Sit back, transcend the old life, and relish virtual reality. As in Brave New World, our alleged transcendence will not provide stability but confusion. We will be less human than ever before and our communion with God will be severed. As Huxley’s antagonist aptly stated, “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.”
To the transhumanist, there is no need to believe in a God. We’re making him. We already have omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence in our pockets (thanks to Google and a menagerie of other apps). Now all that is left is eternal life. Their fingertips grasp faintly at the mantle of god-man.
Transhumanists, like Johnson, have truly deceived themselves. All men are offered the gift of becoming the perfected Image of God. As Jesus Christ was the “Created Image of the Father,” so one day may we be with Him (Col. 1:15).
Yet our transhumanist revolutionaries would have us accept a counterfeit life. Rather than looking to the Creator, we look down.
Rather than accepting the gift of Oneness with Jesus Christ, we endeavor deification via hardware and wiring. We see ourselves in the darkened mirror. We fall in love with our likeness and exhaust all its worth. We see ourselves as God and in our arrogance rebuild Babel.
Transhumanism stages a cosmic coup, dethroning God, and establishing us in His wake. We seek immortality but in the end we still die.
Of course, this outcome is avoidable. There is a great hope. We have no need to fear death.
When the Early Church depicted the crucifixion of Christ, the cross would be fixed above a skull. These were the bones of Adam. The blood of our Lord then ran down to kiss the very dust and bones he had chosen to create humanity. The death of the only perfected human was salvation for humanity. His lifeblood is now ours. Above Christ would often be the words, “Death trampled by death.” The reality being our death was trampled by the death of God.
Only after we submit to the crucifixion can we say that we are born again. Only then can we say we are fully human.
Don’t fear death. Fear Jesus Christ our Lord.
When properly oriented to Jesus Christ, our mortality becomes a gift. Our lives on this earth are meant to be fleeting because there are far greater realities ahead. Just as St. Simeon prayed in Luke 2:29, we must follow: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word.” It is only by death that we may enter into our awaited Oneness with God.
The lie of Tithonus, Johnson, and their transhumanist colleagues is that man is best when he is immortal. Become gods in this life, they say, rather than fixing our eyes on God in this life with the hope of eternity glorified with Him in the next.
Johnson stated it simply: don’t die. Be images of Tithonus, forever embracing the dawn. But we must reject their impudence. We’ve no need to fear death or seek to escape it. To live forever in this reality is to rob yourself of the fuller reality to come.
We are human. And our humanity—with all its limitations—is good. Any attempt to transcend our limits distracts from our eternal purpose.
We must escape the snare of Tithonus and be content with the rise and fall of the sun. Instead, follow Christ Jesus and die, for death has been trampled.
