Euthanasia, Immortality, and The Natural Death Paradox

Natural death as a concept binds us in the shackles of paradox. To make choices around death seem to violate a natural law to which we’ve all unconsciously agreed. None of us know when our time will come, but don’t try die too soon, and don’t try live too long. Death, it seems, is too important a decision for us to make. Like many anti-enhancement arguments, the answer is all too familiar: the most critical choices – those that impact our basic genetic code, what type of children we have, and how we die – ought be left to chance. 

Transhumanism is, in large part, an opposition to the mentality that creates the paradox of death. Death by natural causes is not good, it’s just no one’s fault. But in a world where so much death is caused deliberately, maliciously, and pointlessly, a death by natural causes can seem not just a mercy, but a blessing. Thus, we have come to cherish and value that which is but a morally neutral necessity.

When another person chooses our death against our will, that is a moral wrong.
Death by natural causes is morally acceptable because we cannot choose otherwise. But it is not morally good. 

Volitionally and autonomously choosing when one dies, now there is a moral good. There is no reason the circumstances of one’s biological make-up and environment that determine one’s expiration date must be abided by. If technology can allow us to stop short in the face of years of suffering or overcome an untimely gentle passing for another 20 years, why not? 

A fetishization of natural death should not hold us hostage to the quality and duration of our lives. IEET