Some folks are thinking about immortality, or, at least, significant life extension (hat tip: bioethics):

In Oscar Wilde’s novel, "The Picture of Dorian
Gray," the main character barters his soul for eternal youth but
becomes wicked and immoral in the process.

Leon
Kass believes humanity risks striking a similar Faustian bargain if it
pursues technology that extends life spans beyond what is natural.

If our species ever does unlock the secrets of aging and learns to live forever, we might not lose our souls, but, like Dorian,
we will no longer be human either, says Kass, a bioethicist at the
University of Chicago and a longtime critic of life extension research.
For Kass, to argue that life is better without death is to argue "that
human life would be better being something other than human."

Kass’ position is controversial, but it gets at some of the central issues surrounding the life extension debate: What is aging? Is it a disease to be cured or a natural part of life? If natural, is it necessarily good for us?

     Seems to me that the larger, underlying question is: what is it to be human?  And that kind of question turns me immediately to Taoism.

    Taoists are, in general, conflicted about life extension.  In its religious form, Taoism is famous for inspiring the search for the elixir of life; but in its philosophical expressions, especially in Chuang Tzu, Taoism is accepting of death.  Since I come at things from a philosophical Taoist perspective, my first impulse is to say that Taoists (of that stripe) would be skeptical about concerted efforts to extend life.  They would sympathize with Kass, but from a somewhat different vantage point: it is not that life extension would somehow make us less human, but that the effort of life extension is, in the end, futile.  What matters to a Taoist is not the quantitative length of a life but the qualitative experience of living each moment of life.  A short life can be as fully human as a long life:

No one lives longer than a child who dies young, and the seven-hundred-year-old Peng Tsu died an infant.  (Chuang Tzu, 26).

    Moreover, if we are caught up in unimportant diversions, a long life may be less fulfilling and meaningful than a short life, especially if the latter is attuned to the spontaneous unfolding of Way in all of its marvelous multiplicity.  In the end, a Taoist might argue that we should spend less time and resources trying to discover ways to extend life, and more time and resources trying to discover ways to open our lives to Way (which of course would probably mean using fewer resources!).

     There is also a bigger issue here about what it means to be human.  Searching for life extension, or other apparent "improvements" is a quintessentially human endeavor.  It is something we have been doing since we came down from the trees.  Thus, purposive effort to change the environment and the way we engage with it (including the environment of health and disease) can be said to be a facet of the "natural" Way of humanity.  What, then, would be a "natural" life span of a human?  If, through our own efforts, we are able to extend that span, isn’t that, too, a part of our "natural" activity?  And if we answer "yes" to that question, then there really can be no Taoist critique of life extension, since it is simply a natural expression of what it means to be human.

     This apparent Taoist paradox is solved, I believe, with the recognition that trying to "take hold of all beneath heaven and improve it…" (TTC, 29) is a deeply human impulse, but very often (the TTC says something closer to "invariably") those efforts will not produce net gains.  Perhaps some years are tacked on to life, but more complications and diversions are created that turn us away from Way.

     In the final analysis, Taoists would not be implacably against efforts at life extension (implacability is not really a Taoist orientation).  They might even be willing to take a new medicine to gain some extra years.  But they would not put their faith for a better life in the possibility of a longer life. Rather, they would keep their focus on "occurrence appearing of itself," and follow where Way leads. 

      And they would have DNR orders signed…

     (p.s. – the title of this post – wan sui – means "long life" in Chinese).