The new war on death should make us uneasy

PUBLISHED: December 11, 2025 | www.baltimoresun.com

Every society eventually reveals what it worships. Some societies worship wealth, others worship power, and ours increasingly worships the idea of escaping death itself. That obsession has quietly become one of the most important political, ethical and cultural battles of the 21st century.

In research labs — private, well-funded, and very far from the public eye — scientists are experimenting with medical interventions that could theoretically extend human life to 150 years. It may sound like something from a sci-fi film, but it’s not, nor is it in some distant future — it’s already in clinical settings today.

Only a tiny number of the wealthiest human beings will ever have access to those procedures. But the mere fact that they exist tells us something profound: Modern man is no longer content to postpone death; humanity wants to defeat it. That desire is reshaping everything — from politics to culture to how our young people understand life itself.

For most of human history, people understood death as the inevitable bookend of existence. Fear of it was natural, but acceptance of it was equally natural. Today, we treat death as a design flaw, something that must be conquered medically, reframed psychologically or denied spiritually.

The psychological world is full of tools designed to blunt the fear of mortality. Cognitive-behavioral therapy reframes anxious thoughts. Mindfulness teaches us to sit with our fears. Acceptance practices nudge us toward living with the reality we cannot outrun. Spiritual traditions remind us that the physical body dissolves, but consciousness, soul or self persists.

Yet even inside these traditions is a startling new trend. Many doctors, ethicists and futurists argue that life is simply the “unfolding of consciousness” — a process that doesn’t need to end. They promote duality: the idea that life and death are not opposites, but interconnected frames of awareness. If you believe that, then death becomes a doorway, not a wall. And if death is just a doorway, well, why not build a longer hallway?

But this intellectual reframing has collided with a darker reality. The more fixated we become on defeating death, the more disconnected many young people become from life. Suicide rates among teenagers and young adults have risen sharply. We talk often about anxiety, depression or social media, but rarely about the deeper truth: Many young people find life so overwhelming, so directionless, that death feels simpler.

There is a tragic irony here. While adults chase immortality, children struggle to find reasons to keep going.

Biotech firms experiment on the edges of ethics, from experimental surgeries to genetic editing and biological “extensions.” The focus on artificial organs, lab-grown tissues and new therapies that repair, regenerate or replace will soon become the new norm. You need a new heart, it will be grown, and at some point, may be even better than the previous one. Some of these innovations are miraculous, and others inch disturbingly close to treating human beings like test platforms for a future reserved for the privileged.

It all raises an uncomfortable question: Is modern science trying to extend human life — or replace the natural order altogether?

This is where politics enters the story. Whether we admit it or not, a society that puts its faith solely in human innovation eventually decides it no longer needs transcendent authority. When man believes he can conquer death, he begins to imagine he can conquer God. And the quest to defeat mortality becomes a quest to become the final author of existence, but he cannot.

No matter how many years we add, no matter how many organs we repair or replace, no matter how many psychological tricks we invent, we cannot escape the oldest truth: Life ends. The question is not whether we can beat death. The question is whether we can live well without losing our humanity in the race to outrun it.

If anything, the real task is to rediscover an ancient perspective — one that sees life and death as part of the same mystery, not a technological problem to be solved. A society that remembers that may live longer, and more importantly, live wiser — and in that wisdom, we might find the peace that no laboratory can manufacture.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

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