I strongly believe that getting Celebrities to support life extension is one of the best ways to spread awareness on a global scale. We all know that the masses don't look up to Scientists and Engineers for inspiration. The average person cares more about what their favorite celebrities are doing than what is going on in some Science lab.
Lately, Charity has become the new Fashion. Of course, Giving to Charity is
Good but I feel Charities do nothing more than temporarily ameliorate the problem. I feel they are not looking at the root cause for all this distress.
Let me bring out a few examples here. On one side is the uber-rich Businessman (Warren Buffett, Bill Gates). These are the guys who are just throwing money at charities (in Billions) when something like the MPrize is not even close to 10 Million even after so many donations from various people. The other major category are Celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Bono, Sean Penn, Richard Gere and almost any movie star or band. These people won't throw their own money (although some of them do), but they help with raising money and raising awareness. Consider Angelina Jolie, every one of her crazy antics such as wanting to fly a plane herself to deliver supplies was covered in great detail by the media and press.
Just imagine Anti-aging research getting the kind of attention that AIDS, Poverty and Global Warming is getting. I still think this can be made to happen. All we need to do is get famous people to attend conferences. Nothing else. Their presense alone will cause a huge stir. People all over the world will suddenly start wondering what's going on.
I suggest that we make a list of all the people who would be useful allies in spreading awareness about Life Extension Research. But, I feel we should be careful not to involve silly pop idols who might be detrimental to the cause. Also, I think the word "immortality" should be replaced as much as possible with "Life Extension" to make it sound less self-indulgent. Below are names of a few people I think will be useful in spreading awareness. It will be great if we could get them to attend conferences like Transvision 2007.
Politicians:Bill Clinton, Senator John McCain, Barack Obama and other possible presidential candidates
FilmMakers:James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh and many more....
Entertainers:David Bowie, William Shatner, George Clooney, Tom Hanks ...
Businessmen:Bill Gates
Scientists: Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Martin Rees......
The Media will do its "thing" which is make a lot of noise, and they won't dare insult something that so many important people seem to think important. But what they WILL do is talk about it and write about it endlessly which, if sustained long enough will allow these ideas to seep into society and culture. This will also eliminate whatever "silliness" is left in the matter and catapult the issue into "dead-serious" territory. (Ha ha, dead-serious, get it?). Hopefully it will also eliminate some of those ridiculous arguments people make against life extension such as that banal boredom argument.
The world needs to know that there is a more realistic alternative to the comfort provided by religion. People like Richard Dawkins are doing their part to reveal the dangers posed by organized religion. But, they don't give people a proper alternative and this can cause a lot of fear and anxiety in people's minds. Now would be the perfect time to enlighten people about life extension research before they fall back into the hands of priests.
So, to conclude, I'd like to state again that I think it's vital that we establish a certain dialog with Famous and Influential people and get them to participate in Conferences and debates involving Life Extension. This itself will be enough to bring these issues into the public spotlight.
Edited by sanjay_sreehari, 08 May 2007 - 08:55 PM.
