Longevity, the Next New Religion? At Least One Billionaire Says So
The Netflix documentary “Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever” chronicles tech billionaire Bryan Johnson’s quest for immortality. At one point, he walks along a platform just below the surface of an infinity pool. “I can walk on water!” he laughs. Later in the documentary, he brashly announces, “I like to joke that I’ve done more in two years than Jesus has done in 2000.”
These days, Johnson doesn’t want to be thought of as a joke. On March 7, he posted on X:
“Dear humanity,
I am building a religion.
Wait a second, I know what you’re going to say. Hold that knee-jerk reaction and let me explain.
First, here’s what’s going to happen:
+ Don’t Die becomes history’s fastest-growing ideology.
+ It saves the human race.
+ And ushers in an existence more spectacular than we can imagine.
It is inevitable. The only question is: will you be an early or late adopter?”
Let’s make one thing clear: while fabulists, mystics and tech billionaires throughout time claim to have discovered the secret to living forever, the tried-and-true scientific method has never come through to deliver evidence that it’s possible.
Johnson is famous for his controversial health hacks – like taking blood transfusions from his son, Talmage, to try to slow, reverse, and hopefully halt ageing. Johnson seems self-aware that his strict adherence to schedule, like eating dinner at 11:00 am and consuming more supplements than food, can be isolating. In a post on X from 2023 he makes a list of ten reasons why it’s hard to date him, including “u sleep alone” and “ur not my #1 priority”.
Perhaps Johnson’s religious fervor isn’t surprising for a self-proclaimed prophet. His desire to focus all of his plentiful resources on longevity may be the closest a billionaire who regularly makes trips to a “secret island” to edit his genes can come to being an ascetic.
In the documentary, Johnson says, “People think I’m fearful of death, I’m not, I love life.”
The gathering space of Johnson’s so-called new religion isn’t a church or temple, but an app – free for now. The posts are excruciatingly mundane – users share photos of workouts and meal prep like any other fitness app. Except the captions show they think their early morning runs and handfuls of berries won’t just lead to a healthier life, but a much longer, potentially immortal one.
Some of the photos show users using Blueprint products, Johnson’s supplement brand. There’s the $60 olive oil sold as “Snake Oil” and a Blueberry Nut Mix coming in at nearly $70. But what some may see as fanatic could easily be taken as farce.
