The Finer Points of Ark Engineering

I was listening to my new ultra cheesy mix tape this morning as I was driving the two hour drive back from where I had last night's meetings, and one of the lines in one of the songs is,

"We could be the last two on earth to start a new world."

And that got me thinking about people who really did start a new world, that is, the people on Noah's Ark.

Now, a brief disclaimer: I do not take Bible stories, or anything really, as the literal truth. You don't grow up with both parents being New Testament PhD's and take anything about religion literally. However, the stories from the Bible are often good metaphors, so allow me to use this one as a metaphor now:

So there's this crazy guy who is working really hard on building an ark because he believes, for whatever reason, that a giant flood is about to wash all of humanity away.

Most people think he's nuts and make fun of him and are total jerks about the entire thing, but a few people also believe that there's a serious danger of life-obliterating flood, and that with the right boat, some humans might be able to survive. So they start working on different kinds of boats. Some of these people are professional boat builders: they've made fast ships that win prizes, they've made big cruise ships that hold a lot of people. But no one has, as of yet, made a boat that could protect the human race from the oncoming flood (which most people don't even believe is coming).

Then one day this girl hears about this crazy guy in a far away land who is making a big ark. It makes sense to her: for a long time, she's suspected that God is about to send a flood that will wipe out most of humaninty. So she gets in touch with these ark building folk, and here's what she says,

"Look, guys: I don't know the first thing about building boats -- in fact, I have a hard time getting a rubber ducky to float in a bathtub -- but I'm very good at teaching people how to do things that are very difficult but in the end will drastically improve their lives. That's kinda what I do for a living right now. So here's the deal: I can convince a bunch of people that we need an ark to protect us from the upcoming flood. If I have enough time, I can probably convince some people to fund the building of the ark... I might even be able to convince entire nations' governments that they can lower healthcare costs by putting their people on the Ark instead of providing lots of post-drowning care. But I'll only do it on one condition: When you finally get this thing built, you're giving me a free ticket."

If you look around you, the flood is already here, and it's everywhere. People are aging and dying, whether it's of heart disease, cancer, strokes, or diabetes, people are drowning in the by-products of our affluent Western lifestyle. We haven't yet built the Ark... the CR mimetic drug that will break down the walls of maximum lifespan, but we have found this little rowboat called CRON. It takes a lot of effort to row, but if you keep at it, you might live long enough to be there when the ark engineers finally finish the Ark. Then we can all jump on and start a new world.

I was thinking about this as I recently had a conversation with a friend about CR, and I realized how odd it seems to those who aren't doing CR that we spend so much time thinking and talking about what nutrients we need to maximize lifespan. We seem just as nutty as Noah must have seemed when he was studying ark plans. But in the end... who stayed dry?