Yeah, so I lied

Earlier I had said:

I do believe that people (even me) are too afraid of death. What else can support multibillion dollar drug industries? Since latter half of the twentieth century, we have been so accustomed to science finding answers to all of our problems and curing all of our ills. We no longer expect to die before the age of fifty.

This final point could also be the topic of another post, but I'm running out of time. I'll just leave it at this: it is unreasonable to think that six billion people can possibly enjoy the same standard of living of a few hundred million, and this fantasy is what is causing liberals to have delusions. I'll refine this thesis some other time.

I was reading a criticism of The Constant Gardener. I have no intention of discussing the plot or theme in detail, but I did find a tidbit that made me nod:

The basic point is that Western civilisation has got itself into a situation where we are all whimperingly dependent on the march of modern medicine. The religious support of fortitude given by a providential understanding of what happens to us has gone, and the old Roman recourse to Stoicism as a philosophy can be found in Shakespeare but not much since. Spinoza might understand freedom as the embrace of necessity, but it is hardly a popular option, and our civilisation has nothing left to sustain it except biochemical technology.