If you own a mobile device and have a social media account, chances are that you probably scroll Reels, Tiktok or/and Shorts (?!) a bit too much for your own good, and I’m in the same boat. This article, however, is not about how scrolling is technically a form of escapism and highlights many crucial underlying factors wrong with the world today (although that could be a great topic and I’m sure someone has already written that in this newsletter) and instead about a peculiar man who I, and many others, have probably come across before.

If you have never seen Bryan Johnson before, he’s a 47-year-old man who seeks to perform “reverse aging”, claiming that data compiled by his doctors shows that his unique methods have so far shown results in de-aging. Indeed, according to health checkups, he has the bones of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 37-year-old, and he has the end goal to have the body and health of an 18-year-old.

What are these methods, you may ask? Spending 2 million dollars a year, at some points, Johnson consumed 111 pills per day, worn a cap shooting red light into his scalp and even underwent transfusions with his own son’s blood plasma (although he ultimately stopped this due to seeing no effects).

Additionally, these methods have been heavily debated on whether to be encouraged or not, with some supporters saying that so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, this experimentation would be useful. However, others claim that it’s a complete waste of time and money to the point where it gets unhealthy. Many also view the rigorous regimes required to “de-age” to simply not be worth it as, if your life has so many restrictions and so many prescriptions, what’s the point of living? In any case, Bryan Johnson looks just slightly younger than his age, although even that can be debated as he has undergone multiple facial surgeries along the way too.

An image of him above

This article isn’t about Bryan Johnson though. It’s about what his methods represent. Indeed, such extreme methods to run away from aging is not unheard of. Many rich men across humanity’s recorded history have attempted to perform the same feat, from Emperor Qin Shi Huang attempting to live forever through mercury consumption to members of Chinese and French royalty drinking gold. 

The point is: Rich people do really weird things to escape death. Why?

In fact, if you’re an average person who isn’t absurdly rich, you’ll find that in your day-to-day life, conversations surrounding the evasion of death aren’t very common at all. So why is it that those rich people, who clearly have access to many better ways to spend their time, instead obsess over living forever, an idea that is basically unthinkable of for the common being?

The answer could be boiled down to a few points. The first is that when one is used to the control one gets over life through wealth, the moment that the problem of life ending surfaces, something that cannot be conquered through merely buying it out, rich people start to panic. Much more than those of normal economic classes, who are used to facing adversities that they can’t escape. Secondly, the fear of the unknown to someone who has so much invested in, and so many belongings in what they know, is amplified more than the average person due to the uncertainty of whether everything they have “worked for” (debateable or not if the wealth of the 1 percent is truly deserved but you do you) will instantly be lost when hit with the problem of death. Lastly, and the point that I think is the most important, is that rich people… don’t really have anything else to stress out about, right? 

All of us have our own problems, whether it be in the form of academics, relationships or anything of that sort. The thing is, throwing a lot of money at them can help you just escape from those challenges, and that’s the problem. Frequently, rich people just effortlessly escape from their problems by escaping from them instead of dealing with them and can indefinitely do so so long as their dragon pile of wealth allows them to.

However, you can’t escape death, at least not for now, and that is why most rich people do so many seemingly meaningless things just to attain immortality. To encounter a problem that they cannot keep escaping from, to encounter something that they just must sit with and accept the fact that it happens, is something that must be mentally, incredibly foreign. 

The bottom-line is this: You are never truly free of all your problems. Nobody can keep escaping from their problems, from the world, from reality. Escaping occasionally is fine. You and I probably both indulge in escapism several times a day, like scrolling on our phone when we have more work to do. The thing is you cannot do that forever. That assignment will be due soon, and death will for the rich and poor equally too. 

The human desire to run away from the difficulties and uncertainties in life will always be there. It’s natural to feel this way, and to be aware of when you do and to understand what to do in these situations can help you ultimately avoid your entire life being a continuous marathon away from reality’s problems.