Vita Brevis founder Timothy Furstnau holds a sign during a demonstration at the UM Life Sciences Institute, 2006

Vita Brevis (from half of the Latin aphorism ars longa, vita brevis, “art is long, life is short”) was a short-lived semi-mock-advocacy group which promoted eventual death. That is, all of us as human beings wanted to die, eventually. The activity of the group peaked when we organized a small demonstration for a lecture held at the newly-completed Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan (pictured). This was an exercise in the composition of simple one-line slogans and chants for shouting at the demonstration and writing on signs (limited edition drawings), which included the following: “long live no one”, “ageing is not a disease”, “STOP postponing the inevitable”, “quality of life, not quantity”, and “all’s well that ends”. Shortly thereafter, one of our members traveled to England and met with transhumanist anti-aging leader Aubrey DeGrey. The group has since dissolved, as member have gone our separate ways, each of us working individually toward eventual death.

Some of Vita Brevis’s slogans and chants have taken on lives of their own on the internet, so I’ve archived a few of them here:

learn to live with death
all’s well that ends
ageing is not a disease
long live no one
quality of life, not quantity
STOP postponing the inevitable
immortality: a fate worse than death
all good things must come to an end
stop hogging our children’s biomass
out out brief candle!
curtains, please

“Hell No!  We WILL go!”
“What do we want?  Death!  When do we want it?  Eventually!”
call: “Out with the old!” response: “In with the new!”
Hey hey, ho ho, transhumanists have got to go!
“Vi-ta Bre-vis”, [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap]