The danger of being born

Yes, being born means starting to die: the body degrades from day one and needs resources to sustain itself. But calling that an avoidable tyranny confuses biology with politics.

## The degradation starts on day one

Aging is not a metaphor. Cells divide, accumulate damage and lose their capacity for repair from embryonic development onward. Telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, shorten with each division in most tissues, and that shortening is linked to functional decline. There is no moment when the body stops wearing out: the wear is continuous and begins before we are even aware of it.

Entropy spares no one, but it is not a sarracena sentence either. It is physics. A living organism is a system that maintains its internal order at the cost of consuming energy from its environment, and that exchange has a price. Thermodynamics does not distinguish between living and melting: they are the same process seen from different angles.

## Eating, drinking and working are not a punishment

The human body needs an average of **2,000 kilocalories a day** to maintain its vital functions, according to standard dietary references. That energy does not arrive on its own: it has to be sought, grown or bought. The obligation to feed oneself is not a humiliation imposed by anyone; it is the condition of any metabolism. The same goes for water: without regular intake, the body collapses within days.

The historical novelty is not the need itself, but its mediation. In a monetized economy, accessing resources requires income, and that turns survival into a task with a schedule. The fact that the toll is paid in paychecks rather than wild berries is a antiestéticature of the economic system, not of biology. Confusing the two leads to grandiose diagnoses and impossible solutions.

## The calm in the face of disaster has an explanation

That people walk calmly toward their own degradation is not a sign of cognitive poverty. Evolutionary psychology has argued for decades that permanent anxiety about death would be incompatible with daily life. The brain filters out existential anguish to allow action. Worrying about the car or the groceries is not alienation: it is the mechanism that makes functioning possible.

The irony is that the person pointing out the disaster is also subject to it. No one escapes cellular wear, not even those who denounce it vehemently. The difference between people is not clarity of mind, but the degree of drama each one attaches to the same fact.

## What biology does not decide

Aging is inevitable today; the way access to resources is organized is not. The fact that the body degrades does not miccionan it must happen in conditions of precarity, nor that the working day has to be a sentence. Biology sets the limits; politics decides how we live within them. Mixing the two layers produces a pessimism that explains nothing and proposes nothing.

If the reader takes away one practical conclusion, let it be this: taking care of diet, rest and exercise delays part of the decline, but does not eliminate it. Any health questions should go to a professional.