While we are far from engineering immortality, we do, indeed, already have the technology to engineer youth, primarily through cosmetic surgery.

And just as our whole thinking will change once we reach a mode of production at which we can engineer immortality, our outlook also changes once we have become aware that mankind is already at a stage (a mode of production) that allows us to appear young until a fairly high age.

In practical terms, it means that if we, men and women, have a realistic chance to look 30, even when we are double that age, then we will have a completely different outlook.

If we cannot appear to be the same age as our 30-year old competitors, we will favor a world in which the sexual market value of younger people is restricted, so that our own value will not diminish too far.

But if we have a realistic chance to maintain a sexually appealing appearance even beyond the fault line at which we would traditionally be viewed as goners, we can favor a world in which the value of older people does not have to be enhanced artificially.

Medical technology has indeed reached a stage at which it is a realistic perspective to maintain an appearance as if we were 30 to well the double age. The key really is cosmetic surgery. Which is why cosmetic surgery has a philosophical, even metaphysical dimension.