I am a strong advocate of productive value affirming behavior.  I frequently have discussions with Objectivists and Extropians holding them accountable to their own professed highest value, that of their own life.  Most professed life loving secularists are content to sit idly by while they age, wither, and eventually die.  They deride cryogenic preservation, life extension technologies, and often justify their attitudes with appeals to wildly dystopian futures sprung right from the caves of revelations. 

Often, *death* itself, is cited as a source of value, e.g. Death gives life meaning, death is the end to a beginning, death is the closing of the story, death lets us have our chance and clear the way for later life, death is an escape from suffering and living, etc.  Death is none of these things, it is the cessation of all existence, it is the end of all values.  Dying is not selfish as it is the complete destruction of the self. 

These people who attach a value to death are what I tend to call religious deathists and just as many secularists share this view as do professed religionists.  But when mans productive and inventive forces are fully unleashed, death from aging and disease will likely be completely conquered.  These religious deathists will still cling to their views and will grow old and die, but their children will be raised in a society which accepts indefinite life spans.  The ones who had the integrity, rationality, and proper internal conviction will live to be the first generation enjoying indefinite life spans.  It is hard to guess when this will happen, it could be this generation or the next or 10 generations down the line.  But we can all help to bring this about faster.

To those objectivists out there, who profess to hold their own life as their highest value, why are you not acting in accordance with your values?  You should be acting rationally and productively to fight your worst enemy, which will kill you, your loved ones, and end everything and everyone you care about.  Most people balk at this call to arms, as it demands unwavering integrity and complete adherence to your fundamental convictions evasion is much easier.  Escapism is simpler.  Blank out to get through the rough times.  Objectivists, who profess that all the great advances of humanity sprung forth from the minds of individuals, that profess that a man of rationality with conviction and integrity is a virtually unstoppable creative and inventive force, that profess that one man even if the face of the greatest and most overwhelming odds can accomplish the most monumental feats are the first to bow down, give up, apologize for their own existence, and excuse themselves from ever needing to do anything productive to fight aging, disease, and death.

Now no one is demanding that we drop everything we are doing and make studying senescence the only thing we live, breathe, and think, but first and foremost we all need to drop the philosophical acceptance of death; all else fallows naturally.  Death is not OK, it never is, never has been, and never will be.  It is not an escape or a relief, we are not resting or in a better place this is all hogwash people adopt in order to not have to come to fully face the inevitability of their own demise.  But just like a drunkard who convinces himself that its just who he is and thus absolves himself of the responsibility of ever trying to change himself, the religious escapist completely absolve themselves of the compulsion and obligation to their own deepest values to ever do anything about death, and it is why this world of 3 billion profoundly intelligent beings can not muster up enough motivation or dedication to defeat even a modicum of the diseases which kill them. 

It would be great if all people, everywhere, identified their most fundamental values and started acting in rational accordance with them.  If all people everywhere (who were not just merely struggling to survive under whatever murderous brute happens to rule them) turned off the TV, the video games, the fashion and gossip mags and their IPODs, and started studying, learning, and thinking.  If all people begin to actualize their potential, to at first believe they are capable of great things, and then realize they in fact were able, with dedication and perseverance to actually achieve many of these great things.  But in lieu of that, first and foremost discard your philosophical acceptance of death.  It is not OK.  Secondly, take a look at any of the numerous charities dedicated to bringing about this world, and think about dedicating even just your idle CPU cycles to the Protein Folding at home project, or even better some time or money to any of the various organizations dedicated to saving your life and the life of everyone you love.     

Donating Idle CPU Cycles (full list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects)

Protein folding @ home - http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/
Proteins are biology’s workhorses…The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.  Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

Orbit@Home - http://orbit.psi.edu/
is a project which uses the Orbit Reconstruction, Simulation and Analysis framework to monitor the impact hazard posed by Near-Earth objects

SETI@home - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data

Fight AIDS @ Home - http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/index.html
captures the otherwise wasted cycles of your computer and applies them to model the evolution of drug resistance and to design drugs necessary to fight AIDS 

United Devices Cancer Research Project -   http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/
The United Devices Cancer Research Project is asking you to volunteer your PC to help process molecular research being conducted by the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford in England and the National Foundation for Cancer Research

Charities / Institutions

Lifeboat Foundation www.lifeboat.com


- Future Studies -
Foundation for the Future http://www.futurefoundation.org/

Foresight Institute http://www.foresight.org

- Life Extension -
Methuselah Mouse Prize http://www.mprize.org
Immortality Institute http://www.imminst.org

- Intelligence Increase -
Singularity Institute http://www.singinst.org

- Other -
WTA http://transhumanism.org
Extropy Institute http://extropy.org
TV 2005 Scholarship Fund http://www.transhumanismo.org/tv05/registration.htm

- Social Sciences -
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org/support.htm
Grameen Foundation USA http://www.gfusa.org/microcredit.html

- Space Migration -
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Planetary Society http://www.planetary.org/home/
Mars Society http://chapters.marssociety.org/
Saturn V Restoration http://www.saturnrestoration.org/donate/index.html

Prizes
Elevator 2010 http://www.elevator2010.org/site/donate.html
X-Prize Foundation http://www.xprize.org

[List taken from an Extropy list post]