X-Message-Number: 1413
Date: 09 Dec 92 01:36:03 EST
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #1403 - #1405

To Brian Wowk:

I can agree with you about the response of many environmentalists. How-
ever I disagree that ALL environmentalists fall under that description.
Remember than human beings have many different opinions and can't
easily be encapsulated en masse as having only one.

Speaking for myself alone, I would like to see attention paid to the
damage done to wilderness areas; I favor the Conservancy Society because
unlike many others they take a more market-oriented approach. No one I
know would claim that I am antitechnology or anticryonics. Of course my
interest in saving a forest remains less than my interest in saving my-
self (or more generally, in saving "most" human lives). But usually that
choice does not arrive so starkly. And as for "Nature", well, an interest
in preserving some patch of "wilderness" does not imply in my mind any
illusion that we are really in any sense leaving it to develop on its
own independent of our activities. I just like such gardens, OK?

If we move over to the issue of recruitment material, from the environ-
mentalists I know, I'd say that they DO, as you say, form a group which
has a significantly larger number of collectivists than others. And of
course that means that not only are they poor material (when chosen at
random!) for cryonics, but that a lot of their effort will in the end
turn into destruction of their environment (look at what the Soviet
state did compared to the US, to the "environment"). I don't suggest that
we advertise in AUDUBON, for instance. But if a known environmentalist
comes to us showing interest in cryonics, they should hardly be knocked
back on that ground alone!

				Best and long life,
					Thomas

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