X-Message-Number: 1567
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS:comments.to.Charles.Pratt
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 93 20:39:44 PST




This is a comment on Charles Pratt's message about the OMNI contest. Charles,
I wouldn't be too hard on the Alcor Central people at all. Cryonics is an 
odd subject; I've talked a lot with reporters, carefully explaining everything,
and they GET IT WRONG. I've handed them all kinds of careful press releases,
written up to make sure that no one has the least misapprehension on what we 
are about, and they GET IT WRONG. And especially with OMNI, of all places:
it seems to be accepted among many that OMNI will not hire people to write
about a subject if they know anything about it at all --- a strange procedure
guaranteed to produce a large pile of DUNG (as you can guess, I don't read
OMNI). I suspect that Ralph did all of these things short of stand on his
head, and the OMNI editorial staff threw it in the wastebasket and wrote up
their own (fallacious) specification for the contest essay.

The problem is, there are many people out there who will smile and act friendly
and interested, and even ACT like they're listening, but they've been to acting
school and its all fake. They don't want to hear us and they're trying as hard
as they can not to hear us. That, in fact, is one of the really fundamental
reasons why cryonicists have come to publish so much among themselves. It's
also why I'm skeptical that a PR person would be much help --- unless they 
were already a cryonicist (is that a contradiction in terms?). 

When you decide not just to be suspended, but to DO something about it by
joining a cryonics society, all these walls come up between you and others
around you. Even close relatives will say "Yes, that's nice, and what else
did you do over the weekend," and if you ask them an hour later what you said
they will have forgotten it all. All those people out there have developed
the art of ignoring Death to such a fine pitch, they can even think they're
discussing it rationally and fail utterly to see how thin their rationality 
really is.
			Best
				Thomas

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