X-Message-Number: 15858
From: 
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 01:45:19 EST
Subject: Re: CryoNet #15845 - #15850

In a message dated 3/13/01 5:01:29 AM,  writes:

<< Message #15846
From: "BlackShark" <>
Subject: Motivation?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:51:54 -0700

Hi, I was explaining my interest in cryonics to someone and they asked an
interesting question that I couldn't answer. They asked, "What would be the
motivation for future generations to re-animate me?" A few answers come to
mind. If relatives are around and have the means to have me reanimated, they
may arrange to have it done.  A few "stiffs" may be re-animated out of
scientific curiosity. But look at it this way. Say a hundred years from now
the technology and medical knowledge does exist to reanimate us. But people
a hundred years from now will have their own lives to live and their own
problems to worry about. They may be running out of places to live on our
finite globe with an ever-increasing population. They may be worried about
feeding everyone. What could you or I contribute to society a hundred years
from now? We would be so far behind in our knowledge base we would be
practically useless to anyone. I suppose we could go back to school and
"catch up". But the question remains, what would be their motivation to
reanimate a few hundred frozen stiffs? If we, today, had the ability to
reanimate people who had been frozen a hundred years ago, besides perhaps
re-animating a few for scientific and historical research, what would be our
motivation to reanimate everybody. I can't think of any.

David King
Edmonton, AB
Canada >>

In response to David King, I would say that he has a rather dark view of the 
future as a place of starving, crowded masses.  This and similar views of a 
negative future and a degeneration of human civilization is utterly 
incompatible with cryonics and I don't understand how people with such a mind 
set would want to subscribe to this list. Unfortunately, however, his views 
are reflective of the vast majority world wide who reject the view of a 
positive future guided by scientific progress even in the face of empirical 
evidence to the contrary.  These views are abetted by science fiction writers 
who generally portray images of negative futures as well as malevolent 
extra-terrestrials.  In fact, when most people think they are looking to the 
future, whether writing fiction or spinning scenarios, they are really 
looking backward, to Hitler and Stalin, to the great plagues, and the 
crowded, disease-riden, and smoke-choked streets of London of the Dickens 
era.  My friends, this is not where we are headed, but until we can get 
larger numbers of people to realize this, we will continue to have a tough 
time selling cryonics.
    To David King's other point about nobody caring about us stiffs, I think 
that advanced peoples will have an enormous interest scientifically and 
technically in the revival process.  Certainly, any reasonably curious person 
alive today would be very eager to learn first hand from the experiences and 
thoughts of someone who lived one, two, or three hundred years ago.  
Anthropologists and historians would have an especially keen interest, and a 
reasonably enlighted society would have a collective interest, just as 
various national and international societies now spend millions on such items 
as the remains of a wooly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost or 
the many thousand year old traveler discovered in the high Alps not so long 
ago.
    However, even apart from curiosity and science, and disregarding any 
humanitarian concerns [which I believe will increase rather than decrease  
over time, as I read the historical record], don't forget the Cryonics 
organizations and their successors.  Without them, we won't remain frozen 
anyway, and with them and their continued viability and prosperity we have a 
group of people in whom we have collectively entrusted many millions to be 
guardians of our personal futures. 
Ronald Havelock, Shady Side, Maryland

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