X-Message-Number: 22046
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Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 01:26:24 EDT
Subject: Libertarians and cryonics
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From Steve Bridge
June 28, 2003
Libertarians and cryonics
It has been enjoyable and instructive reading the arguments over political
theory the past few weeks. I even think it has much to do with cryonics,
although not solely for the reasons that some people have mentioned.
Perhaps the most basic conflict in human nature is the self vs. the tribe
("tribe" here meaning any group of humans with shared interests, from the family
to the work group to a nation). Am I better off choosing to follow a
particular group (maybe the majority, maybe not) or choosing to act
independently? Even
if I can recognize that I am more likely to survive or be happy or be rich
(etc.) if I choose one way or the other, will I actually make that decision, or
will I choose to stay with the group or act as an individual for other
reasons? No matter how much we like to pretend we are totally rational, we are
all
subject to peer pressure, culturalization (including various biases), the need
to be accepted, hormones, brain chemicals, fuzzy reasoning, and pure
contrariness.
We evolved as tribal beings, subconsciously dependent on family and tribal
units, requiring a hierarchy of dominance and submission, and suspicious and
fearful of other tribes. It is probably necessary that we each learn to break
away from our families in some ways, and probably physiologically impossible to
delete the influence of our families to any great extent. For much of human
existence, the system of tribes and families was probably the most important
factor in survival (both the personal survival of individuals and the survival
of
the species). Sometimes being a member of a particular tribe would shorten the
lives of its members, but totally independent people were unlikely to meet
and attract mates. So the people who did survive to pass their genes along
almost certainly were part of successful tribes, and passed along that "group
mentality." These are our ancestors and we cannot escape them. People with new
ideas or cultural preferences different from those around them would often add
strength to the group; but just as often those ideas would reduce the
possibility
of survival. So even good new ideas often resulted in the tribe rejecting the
creative one. We cryonicists come from a long tradition of rejection.
As the concept of individuality grew, the conflicts within families and
tribes no doubt grew also. And while we are no doubt far from our "primitive"
ancestors in many ways, that conflict remains in us today in nearly every part
of
our existence, from international relations to politics on the job to conflicts
between the two members of couple. Of course, we still require the "tribe" to
survive as a child, since we are born unable to take care of ourselves and
completely ignorant or any language or culture. At some point you may feel that
you have become an independent adult, but your tribal past (both personal and
species) is still part of the way your brain is organized.
I'm not interested here in questions about which of you are "morally right or
wrong" or which version of libertarianism is the "right one." As in any
intellectual conflict, I'm sure you all have some points on your side.
What I *am* interested in is how the conflict of self vs. tribe affects us as
cryonicists. For people who are leaders of cryonics organizations, it is
critical to remember that the conflict exists in all humans and that a large
number of the complaints received by their members are rooted in that conflict.
The
particular mix in the cryonics community at this stage in our existence is
heavily skewed toward people who place a high emphasis on individuality. This
should be no surprise because only people with that mindset are likely to be
early adopters of new ideas like this, which places such importance on the value
of individual lives.
And yet, no one can do cryonics effectively by himself or herself. It
requires specialized knowledge and skills, a team that works together, a
building,
and people willing to commit themselves to caring for frozen patients for
decades at minimum. And you really cannot make individual decisions about your
own
cryonics care while the physician is filling out your death certificate. The
result is that, while cryonics organizations may be largely made of people who
are more or less "libertarian" in personal nature, cryonics organizations
themselves are not libertarian or even democratic. To protect the physical and
financial safety of patients and staff, cryonics organizations cannot accept
every
individual demand, financial plan, marketing plan, etc. from every member.
Decisions about the organization cannot be made by general vote of the members.
Someone has to be in charge and someone has to make the decisions with the
long-term survival of all members in mind.
I have often said, when I became Alcor President back in 1993, I discovered
that I was not the President of an organization of 300 people. I was the
President of 300 organizations of one person each, who grudgingly agreed to
confederate under one name. The average cryonicist has already spent a lot of
his/her
life saying "No" to what other people wanted them to do -- and this doesn't
stop when they join a cryonics group. And yet, they still have that need to be
part of a group -- just a group that does what THEY believe to be correct. If
this argument is beginning to sound circular, that's part of the conflict.
Every left has a right; every in has an out.
By the way, many years ago, we had some members who insisted that Alcor
should become an organization that allowed all of the members to vote for
Alcor's
Board of Directors. (Alcor instead has the other legally permitted kind of
non-profit Board which each year elects the Directors for the following year.) I
admit that I originally thought that such "democracy" was a good idea myself --
until I saw graphic evidence of what could happen.
The number one mission of Alcor and any other cryonics organization has to be
to "keep the patients in suspension" - or else there is no reason to even
start this tangled, complex enterprise. This requires an organizational
commitment to goals that might last for centuries. One year Alcor was approached
by a
large, technically oriented but "cultish" group which wanted to join Alcor in
one massive leap. (I will not list the name here because I don't want them
finding this discussion, if that organization still exists.) The leaders of this
organization were all excited about cryonics and they were getting prepared to
tell their members that suspension membership with Alcor was a requirement for
them. Alcor's leaders at the time (I was not yet a Director, but I was more
or less an "insider" by then) seemed to be torn between the general creepiness
they felt at the "requirement" part of the cult and the very large gains in
Alcor finances and volunteers which would seem to be the result of more than
doubling Alcor's membership at one time.
Interestingly, the decision of what to do was taken from Alcor's Directors
when the cult leaders discovered that Alcor's Board of Directors was NOT elected
by the membership at large. When they discovered that no amount of persuasion
would cause Alcor's structure to change in that way, the cult immediately
stopped all contact with Alcor and we never heard from them again. Our
assumption
was that meant these folks didn't have what we would have considered "good
intentions" in their interest in Alcor. They may have desired our
non-profit/tax-exempt status and the prospect of large trust funds a lot more
than the
survival of their members. I leave it to your imaginations to determine what
changes might have been made in Alcor if this group had suddenly been able to
elect
all of their own leaders to Alcor's Board of Directors; but it certainly
convinced me that Alcor could be not a democracy.
Back to the "libertarians vs. socialists" debate: Personally, I believe that
no "pure" form of political philosophy is likely to be successful with any
group much larger than 100 people, because it is too hard to agree on one's
principles and rules with larger groups. And "agreement" is what holds such a
group
together. Larger groups stay together partly through various forms of
coercion -- legal, social pressure, or outright force -- or they split into new
groups.
I think pure libertarianism will not work in large groups because we are too
dependent on being part of a tribe -- and communism and other extreme forms of
socialism won't work because we have developed too much individuality. So we
humans use combinations of political structure depending on what the purpose
is and the level of control we can give up. There will ALWAYS be a tension
between those two needs as long as we are any form of human -- and I would bet
that it will last (perhaps unrecognized) long into any future where human beings
have become robots or computer programs or thinking pink clouds of energy,
because we will be extensions of our human origins. There will always be people
or beings that will say, "My freedom is worth more than your freedom."
Most of us in reality are "pragmatists." We concede enough authority to the
different tribes around us to make sure things get done and that we feel as
safe and comfortable as possible, while having certain borders of personal
freedom that we are unwilling to have the tribal leaders cross. The exact limits
of
these borders vary from person to person, no matter what they tell you. Very
few of us are willing to spend years in prison in order to combat the federal
income tax or willing to avoid restaurants because we do not like sales taxes.
We may feel these taxes violate our principles and even the U.S. Constitution,
and we may spend significant effort to protest them in various ways. Some of
us may attempt to push those borders of personal freedom farther out and some
have succeeded in important ways. But we also want to have comfortable,
productive and pleasurable lives, which is hard to do when large numbers of
people
are deeply annoyed with you and trying to put you into prison. So we
compromise.
Cryonics is no different. Most of us don't want the combination of tedium and
tension, broken several times a year by the outright terror and overwhelming
personal responsibility of attempting to save someone's life in the face of
apparent death. So we contract with a cryonics organization to do that for us --
and hope we have chosen one that has found enough competent people who CAN
handle that tension and terror. Once we have given the future saving of our
lives over to this organization, we then feel the necessity to assert our
individuality within that organization in as many ways as possible. This is
perfectly
normal, if quite grating to those people in charge. It takes a strong leader
to say, "Yes, in an ideal world, your suggestion would have great merit; but
the strength of the organization as a whole and the future protection of the
patients -- which, by the way, will probably include YOU and ME -- require that
every member fit within the legal and financial parameters we have
established." And it requires strong individuals to recognize that the tension
between
tribe and individual exists and to set their personal borders at a level that
allows their organization to save their lives and get them into the future. No
one who is buried or cremated will ever get to make a personal decision again.
Maybe there are "no Atheists in foxholes," but there are certainly no
libertarians in caskets.
So when I was Alcor President, "pragmatism" was my guiding principle. What
would achieve our goals of preserving our patients and saving further lives in
the future, including our own? Now, pragmatism isn't a very glorious
philosophy, if it can be a philosophy at all; and it's hard to write a book
about it, or
even a short essay like this. Pragmatism in Alcor's context, especially in
planning our move from California to Arizona, meant being open and friendly to
the press, following all of the arcane and aggravating laws and regulations we
found, and getting along with local government officials, no matter what party
they were or what we thought of government regulations in general. Being
human beings themselves, most government officials whether elected or appointed
are simply trying to protect their jobs and occasionally to do public service.
They tend to do a lot more public service for members of the public they are
friendly with than with members of the public who are always fighting with them.
To protect our patients and to make sure we could do business in Arizona we
made the acquaintance of the Mayor of Scottsdale, the Maricopa County coroner,
a couple of County Commissioners, the Scottsdale police and fire departments,
the State Funeral Board, the State Health Department, the Chamber of Commerce,
the Attorney General's Office, and some faculty members at the University of
Arizona School of Medicine. Some we made friends with and with some we just
earned respect. On the occasions when that didn't work, we made friends with
groups or people that could protect us from the officials who didn't like us.
And
we made sure to have a very good attorney.
From my point of view, it worked. We didn't go to court once and we have had
generally calm and professional relationships with all of the officials in
Arizona. We make it look like we are part of the same tribes as everyone else,
even when our motivations may be MUCH different. The members in suspension are
part of a temporary tribe that they chose. They will be able to choose their
political philosophies again when they are revived. For now, it is up to us to
keep giving them that chance.
Immortality may await us. Don't let your principles or political philosophy
kill you first. "Compromise" is a dirty word only to those who are already
lying to themselves about the compromises they make every day for survival. That
person you are "yelling at" in your arguments on Cryonet may be the exact
person responsible for your survival someday, and his political philosophy won't
matter -- only his commitment to the principles of the temporary tribe of
cryonicists which you have joined.
Steve Bridge
Alcor President 1993-1997 (only listed to show my background for writing
this, and not speaking for Alcor today.)
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