X-Message-Number: 29035 Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:08:43 +0100 From: "Eivind Berge" <> Subject: Re: Cryonic Capital Punishment Is No Less Murder Flavoniod wrote: "It is primitive, savage, revengeful, eye-for-an-eye type thinking. It is also gradually becoming out of date, as medical technologies evolve to find the chemical source of deviant behaviors and solutions for them. This is already well on its way, and cures for things like manic homicidal tendencies will most likely be available long before the time any cryopatients are reanimated. They will then be able to be cured of that, as well as what ordinary malady caused their temporary death." Actually, "curing" homicidal tendencies and other deviant behavior appalls me more than capital punishment. However savage and outdated the death penalty might be, it is still not as nefarious as not being entitled to the integrity of your own mind. I would rather be executed than subjected to unwelcome psychiatric "treatment." That is something I would resist to my death under any circumstances. I believe my identity is inseparable from my thoughts and opinions, and destroying these would be tantamount to killing me; but worse because it also takes away my honor and adds the insult of a "treatment" ostensibly for my own good. I don't believe there is such a thing as mental illness (Thomas Szasz did a good job of debunking that myth in his books). It is frightening that so many people believe it is OK to reengineer a person against his will according to the values of society. Convicted homicidal maniacs need to be imprisoned of course, and for a long time, but messing with their brains is not something any civilized society would do, in my view. Currently you don't even have to be a criminal to fall victim to psychiatry, but fortunately their "treatments" are still crude and ineffectual. I dread the day it becomes practical to manipulate a person's personality and ideology by technological means. The psychiatric infrastructure already exists, so as soon as anyone finds such a "cure," governments will be ready to employ it en masse without passing any more laws and that will be the end of liberty. Hopefully that day will never come. By the way, cryonicicst are far more deviant than murderers, so this kind of behavior is at risk of being rooted out as well when the means to abolish freedom of thought is available. Eivind Berge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29035