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  It is also gradually becoming out of date, as medical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 However savage and outdated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

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