X-Message-Number: 31283
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:57:17 -0700
From: "Finance Department" <>
Subject: "Community" or Not = Semantics

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By some ordinary definitions, there can be many communities.  As to
cryonics, there could be the community of people who read CryoNet.  That
would not be much of a community though as they do not commune.  There is,
however, a community of people who post to CryoNet.  They certainly do
commune.

Then we have the community of Alcor.  That is not much of a community, since
there is no medium for facilitating it, despite "Alcorunited.com" which also
invites intruder outsiders and seems to get minimal attention from the
larger Alcor membership.

And there is the Cold Filter community, where I usually hang out, and it
talks to itself about like CryoNet though in a different format and somewhat
higher volume level.  Cryonics Institute has its own community via their
private Yahoo list, I am told, and we get brief snippets from there in their
online published magazine.

We have even gotten hints of a private "community" of Saul Kent Supporters
who have nearly a blood relationship built to take care of each other in
times of crisis.  Most of them seem to maintain Alcor memberships but I
cannot discern why.  Ain't that fun.

My point here being:  there are various communities no matter whether you
think they should be there or not.  Is there a larger community of
"cryonicists in general"?  Well, I really think not.  It hasn't gotten
together like that yet, as I can see.

I do think it would be advantageous to the "greater community of cryonicists
in general and on an abstrsct level" for them all to sometime in the future
come together and sit down and cooperate with each other on just about
everything, instead of always thinking "competition drives progress".  With
cryonics, it seems to retard progress.

I am not talking about the other semantic meaning of community, where there
is a formalized organization complete with articles of incorporation,
bylaws, meeting minutes etc etc.  That was what Charles Platt obviously
meant.  I don't think that is needed either.  It would certainly attract
unwanted attention as Charles points out, from the larger world.

But if Charles, with whom I occasionally have I hope friendly banter on Cold
Filter, thinks no type of community at all is desirable, I just have to ask
him who is going to be an advocate for him in the future for his cryonics
needs then (and that could embody a wide spectrum of areas - legislation,
medical practice, social paradigms)?  Or vice versa, what would he be
willing to be an advocate of for others?  Perhaps any lack of concern on his
part is due to his lack of perceiving his membership in "Saul Kent
Supporters" as also being a member of a "community"?

Cheers,

FD

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