X-Message-Number: 391 From att!uunet.UU.NET!ininx!ininx.com!jkreznar Tue Aug 13 01:44:56 PDT 1991 Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 01:44:56 PDT From: ([John E. Kreznar]) Message-Id: <> To: Subject: The Tragedy of Political Government In cryonics #390 Allen Lopp urgently implores us to write or call a legislator to thank her for her interest in cryonics and press our views on the matter. Of all the effects such an action might have, the one that is most certain is that it will strengthen the role of other people in making decisions that are properly his alone. The truth is that what you do with your own body, or contract to have done with it, is your business alone and concerns no one else, assuming of course that you haven't, in so doing, contrived to violate others' identical prerogatives. Neither that legislator nor the constituents she presumes to represent have any legitimate say in the matter. Your intentions are good, but by your actions and recommendations you empower the very institution with the potential to obstruct your plans. Your purpose is not, I assume, to win popular acceptance of cryonics, but to save your own life. Suppose the legislature, in its infinite wisdom, outlawed cryonics. Would you abide by that outcome? Of course not. Defeating one's mortality is far too important a matter to be decided by others. So, if you don't intend to abide by the outcome of the political process, it is the height of deceit to participate in it in the first place. Your actions ACCELERATE THE SUPPLANTING OF PERSONAL CHOICE BY COLLECTIVE DICTATE, which is the most serious disease of society resulting from the ascendancy of democratic political government a couple hundred years ago. The TRAGEDY OF POLITICAL GOVERNMENT manifests itself in this case by converting a noble and proper intention to defeat one's mortality into an empowering of the foremost non-technical potential obstacle to that accomplishment. Your energies would be far more profitably expended in INSULATING yourself from the depredations of collective dictate, than in STRENGTHENING it in the vain attempt to capture it on your behalf. Relations among people to be by mutual consent, or not at all. | Voting in government elections, or petitioning government, or willfully | | accepting government ``benefits'' when it's feasibly avoidable (thereby | | generating demand for taxation), accelerate the supplanting of personal | | choice by collective dictate, making these most serious crimes against | | humanity. ---John E. Kreznar, , uunet!ininx!jkreznar | It got so cold last winter, I saw a voter with his hand in his own pocket! Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=391