X-Message-Number: 4685 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #4668 - #4672 Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 18:18:02 -0700 (PDT) Hi! Mike is quite right that things don't always go well. Even a superficial reading of history will tell anyone this --- though some may decide that their own society (country,culture) are special. It even looks as if the US is now in the first stages of decline. And I will also say, from personal experience, that NO country I know of treats those who are not citizens with the same gentility as those who are. Naturally the degree of discrimination (and even the reasons for it) differ from country to country, but it's always there. Making cryonics worldwide should involve much more than just seeing that cryonics societies are set up in other countries. As much as possible, we should cultivate the attitude that any other cryonicist from anywhere is closer to us than someone from our own country who is not a cryonicist. We may have to ask them to help us move, someday. As for development of safe, complete suspended animation, I feel a bit more pessimistic than Brian Wowk seems to about its social and general effect. Lots of people claim not to want to live now, and may not see that the future will be any better. And even now, prominent gerontologists argue that we should not change our lifespan. It would certainly help, but it would do so by removing only the top layer of problems for cryonics. And even with suspended animation there is another layer: just how can we make it continue until a cure for this patient is found? Really establishing cryonics in society at large can easily take a minimum of 100 years (not that anyone frozen now will be revived then, but that most people will accept the idea in general and for themselves then). We cannot prove that our patients will last long enough to be revived until someday we have a patient who lasts long enough to be revived. That will take a long time. After all, cryonics hasn't even existed for 50 years! As for my personal ATTITUDE to these problems, I think I am temperamentally more optimistic than Mike. But even temperament doesn't excuse a lack of awareness. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4685