X-Message-Number: 7260
From:  (Randy)
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Re:Rick's Reanimation Scenario 
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 09:09:11 GMT

>From: Rick 
>Subject: reanimation

>One point missed in discussion about future reanimation is the demographics of

>future civilization.  In the industrialized world the percentage of older 
people
>is increasing each year.  If recent news about medications to ameliorate
>Alzheimer's disease is true, we may expect to have an older, wiser group

>in the near future (and continuing) populating the earth.  I for one think that
>is a good thing.  The problem with current life span is that by the time one
>is old enough to mellow out and be more tolerant of others- one croaks!

I agree. I think that this consumer society of ours overvalues youth
and undervalues age. I am only in my thirties, but as I get older I
realize more and more that older folks have an entirely different
perspective from most everyone else. It is truly *is* wisdom. I can
scarely believe the difference in my own father. I can see signs of a
radically different outlook in him. He's far more thoughtful and
tolerant than he was 20 years ago. I  suppose the realization that he
truly is going to die just like everyone else is a factor there.
Yes, if cryonics does work, and death is more or less put of
indefinitely, we'll see a truly different society from anything even
seen before. 

Who's to say that the softening of the human heart that has
accompanied western civ is not in part due to the fact that people are
living longer and therefore more mellow and more respectful and
appreciative of life. 


>As far as worrying about who will reanimate the frozen few, I thought that's
>what the funding is all about.  Isn't the whole idea to fund one's suspension
>and care at least a century out into the future? 

As I see it, there were always be doctors and caregivers and
biosciences grad students, those who have taken an oath to preserve
life and those in search of a degree and knowledge. If the reanimation
technologies are developed, then we in the dewars will represent lives
needing restoration, just as a critically ill patient in a hospital
deserves lifesaving care, so too, will we.

> That's why is seems to me
>to be of the utmost importance to have the Cryonics companies show stable
>leadership, and like insurance companies, make the utmost effort to reflect
>that stability to the public (including this news group). 

True.

>When I see quarreling it makes me worry about the long-term stability of
>cryonics. 
>We have to look at cryonics as life insurance, market it as life insurance,
>even fund it as life insurance.  Ideally, we would want a cryonics company
>to be a public company with shareholders and billions in assets.  Wouldn't you
>rather buy a cryonics policy from Allstate if you could?

I recall reading something somewhere (was it in an Inspector Morse
detective novel ?!) about the struggles of the first life insurers in
19th Century England. They had quite a struggle coming up with
customers for life insurance. Entirely new concept and all that. I
need to research that; might be some useful analogies there.

>It would be nice to picture a scenario where I am reanimated in 2030 and I
>awake to find a global village populated by a energetic grey-haired friendly
>people who live in homes powered by the sun, where war is a thing of the past,
>and the grandchildren live on the Moon.  Why not?

Why not indeed? I'm sure Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy of 250,000 BC East
Africa would see as a utopia any of our lives. There are no true
utopias and never will be, but everything is, as they say, relative.

Randy


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