X-Message-Number: 854
Date: Mon, 25 May 92 15:51:40 PDT
From: 
Subject: Re:  cryonics: #852 - #853


The reasons that recruiting suspension members is important to cryonics
organizations are as follows:

1) The more people there are that are committed to the success of cryonics,
that have a personal stake in its success, the harder it will be for those
who are irrationally opposed to the practice of cryonics (by others) to
ban, restrict, interfere with, tax or otherwise endanger the operation of
cryonics organizations.  

Also, society will in general be far more cooperative with cryonicists if
we are seen as a significant movement numerically.  Numbers engender
respectability.  

This is by far the most important consideration.

2) Organizations with larger memberships have more resources, most importantly
money, talent and volunteers.  Such security is important to the long term
success of an organization.  And it is also necessary in order for an 
organization to have the luxury of expending resources towards the 
accomplishment of long term strategic goals (such as revival of suspension
patients) in addition to immediate tactical problems (such as suing the
local health department when they try to obstruct a suspension).  

This is the second most important consideration.

3) If we do not care enough about our fellow beings enough to at least make
some reasonable attempt to educate them about their options for attempting to
extend their lives, then how can we argue that we--or our successors--will
care enough about cryonically suspended patients to expend the time and
resources necessary to revive them?

This emphatically does not mean that we should "force cryonics down people's
throats."  It is sufficient if we do the best we can to make cryonics
easily available, to make the information necessary for rationally evaluating 
the cryonics option easily accessible, and gently and calmly let everyone
know we're here, what cryonics is about and how to find out more.  

Don't rant and rave at those who reject--or simply fail to take advantage
of--cryonics.  First of all, it won't help and will probably hurt.  Secondly,
it wastes our time and energy on an endeavor with a very low probability of
success.  

When a person has come to see that conscious life is a physical phenomenon
arising out of the operation of a physical device (the brain), when he sees
that molecular technology will be able to repair the body and brain of 
injuries at the cellular and even the molecular level, and when he realizes
that the advancement of science and technology leads to a higher quality of
life in the long run (even though a Utopia may not be likely or even possible,
and even though technology is only a tool that can be used either for good
or for bad), then he will be receptive to the practice of cryonics.   

The best way to sell cryonics is to sell the memes on which it depends, but
without stigmatizing these memes by explicitly associating them with
cryonics.  

 (Alan Lovejoy)

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