X-Message-Number: 9131
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 11:00:04 -0800
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Drama and Amnesia

Robert Ettinger writes,

>Rand Simberg (#9122) says he would not be interested in saving himself through
>cryonics if he knew "he" would be revived as an amnesiac, because the amnesiac
>would be a different person.
>
>This is merely an attitude or feeling, not based on knowledge of what "really"
>constitutes identity, because we don't have that knowledge yet. But one should
>also remember that an "amnesiac" has only lost SOME of his memories, perhaps
>those relating to his personal history. If someone decides that this sort of
>memory constitutes his identity, or if that is what he values most, then that
>is his decision, but it is premature.

I write this on a particularly groggy morning when I don't really feel myself.
It's easy to feel disconnected from yourself when many of the things that 
remind you of who you think you are are a long way away. Taken out of your
dramatic context, it is only your recollection of context that defines you,
and that recollection is fragile and plastic.

Do I mean this literally? Yes, I believe that it is dramatic context, the
way we construe ourselves with respect to the drama of our memories, that
entirely determines our identities. If we have a will to survive, it is to
fulfill a dramatic purpose. With the loss of dramatic context and of our
recollection of this context, with displacement in time and in memory, what
good does a beating heart and sound mind? Rand makes the point that his own
walking but disconnected carcass would be to him no more or less than any 
man, and I can't see how he is mistaken.

It is a consequence of this that so so many people do not take an interest
in cryonics and yet spend fortunes on elaborate funerals. Their conception 
of their dramatic purpose is well defined, resolved by leaving the 
stage with progeny, pith or wit. They see themselves not as authors of 
the drama but as actors animated by some divine bard, and their funerals
not as continuity, but applause.

To find cryonics desirable requires either a tremendous presumption,
to view yourself as author rather than subject of fate, an unfulfilled
dramatic purpose, such as the drive to create some great work or regain
some lost love, or a transformation of dramatic context, the elevation of 
the drama to a saga, which might be effected by reading and accepting the 
work of Halperin, Heinlein, Drexler, Lao Tse or other transhumanists.
Without the survival of dramatic memories, only the first of these three
can be regarded as a rewarding outcome.

Peter Merel.

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