X-Message-Number: 9148 Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 00:51:03 -0800 From: Peter Merel <> Subject: Saga, Presumption & Purpose Robert Ettinger writes, >The "dramatic fallacy" concerns the feeling many people have toward events >surrounding and following their deaths. They will die, but they feel that they >will persist in a sense as presences on a stage and in the appreciation of the >audience. They disregard the fundamental fact that after death--in the >ordinary course of events, without cryonics and without religious types of >rescue and without the Omega Point--they will simply NOT EXIST, and nothing >whatever that happens or does not happen in the world will matter to them. I've yet to see good reason to regard existence as more than a value judgement. Light refracts from countless drops of water, and I say a rainbow exists. Neurons jangle eachothers' synapses in my head, and I say I exist. Existence is lines on a map; what's actually going on seems much grander and subtler than those lines. Let me put this another way. In my study I have maybe a thousand books. I know their authors better than most of the people I work with. To me, they seem more alive. If the dramatic effects of the authors' lives continue, why should we say their existence does not? If their ideas live in my head or in their heads, what difference does it make? I can think of blood relations I'd not swap for the works of one or two favourite authors - can't you? >However, I think Peter overstates the case in prescribing the necessary >psychological condition for acceptance of cryonics--transformation of dramatic >context etc. For some people, at least, it is simpler than that. We think we >can save and extend and improve our lives, and that is more than enough. I wonder whether that doesn't fall into the "saga" category. Or perhaps you're saying that it is the aesthetic pleasure of life that drives such people - I'd grant aesthetics as another good dramatic rationale. Or is it the *opportunity* to save, extend and improve that you mean - which I might lump in with a creative "presumption". --- Rand Simberg writes, >With all due respect, I would suggest that the will to survive is primarily >hardwired evolutionarily. Ah, the will for *what* to survive? Your name? Your genes? Your sense of purpose? Your social affiliations? We've been round this question many times here. That we all want something of ourselves to survive may indeed be reinforced by our evolution, but it's plain from the massive undersubscription of cryonics that most folks don't think of survival the way we do. People give their lives for countries and religions, even for companies and football teams, far more readily than they attempt to save them via cryonics. >I believe that it will always be subjective, and that even the belief in an >objective reality requires a leap of faith (or an axiom, if one is more >comfortable with the term). There is no point in arguing the point (at >least with me), because I (and Goedel, among others) don't find it arguable. Doesn't the belief that reality is always subjective also require a leap of faith? What is this difference between subjective and objective? --- Thomas Donaldson writes, >You may be quite right about how many people spend their lives acting out >their dramas. HOWEVER that attitude simply doesn't work if you want to >live forever. Even the notion that your life is to be a saga doesn't work. Saga in the sense of roman-fleuve or soap-opera, which is drama without denouement. The trouble with this form, of course, is that it tends to become repetitive, but so long as there are expectations of "extension and improvement" it may entertain indefinitely. Chesterton's "Father Brown" cycle is a good literary example. Van Gogh's self-portraits might be on point too. >AND it is NOT presumptuous to try to alter your fate, and think of ways to >do so, rather than simply following a dramatic path which has been traced >by millions before you. Of course I agree. Then again I can present no end of folk to attest to my own presumption :-) >A drama exists only when there is an audience. If I understand you, you >are also saying that many people play their lives out for an audience. That's not quite what I had in mind. An author can be his own audience. What I mean is that people understand their memories in dramatic terms. Ask anyone to recount the meaningful parts of their lives and you'll hear drama. Peoples' motivations seem to me to generally be cast in these same dramatic terms. >You may also have given >an explanation of why so many PROMINENT people fail to become cryonicists: >they will lose their audience, and on revival must once more spend years to >create another one.... and may even discover, finally, that they now live in >a world in which that relation does not exist. I think that there's more to it than this. I note that writers of prose and software are highly over-represented in our ranks compared with the general population. What distinguishes these folk from other emminences is their faith in their ability to create, to define reality for themselves and for others. But creative folk are rare as hens' teeth in the world. The majority of PROMINENT people are cannibals and marketeers, not builders and writers. >So do you count yourself among these people or not? Among the vain? I think I'm pretty cute all right, but my reason for interest in cryonics is mainly this creative presumption. I will be happy to build things so long as there is a need for things to be built. Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9148