X-Message-Number: 10519
From: 
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 10:35:21 EDT
Subject: hope

Thomas Donaldson says it is untrue that it is always too soon to give up hope,
and that belief that there is always hope leads to passivity and reliance on
hope.

Come on, Thomas. That doesn't follow at all. "Praise the Lord, and pass the
ammunition." Remember that? We hope for help, but we rely on ourselves. If at
some juncture (prostrate with illness, perhaps) we cannot do anything further,
we can still hope, with justification. As you yourself have said many times,
we are far too deep in primitive ignorance to make any confident judgment
about what will or will not prove ultimately possible, and Mr. Smith
reiterates this.

When I say it is always too soon to despair, that obviously doesn't mean that
all situations are equally hopeful--only that uncertainty remains. It ALSO
means that, when tempted to despair, we ask ourselves whether we have really
exhausted all our resources, whether there is not something we have overlooked
that might help solve the problem. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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