X-Message-Number: 15856 Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:30:10 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: Motivation David King, #15846, writes >Hi, I was explaining my interest in cryonics to someone and they asked an >interesting question that I couldn't answer. They asked, "What would be the >motivation for future generations to re-animate me?" It may be that not everyone in the future will have this interest, but it seems a very good possibility that some will (I will even say many). I certainly intend to (but someone else who has this interest may have to reanimate me!). I don't think we will be that rare. People can be interesting. People with memories of the past should be especially so. It will be interesting to see into what advanced beings such people develop, along with the rest of us. There are many reasons to want to reanimate someone, when you think about it. Indeed, it should not be hard to become obsessed with this idea. The world of the future will be very different from ours today in some ways. Hopefully, such things as the self-sustaining life-support system will be available to all. You will be able to do much more of what you want to do with your life, rather than being constrained to some "daily grind." It should be possible to enhance your powers, including mental abilities and ability to feel joy and meaning. In a world like that, people will still seek what is rare and hard to get, such as living, functioning people of the past. Today there is an organization, the Society for Venturism (http://www.venturist.org -- though right now the web site is a bit limited), that is determined to see that some people of the future (those in the organization, at least, but hopefully others too) *will* care about reanimating everyone who can be reanimated. >... Say a hundred years from now >the technology and medical knowledge does exist to reanimate us. But people >a hundred years from now will have their own lives to live and their own >problems to worry about. They may be running out of places to live on our >finite globe with an ever-increasing population. Highly unlikely, in my view. Who would want to overpopulate the earth, in a world of plenty with no aging process to worry about? > They may be worried about >feeding everyone. What could you or I contribute to society a hundred years >from now? We would be so far behind in our knowledge base we would be >practically useless to anyone. You should not need "knowledge" in the same way as today--see above. But I think you will have the means and motives to acquire it in abundance. >I suppose we could go back to school and >"catch up". But the question remains, what would be their motivation to >reanimate a few hundred frozen stiffs? If we, today, had the ability to >reanimate people who had been frozen a hundred years ago, besides perhaps >re-animating a few for scientific and historical research, what would be our >motivation to reanimate everybody. I can't think of any. People ought to have a *very* strong motivation to see to it that they *don't* have to live in a world of scarcity in which they have limited lifespans, intelligence, freedom to do as they please, and ability to feel joy, meaning, and satisfaction in life. I expect, when it really dawns on people that they *don't* have to put up with these shortcomings, they will relentlessly pursue their elimination. What other sort of outcome would anybody tolerate, who didn't have to? I also think people will realize that they have something major to gain from good relations and harmonious interaction with others. This, then, will provide a motive to be proactively benevolent, and not simply indifferent or hostile. Mike Perry Secretary, Society for Venturism Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15856