X-Message-Number: 16193
From:
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:05:58 EDT
Subject: Co-opetetion
The other day I was forwarded the following bit of humor by a friend:
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a
support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they
meet at the bar."
-- Drew Carey
Almost everybody loves to complain and very few people go through their daily
life without a fair measure of frustration, angst, and resentment. Life is
hard as well as rewarding. Sometimes it is more of the former than the latter.
As I write this I occasionally reach over next to my key board and pick up
and hold in my hand a piece of the planet Mars and a piece of the great
pyramid of Cheops at Giza. When I was a child I dreamed of going to both
places. I dreamed of standing on the sandy expanse that is Giza and scaling
the Great Pyramid and looking out over the Nile at sunrise. I have been
fortunate enough to do that.
I also dreamed of Mars as I looked at Werner von Braun's plans for going
there, rendered into awe inspiring drawings by Chesley Bonestell, and
reprinted from Colliers magazine endlessly in the 1950s and 1960s. I saw
2001: a space odyssey, when I was 13 years old in 1968. I was more certain
that I would reach the moon and possibly stand on Mars than I was of scaling
Cheops' at Giza and walking the banks of the Nile at sunset.
The Mars Scape compiled from the images sent back from the Mars Global
Surveyor hangs over the desk where I now sit writing. There is great pain and
sadness in my heart. Like Moses I can see my dreamland and even hold a piece
of it in my hands, but I will probably never go there. If I do, it will not
be in the way I wanted to, not in the way I dreamed about, not with the
people who should have been with me on that journey.
One bright summer day when I was very young I wondered what I would be doing
if I lived to see the year 2001. I would be incredibly old; 46 years old, in
fact. The years have flown by and it seems like only yesterday that all my
dreams were as real the next morning's sunrise. But, while time is swift it
is not always kind.
Like the anonymous Everybody in the joke above, I have my share of deep
dissatisfactions as well as petty frustrations. Despite my 46 years I have
not reached any great epiphany of enlightenment that leaves me a soul at
peace with universe. I am still all too human.
I can't help but reflect on the way my fellow humans have collectively chosen
this present we inhabit, this present that was once a dreaming little boy's
future. The resources that went into the Vietnam War, the arms race with the
former Soviet Union or the war on drugs: even a fraction of these would have
solved all the problems and opened all the opportunities that weigh so
heavily on me now. The "conquest of space" (to use a 1960s cliche) and
suspended animation could have been achieved a decade ago by now -- if not
sooner.
The remnants of that little boy in me cannot help but be angry and hurt that
this has not happened. The adult that is me cannot help but be appalled by
the cost in human life and suffering that the absence of these two
achievements has caused.
And so we come to Kryos, the present, and what the future will be.
I must confess I am a very tired man. If weariness could serve as a
substitute for Enlightenment then I would be shining with wisdom.
I have spent over 30 years deeply involved in cryonics with very few breaks.
I have made enough mistakes to see with clarity how hard it is to make good
decisions. This has given me a fair measure of understanding and even
compassion for the people who made the decisions that created the world we
now inhabit. It's hard being human.
If I have learned any lesson from life both in and out of cryonics it is that
one of the hardest things is to know when to complain and when to stay
silent. There is in this world clearly a place for both the Oscar Schindlers
who work silently to save what they can while living in the status quo, and
the J. Robert Oppenheimers and Linus Paulings who criticize, demonstrate, and
even lash out at the injustices in the world around them. Knowing when to do
which is the hard part. Knowing when there is no good solution possible is
even harder.
With the passage of time and the acquisition of experience I have come to
realize that criticism, while important, is often self limiting. Anger and
hatred are especially effective at obscuring the truth when the issues cannot
be reduced to the crisp objectivity of a well defined experiment. That's why
scientists love science so much: at its purest it is ever so much more
satisfying than the gray blur of hard tradeoffs and judgment calls in
everyday life.
I respect the right of people to choose to be a Schindler or an Oppenheimer.
Each has its price and each it critics who can and will cut you to the quick.
I do not want Kryos to be a combatant in the never ending cryonics wars. They
are not wars that can be won with ay kind of victory worth having. For those
who have read and understood Barbara Tuchman's The Guns Of August the folly
of believing in a quick win or a sure fire strategy should be painfully
apparent and taken deeply to heart. The story of the roots of World War I
which she so eloquently chronicles is a lesson of human stupidity and hubris
so vast it is hard to comprehend. For a feeling man or woman it is impossible
to truly comprehend without weeping. We are captivated by human struggles
and tragedies on that scale because we are creatures fascinated with extremes
and dazzled by numbers.
This tendency to look at big tragedies should not mislead us: all great
tragedies start in little ones. What we are doing in cryonics is important.
It will be a terrible tragedy if we do not succeed. Small choices and actions
made now are like the flapping of a butterfly's wings that are magnified by
the chain of causality leading onto to a hurricane.
While it is probably folly, I hope that Kryos can remain focused on
achievement and on constructive work. I hope that we can avoid incendiary
debates that generate only obscuring smoke and leave mostly ash in their
wake. I have seen and been a party to too many such debates in my years in
cryonics. Indeed, I left cryonics in no small measure to work in the garden
of science where I dreamed I would be far removed from such an inferno. I
learned that there is no such escape and that the only way to achieve any
measure of personal peace and satisfaction is to put a very high bar on
conflict. There is a time when war is the only recourse. That time is not now.
I wish that Charles Platt had not asked the questions he did about the
situation with Alcor in the UK in the way that he did. I still do not fully
understand what happened there myself, and in all my relatively few
communications about the matter I have made clear that neither I nor the
other principals in Kryos want to be caught in the middle of that situation.
If there is something constructive that we can do we will. But that will
depend on many factors outside our control. Certainly, the best approach is
to deal with matters privately and with discretion: exhausting all other
channels before the debate becomes public and erupts into open hostility. My
level of interest in even private debate on this issue is modest. We have
other priorities and problems.
While I personally have a great many strong feelings about the people and the
facility in the UK, I must put them in perspective. Jerry Leaf and I worked
very hard to set things up there with Alan Sinclair, Mike Price and Garret
Smyth. I have many good and powerful memories of those times. And I, more
than almost anyone else in the US, have stored away in my heart and head the
dreams that went with those experiences.
Alas, dreams do not always come true. I am sitting here gazing at a
photomosaic of Mars instead of peering at her dunes through the window of a
spacecraft. I have only a 500 milligram piece of Mars to hold in my hand
instead of a fistful of cold red sand.
While I disagree with what Charles Platt has done, I disagree also with Dave
Pizer's response. It is one thing to speculate privately on another person's
motivation and state of mind. It is another to do so publicly. Unless Dave
has spoken with Charles or has other hard evidence to indicate that Charles
is acting to promote Kryos by his post, then he should refrain from saying
so. It should be sufficient unto the day to say that this kind of exchange is
not productive. It is also the exact opposite of what I want and what I
solidly believe the majority of the principals in Kryos want.
I have had only brief contact with Dr. Jerry Lemler of Alcor. What contact I
have had has impressed me very favorably. It is still one of my fondest hopes
that Kryos and Alcor can work productively together, that we can be engaged
in what E. Shaun calls co-opetetion rather than cut throat competition.
No cryonics organization is a good fit for every person. Realizing this deep
down, on an emotional as well as an intellectual level, has been a great
relief to me. It takes much of the weight off my shoulders and it makes the
world a place where it becomes possible for more of our dreams to come true.
I still want more of Mars than the half gram piece that sits on my desk. I
still want more of the Universe for myself and for my loved ones than exists
as a probability now. I am not very sure about how to reach these objectives.
But I am very sure of several ways in which I can fail. Blaming arguments and
bitter recriminations are one sure way to fail.
I can be sure of this because I am personally too weary for the kind of
trench warfare where our feet rot off in the mud while we stare hopelessly up
at the stars shivering in the cold certainty that we will never get out of
the grave we dug for ourselves in the sure and certain hope of victory.
I want no part of that past for our future. War is sometimes necessary. Let
us be damn sure it is a just and absolutely necessary one before we prosecute
it. And let us work very hard to make such ugly acts, like death itself, a
less and less frequent part of all our futures.
Mike Darwin, CEO
Kryos
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