X-Message-Number: 16998
From: 
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:42:23 EDT
Subject: justice and mercy

CSBC wrote to the effect that future people may revive (at best) only the 
most virtuous (or least antisocial) of the frozen patients. Nonsense on 
several counts, of which I now mention only one.

"I don't want justice. I want mercy." And many of us--perhaps most, even 
now--are prepared to temper justice with mercy. Some cryonicists have said in 
public that they would not refuse to freeze even the nastiest people, the 
worst criminals--in part because it should eventually become easy to cure 
them. And even now society as a whole rarely kills its predators, but instead 
spends large amounts of money to keep them isolated but alive and relatively 
comfortable.

From the broadest perspective, no one deserves blame (or credit either) for 
anything at all. We each do what we can and what we must, no more and no 
less. No one made himself, and no one created his own environment--we are all 
equally victims or beneficiaries of blind chance.

"Justice" is basically a matter of politics or expediency or practical 
necessity. It works--more or less. But the shift toward mercy will almost 
inevitably increase with time. 

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

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