X-Message-Number: 1907
Date: 06 Mar 93 13:40:54 EST
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: CRYONICS Membership

To: Cryonet


March 6, 1993


In response to Steve Harris: my question ("Why do we have to 
speak of cryonics "members"?) was partly rhetorical. I do 
realize that small groups of unusal people who feel at odds 
with the world will naturally tend to band together a bit 
more tightly than, say, people who happen to be buying 
insurance from the same provider. For emotional reasons, one 
feels more like a member of Alcor than merely a customer. 

However, I suggest that these emotional reasons are not all 
positive. On one hand, people who feel like members may show 
a greater level of commitment and may all pull together for 
the "cause." On the other hand, as Michael Riskin says, there 
is also the tendency for unrealistic expectations, along with 
impassioned infighting. 

My bias is that I tend to trust rational interactions more 
than I trust emotional interactions. Therefore, I would feel 
more secure if cryonics "membership" became less emotionally 
charged, and more like an everyday business transaction. 

To some extent, this is already happening. I think we must 
have reached the point where the majority of Alcor members 
are not activists. They are just paying money in exchange for 
an anticipated service. This is surely a healthy trend, so 
long as they pay sufficient money to cover the real costs of 
the service. Right now, this is not the case. Therefore we 
have the worst of both worlds: activists getting very excited 
and squabbling with each other (yes, I include myself) 
because we are struggling to "support" the organization, 
while the organization is serving a larger group of people 
who feel no obligation to help out, because they are in it 
just on a value-for-money basis. 

I really think we should be clear, in our own heads, about 
the real nature of cryonics. This is not a trivial matter of 
semantics, because the mental image that one has of an 
organization will always tend to influence decisions that are 
made regarding its future. For instance, if we think of Alcor 
as a tight-knit fraternity serving its "members," we will 
feel we are betraying them by raising annual fees. If we 
think of Alcor in less emotional terms, merely as a service 
provider, we would assess the market and determine how much 
we can charge for the service without prompting people to go 
and get cheaper suspensions elsewhere. I don't think anyone 
has mentioned this as an important factor, in all the recent 
postings about raising fees. Therefore, clearly, the 
emotional, "unbusinesslike" mindset prevails. 

--Charles Platt 

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