X-Message-Number: 22569 Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 10:57:16 -0400 From: Subject: John Grigg, Charles Platt, and the "desire to know" In Message #22567 (Subject: Returning to the subject at hand about Charles and Dr. L), John Grigg wrote: > I just want to end this post by saying I want to know much > more about your twenty-seven page memo (27 dang PAGES!!) > criticizing Dr. L and how it ultimately affected him. John, "your desire to know" does not equal anyone else's obligation to tell you. Charles, the fact that people ask you questions in a public format and even question your motives does not mean you have to answer them, writer though you are. John, when I was Alcor President, I knew hundreds of stories about the members' health, finances, family lives, even sex lives that you would probably find interesting, but I don't have any obligation to tell anyone about them unless it is a Director needing to know them for an Alcor purpose. Your curiosity to know the inside workings of Alcor is understandable but misguided. If you want to work to become an Alcor insider and even an Alcor Director someday, that would be a good goal. But people won't be impressed if you insist on having private discussions in public. And if you ever become an Alcor Director, you will have so many difficult, even agonizing, *private* decisions to make about suspensions and staff and members and legal matters that you will understand how difficult this sort of thing can be. The only purposes that could be accomplished by further discussion of this topic are: 1. Satisfying the undirected curiosity of onlookers. 2. Stirring up the same kinds of arguments and ill will we have had in cryonics many times over the years, which prevents some of our best minds from working together as they choose up sides and throw clever verbal bombs at each other. We should all have gotten over this by 6th grade or at least by age 30. 3. Finding a scapegoat, which might make some people feel justified in some previous animosity they had toward the scapegoat, and which allows them to ignore the other problems that an organization might have. Scapegoats don't really take the sin away, you see. They only take away the urgency to examine the sin. John, if you really wanted to understand what has happened, you wouldn't ask questions which prejudge the answer. That's an old interviewer trick for antagonistic radio and TV talk shows, very irritating to me, completely counterproductive to meaningful conversation, and a good tip that no *listening* to the other side will actually take place. Let's give this thread a rest. Steve Bridge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22569