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