X-Message-Number: 24336 From: Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 13:24:11 EDT Subject: "Independence Day" from the Tyranny of Death, Written July 4, 2004 In a message dated 7/5/2004 5:04:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, writes: Dave Pizer is talking about a day to celebrate and promulgate physical immortality, etc. The final paragraph or two of his posting follows: A day that we get together each year and all declare publicly that we want to achieve physical immortality and we want to be independent from death. From that day forward we would publicly act as if we were in a battle against death and for immortality for all. For some of us we have been acting informally this way for some time, but perhaps now is a time for all of us to band together and state it formally for the whole world to know of our intentions. ???? We could call a press conference and have a big party. Any thoughts on this? David Hello, David and fellow Cryonauts, David Pizer has an interesting idea. Freedom from slavery begins in the mind of visionary leaders, and is promulgated by promotions, celebrations, literature, songs, poems, and culture. In a like manner, the memes of freedom from the tyranny of death and aging also have their beginning in the minds of visionary leaders. Believe it or not, gentle reader, we, this means people looking like YOU and ME, may be looked upon as the "Founding Fathers" of the ultimate revolution. This "Revolution" is against the ultimate tyranny. As you read these words, free radicals are damaging your mitochondria by the millions. Your cellular repair mechanisms are being eroded by time and multiple aging processes. Lipofuscin is coagulating in your skin and in your brain. You and I are suffering from "The death of a thousand cuts" that is the aging process. The memetic engineering that underlies changing the tragedy that is aging and death involves nothing less than a cultural sea change. The odds of you dying in a terrorist attack are minuscule. The odds of you dying as a result of the standard aging process are close to 100%. Yet governments around the world (not just ours) are willing to spend billions...tens and hundreds of billions...to do whatever it takes in their perhaps misguided minds to "combat terror." The discrepancy here lies in the CONCEPT of what is DOABLE. Have you lost a loved one to cancer? To Cardiovascular disease? To the wasting process of mental aging and Alzheimer's? Do you feel that this loss is any less than the loss of the families of 9/11? Yet we can point fingers at (alleged) culprits and conspirators of a terrorist attack, and mobilize huge public support for "preemptive" strikes against folks whose connection with 9/11 is tenuous at best, and perhaps nonexistent. I am not trying to be overly political here about the Iraq war. I am looking for an obvious disconnect between the national will to make war against terrorists but refuse to fight the ULTIMATE terrorists: Death and Aging. To these evil and hated foes, we as a society still believe in appeasement, surrender, and acceptance. And this is function of public attitude and will. Most people, including many influential scientists and "ethicists" have the public's ear, believe that aging and death are inevitable. Bush and his cronies, including our favorite and justifiably vilified Leon Kass, think that it is a GRAND thing that we become infirm, lose our strength, have our muscles, internal organs, and brain become increasingly malfunctioning. And that we eventually die. The huge and growing body of research showing that we can and do combat aging is still not widely known or accepted. The very CONCEPT of trying to defeat aging and eventually death is viewed by many as "not accepting god's will" and "unnatural." Yes, to these people, life without the timeline imposed by death would be meaningless. And this is JUST why ideas like Pizer's are so important. Why we need to "rant" to each other about the beauty of and potential of both NON aging and eventually YOUTHENING as we add years and wisdom. Why we need to become compelling proponents of and living examples of mental, physical, and attitudinal youthening. Is there anyone reading this who feels that a "Manhattan Project" against the basic mechanisms of aging would not yield LIFE SAVING benefits for millions of individuals? Yes, David, I will sign on for your "Independence Day." And I will sign on to help draft the "Declaration of Independence" against our common enemies. We need to demonize and vilify DEATH and his handmaiden AGING. We need to personify them, to make this struggle to defeat them a HEROIC and EPIC one. Too corny? Too fuzzy brained? Too vague and nonscientific you say? Well, just grow up. Look around. Most folks are NOT motivated by our most rational arguments. There are less people signed up for cryonics than people who believe the pyramids were made by aliens. Pick a lunatic fringe cultish idea, and you will find more adherents ready to lay down their lives and fortunes for it than we can muster. So, the rock stars and the sports heroes of my world are the scientists who daily struggle with the astonishingly difficult but not intractable mechanisms of aging. Let's have a day to celebrate and canonize these people. Let's make it a day to celebrate the progress that humanity has made against aging and death already, and consider the progress to be made in our glorious future. Let's start to see ourselves as the Patrick Henrys, the Thomas Jeffersons, of a memetic revolution of consciousness. Count me in on the NEW Independence Day! Rudi Hoffman Port Orange, FL Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24336