X-Message-Number: 25891
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: resentment of limits and the passage of time
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 11:56:21 +0100

On
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4385459.stm
Dr Rowan Williams is quoted as saying:
>>Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a
resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do,
fear or even disgust at growing old.<<

If people didn't have anger at what they can't do, then humans would be no
different than other animals, living short brutal lives naked and restricted
to areas of the planet where the climate permitted such an existence.

Most of what we take for granted today was once considered impossible, and
indeed invented by people who were eccentrics in their day. see "Strange
Brains and Genius" by Dr Clifford Pickover:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0306457849/longevitybooksA/
I can recall being told that video recording is impossible, that no
individual
would ever own a computer (considering one of a specification that today
even the dustman would refuse to take away), and that it was silly to
consider using PCM to transmit or record entertainment material (the latter
by PCM's inventor).

There must be a period of "anger at the seemingly impossible" before people
are motivated to make it possible.

Jesus healed the sick and "raised" those considered by their contemporaries
to be dead. Today, cryonics makes it possible for those with the advantages
of future technology to restore those that are considered by their
contemporaries (eg doctors, pathologists, lawyers etc) to be dead.
Cryonicists do not claim to be able to "raise people from the dead". But
they are making the process easier for those in the future who may have this
ability.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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