X-Message-Number: 28173 Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 11:40:37 -0600 From: "Anthony ." <> Subject: thought's on Grodzicki's fight Following is a link to an article about Charles Grodzicki's current fight to change B.C. law which *seems* to outlaw cryonics: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2006/07/05/Cryonics/ Below the article are comments like: "What an immense waste of resources! most of humanity lives in poverty while we exploit them for their resources so that we can live our luxurious lifestyles." "I mean really. Cryogenics - What a money-scam... the Baby Boomers... come full circle to embrace a second-rate, nihilistic wasteful pseudo-scientific substitute for that ancient and time-tested answer to the "death question" ... Now we've gotta keep them around in the basement freezer for the next 100 years..? Unplug them!" Having encountered the attitude expressed in the first comment before, I can see why several cryonet members reponded to my post regarding poverty and the distribution of resources. I do not align myself with the sentiment of this first comment. Despatching a dead body always costs something in resources & money, unless you're going to leave the body to the vultures. I do not object to people making what provisions they can to safeguard their future - including cryonics. Such safeguards also come at a cost - but so does everything. Just driving your car kicks out pollution. What I have been suggesting all this time is not that Westerns like ourselves become ascetics - but that our elected governments and our not-elected corporations should be doing more to prevent the despoilation of human and other animal life and our world that we are seeing, and that we should be angry about and aware of this tragedy. We are animals who fear death and seek heroic transcendence of our fate - because to be a hero is to be meaningful and loved. The question for the human animal is "what are the real threats and what are the real avenues of heroic expansion?" This leads into an understanding of human want and need, and how they are so slippery and difficult to understand. Want and need, and how they drive the human animal to new creative endeavors, can not easily be rationally analysed or taken control of. And so the government or corporations can "manufacture" want and need, and the consent of what they want and need. Thus we buy into the latest war, or latest consumer fad. The problem is that we all must manufacture it at some level, because we all need meaning. In this sense human life is built on symbolic systems which attempt to transcend physical reality (the driving force behind religion, patriotism, etc.). It is my contention that cryonics is a good way of securing the very real want and need for more life - something which every living thing wants. It is ironic to read that "cryonics is a scam" when it is the only available method for trying to secure the future every person who is being honest with themselves wants to see. Anthony Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28173