X-Message-Number: 29152
References: <>
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: religion without worship or dogma
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:05:01 +0100

On 16 Feb 2007, at 16:11,  wrote:

> Finally getting to the point, the main element of "religion" that  
> we need  to
> emulate is fellowship, which is found not only in nominal religions  
> but in
> ideologies and even political parties and clubs. The obvious  
> problem is that we
>  are too few and too widely scattered, and also too diverse and
> disputatious,with  not too many communal or social type personalities.
>
> I don't know if the strong fellowship goal is achievable, or if it is
> necessary. We are gaining, and at an increasing rate, even though  
> the absolute
> numbers are still ridiculously small. But it ought to be possible  
> to emulate the
> political parties in their use of volunteers to build fellowship.  
> If getting
> together in person is too awkward, then use the net. Assign jobs  
> and offer
> rewards of praise and tokens. It's not really a big mystery, but  
> it's a big
> job..

And it isn't going to happen anytime soon unless some people with the  
resources are willing to contribute to the effort. We can come up  
with donations to get a single person suspended, but we haven't done  
it when it comes to getting a group organized, so they can fund their  
own suspensions.

We know from surveys in, for example, the UK, that about a third of  
persons find suspension acceptable. However, these people are  
typically surrounded by those who are opposed and they face ridicule  
if they even express themselves. In any urban area, there are  
probably thousands of people who would be willing to join an  
organization that would provide them with suspension + fellowship.  
But without the fellowship, the short-term incentives don't exist and  
therefore the sustained motivation required for suspension can't be  
maintained.

We are not going to be able to activate groups of people as long as  
the payoffs (life extension) are only directed to individuals. A  
totally different marketing dynamic is needed, something more  
'viral'. This is like word-of-mouth advertising and the big players  
are using this more and more, because the old method of bombarding  
people with ads is becoming less and less effective.

I would like to see a commitment from each of the suspension  
organizations to provide a gratis preservation for one person. This  
would be available to an organization that demonstrated it could  
become self-sustaining after the free suspensions. We have legal  
talent available to the movement, these people should put together  
the documents needed to do this. Then the resources have to be made  
available to start the organization - marketing, operational funding  
for the first year(s), etc.

Once an effective model is demonstrated, it could be repeated in  
cities around the World. This would dramatically increase the number  
of funded members and, most importantly, start building the political  
power that is necessary to avoid annihilation of the entire movement  
and most likely all persons currently suspended, when cryonics gets  
high enough on the political agenda to become a main-line issue.  We  
have already seen the problems that can occur when a few politicians  
decide that 'regulation' of cryonics is needed. Cryonics will be a  
lot easier to stop then stem-cell research, and we have seen that  
that is far from unlikely.


dss



David Stodolsky    Skype: davidstodolsky

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