X-Message-Number: 30029
From: 
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:20:45 EST
Subject: a bit more on fear of death

Those who insist that unconscious or inherent fear of death is universal  and 
inescapable are simply absurd and not paying attentiion.
 
There certainly is a nearly universal "survival instinct" in a restricted  

sense, viz., that when faced with imminent threat most people, most of the time,
 will try desperately to escape. Anybody will try to dodge a tiger or a 

taxicab.  (There are "abnormal" exceptions even to this, as in the "martyrdom" 
of  
zealots.) But when the threat is not clear and present--and in modern life  it 
very seldom is--then the situation is very different, and a great many  

people, much of the time, will make choices that ignore self preservation or are
even self destructive. 
 
And again, we see the very common case of miserable people who do not  choose 
to live. True, they do not often choose active suicide, but they do often  

reject medical help. One of the well known cagegories here is that of patients
on dialysis, who fairly often choose to come off it and accept death. 
 
As I said, I think the only practical lesson is that we should try to  

motivate people to make the cryonics choice for their relatives who do not  
oppose 
it but have lacked the energy to make arrangements. 
 
Trying to motivate people through encouraging optimism and love of life  does 
not seem to work. This was my motivation in writing Man into  Superman, and 
it was a total dud. Most people do not want radical change,  and few want 

serious change in themselves. What DOES work, in our experience, is  family 
love. A 
significant number of our patients were frozen because of the  efforts of 
spouses or children. 
 
Robert Ettinger



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