X-Message-Number: 31209
From: 
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:50:14 EST
Subject: Thought provoking post by Julian Conrad  re: "cranks" and ide...

In a message dated 11/29/2008 5:00:54 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
 writes:


I  wonder how odd the gurus and intellectual role
models adopted by today's  cryonicists will look in a
century or two. I can see our revivers asking  about
the "Ludwig von-who? Ayn who? Robert who-lein? etc."
that some of  us talk a lot about, while the future
society we'll find ourselves in had  long ago solved
today's problems with ideas owing little or nothing  to
the 20th century intellectuals who seem inordinately
smart or  insightful to some of us now. 

Consider that not that long ago  forward-thinking
people (the sort who would have written for  the
Edge.org website if the internet existed back then)
viewed Marxism,  General Semantics, eugenics and
psychoanalysis as the cutting edge concepts  in the
progress of human understanding. Today we can see that
these  ideas suffer from serious problems, even though
they still have proponents  often called "cranks." 

Will many of today's cryonauts become  tomorrow's
cranks because we have trouble incorporating a  future
society's world view that conflicts with our  current
pseudo-explanations for the way the world  works?

Regards,

Julian


(End copying of Julian Conrad post, Rudi Hoffman writing follows:)
 
I found this an exceptionally well written and thought provoking  posting on 
cryonet.  
 
EXAMPLE OF PAUL KURTZ AND THE CFI WRITERS

And, it is indeed worth noting that the intellectuals of previous decades,  
some of whom are still active, were active proponents of ideas and ideologies  
that are now substatiantially out of favor.
 
For instance, I have been a subscriber for perhaps a dozen years to the  
magazines, "Free Inquiry" and "The Skeptical Inquirer" put out by what is now  
known as the "Center for Inquiry" based in Amhurst, NY.  

I also  listen consistently (would one say "faithfully"?) to the tremendous 
podcast that  CFI promulgates, hosted by D J Grothe, called, "Point of 

Inquiry."  And, I  read many of the outstanding books that the CFI publishing 
house  
promotes/publishes.  These guys form much of my ideological and  intellectual 
worldview.
 
The point is that most of these skeptical/agnostic/atheists intellectuals  
writing for the above idea sources are self-acknowledged socialists  

currently...and twenty or thirty years ago were at the vanguard of  
intellectualism, 
which included a socialist, perhaps even communistic  orientation.  

Paul Kurtz, who in his early eighties remains the  very active head of CFI, 

remains a self avowed socialist.  He writes,  surprisingly compellingly, in his
"Humanist Manifesto" (several iterations over  the decades) that radical 

divisisions of wealth and power between humans needs  to be "cured" by 
government 
redistribution and heavy taxation of the "haves" to  the "have nots."  
 
Like a disproportionate percentage of cryonicists, I tend toward a freedom  
loving orientation loosely known as "libertarianism."   And I am  sometimes 

dismayed to find that the politics on both the transnational /  national level 
as 
well as the local level of CFI activists is agressively left  leaning.  
 
HERE'S HOW THIS RELATES TO "FUTURE CRANKS" POSTING
 
The point of this posting is that I agree with Julian that we as  a group and 
as individuals need to be aware of tendency to see reality through  our own 
ideological biases.  
 
Perhaps some of you have had the experience of running into  "kooks" or shall 
we say "crackpots, or cranks" within the realms of  cryonics.  (Don't say we 
all are...although some would! LOL)

And, the reality of life has a way of showing that the  certainties of one 
age may be discredited, or certainly superceded, by the  realities and social 
constructs of a subsequent age.  
 
Which is a nice way of saying that the sophomoric understandings  and 

certainties I held about life, and really important and foundational  
philisophical 
bedrocks I based my worldviews on while in college, turned out to  be 

astonishingly naive, ignorant, and plain old fashioned wrong as gained  insights
later 
in life.
 
Perhaps it may make all of us a bit wiser to consider how our  understanding 
of all sorts of things may be correct, but incomplete.    As I consider the 

brashness, the intellectual superiority and certainty, the  plain old fashioned
obnoxiousness of much of my early behavior, I am  embarrassed.  
 
And, it makes me resolve to try to see things from alternate  viewpoints...to 
talk and read others who come from ideological positions that  are 

diametrically opposed to mine...to be less of a "crank" and more of a  friend.  
To stop 
finding where people are "wrong" and "I am right" and  looking for a synthesis 
of worldviews, a fabric of life woven with different  textures and colors.
 
So, perhaps when we are resuscitated in a world with an  amazingly different 
value system, we will have practiced the art of thriving  when our 
philisophical worldviews are deemed to be incomplete.
 
Warm and Respectful Regards,
 
Rudi


Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU  ChFC

Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com
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World's Leading Cryonics Insurance Provider  rudihoffman.com
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