X-Message-Number: 31670 From: Mark Plus <> Subject: Re: social driven growth vs publicity driven growth Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 07:41:27 -0700 Unperson writes: >I posted an article here on cryonet some months ago called THE BIG SORT (from slate.com). It showed how the GOP grew its organization via social growth, in particular working within religious organizations and by using a technique whereby the recruiter is selected to mirror the potential recruits in certain major social and personal characteristics. In other words, social recruitment is best done by recruiting people who are like yourself, or by at least trying to be like the recruit. A lot of good that's done the Republicans lately. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that now only 21 percent of the American population identifies itself as Republican, an impressive drop for a party that had its way in American politics for a generation. I have to wonder if some kind of shaming process partly accounts for the decline. >Also, we do not generally work within religious organizations, which have proven to be a very fertile ground for social recruiting, and also because those who are religious are likely to want to live forever. Yet another example of trying to model cryonics' growth after a declining sector of American society: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/1209/sacred%26profane%3A_aris_survey_gets_%E2%80%98religion%E2%80%99%2C_misses_boat 'The recently-published American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), compiling the results from nearly 55,000 Americans, made headlines this week for the trends it revealed in the nation's religious landscape: Christianity is losing ground, more and more Americans claim to have "no religion,” and the number of Muslims has doubled, to name only a few. Jews seem to be disappearing-the religious ones, anyway; evangelicals are increasing their numbers as the mainline churches continue to shrink; and new religious communities like Wicca continue to grow in popularity.' Evangelical Christians represent a bigger slice of a shrinking pie, in other words. Perhaps you should look at religions definitely thriving in the U.S. like Islam and Wicca as models for recruiting more cryonicists, unperson. "Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . . Life expectancy will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death will be rare and accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981). http://www.box.net/shared/static/ay9lub60ha.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/10948503/Up-Wing-Priorities Mark Plus _________________________________________________________________ HotmailR has a new way to see what's up with your friends. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/WhatsNew?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_WhatsNew1_052009 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=31670