X-Message-Number: 352 From att!lsuc!canrem!ben.best Mon Jun 17 11:05:21 1991 From: (Ben Best) Date: 16 Jun 91 (02:00) To: Subject: branden,esteem,death On the weekend of April 12-14 I attended Nathaniel Branden's "Self-Esteem and Personal Transformation" seminar in Toronto. I was very impressed by Branden's arrogance, sleaziness and lack of intelligence. The result of his 22 years of thinking about self-esteem seems to be that his ego has finally grown to the point that it has crushed all the other neurons in his brain. I think he should title his next book HOW TO ACHIEVE SELF-ESTEEM WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT COMPETENCE OR INTEGRITY. Anyone wishing to meet the Great Man can phone (604) 589-6868 and reserve a place in the June 28-30 seminar in Los Angeles. I am mentioning all this because in preparation for Branden's workshop I read his book HONORING THE SELF and thought the chapter on "Death Anxiety" might be of interest to cryonicists. Branden asserts that mortality is one of the "givens" of existence and that therapeutic efforts are necessary to overcome the powerful behind the denial of death, so that a client is more willing to participate in life. He says that working with "death anxiety" is the most rapid way to generate growth, because it focuses attention on values and priorities. But then he goes on to say that a "morbid" preoccupation with death usually reflects a fear of life -- that a sense that one is "not living" is translated into concern that life is too short and becomes a rationale for procrastination. Oddly, he says that to know how to live in eternity, one must first know how to live in the moment. (I say "oddly" because he has already said that living in eternity is impossible. I have noticed that Branden is more inclined to mollycoddle religionists these days, and explicitly flirts with mysticism.) I have not met any cryonicists who impressed me that they were people who are living for the "afterlife" (after reanimation) -- although I can imagine such people might exist (bored with life and living in a fantasy futurific world of nanotechnology and space travel). A willingness to face the reality of death and try to do something about it does not strike me as "morbid" (provided that something can really be done). Procrastinators are the sort of people who never get-around to making suspension arrangements. Branden's analysis is very much like that of other psychologists reflecting on death. Many of his conclusions follow from his assumption that mortality is a "given", but he has not done enough to check his premises. -- Ben Best () -- Canada Remote Systems. Toronto, Ontario NorthAmeriNet Host Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=352