X-Message-Number: 4608
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4593 - #4600
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 23:38:15 -0700 (PDT)

Hi again!

To John Clark: It seems that we agree on something: that purpose depends on
the person, and to ask any other entity what your own purpose is will never
(by the nature of the question) give you a satisfactory answer.

As for Dawkins, I'm dubious that he meant his ideas about how our genes act
to be a statement of purpose. There is a MECHANISM there, certainly, but
mechanism does not imply purpose. The notion that there is any special
purpose in how our genes, or our brain, or any other side of our human nature
are put together misunderstands the entire theory of evolution by natural
selection. Evolution tells us no more about our purpose than does a rock.
We find that purpose in ourselves rather than from any natural event or 
process.

More on fear: It is a pity that common language is so poorly tuned that it is
hard to express such feelings as those of fear without implying lots of other
baggage too. I do not want to die. I want to live. And this want of mine is
so intense that it causes all kinds of reactions in my body when I meet
something which might thwart it. We know from animals that fear, flight, and
combativeness can be very close to one another, and that insight needs to
somehow be applied to our own emotional reactions. Depending on circumstance,
one can turn into the other in an instant. I believe that our current words
simply do not describe the real emotions that we feel.

Usually if all action to prevent an intensely painful or disliked event has
been made impossible, an animal (or a person) will go through a period of 
agitation and even rage, after which it seems to lose all signs of caring.
But if the animal can do something about what happens ie. it has some
control over whether or not these events occur, then it will behave very
differently. Sometimes it may run away, sometimes it will confront things
directly. Either response may be rational, depending on circumstance. To
say that fighting or flight is a sign of "fear" mistakes what happens in 
the mind of that animal. Feelings such as dread attach much more to events
which we cannot control than they do to those which we can.

Am I agreeing with Michael Riskin? Well, yes, and no. (The word "wants"
or "desires" carry no fires with them, though I intend them to suggest, at
least sometimes, very great intensity). Anyone who claims that cryonicists
suffer from fear has mistaken what has happened ... so easy, since few 
people even now understand cryonics. We act as we do because we believe that
we CAN do something about death, an event which we very much do not want to
happen. They, believing that they can do nothing, have lost all signs of
caring. 

And with that loss, they look on us and fail to understand at all. 

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4608