X-Message-Number: 7060 Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 10:44:43 -0700 From: Tim Freeman <> Subject: Assumptions in Terror Management From: Peter Merel <> >Why don't medical and life insurance sales encounter this "existential >terror"? What distinguishes cryonics as a particularly scary prospect under >this theory? I think what's been posted so far doesn't answer this. First, I should emphasize that the entire purpose of TM is that this "existential terror" is never encountered. Experiments cited in the paper say that people do terror management with no negative affect (that is, no unpleasant emotions). TM successfully manages (prevents) the terror. When TM comes into play, the person doing it simply displays an abject failure to think clearly about the subject at hand. The theory predicts that new things having to do with death will always have a tough time. Once they are well-established, they become part of the cultural worldview and terror management pushes them forward instead of back. I'm not sure what you mean by "medical sales". Irrational behavior around people dying in a medical setting is quite common. Look at how much of a battle the euthanesia people in Australia are fighting; I have yet to read an argument against them that even attempts to make sense. Another instance is the difficulty a century or so ago in creating sterile procedures in hospitals to prevent infections. Anesthesia had to be discovered more than once. People who have nothing better to do with their corpses rarely donate their organs. People die from restrictions on interstate transportation of donated organs in the US, and these restrictions have no obvious offsetting benefit. Etc. Life insurance is halfway part of the worldview. It is considered an ordinary thing to do, but the salesmen generally have to personally persuade people that it is worth buying instead of being like a bank and having the customers come to them. This is a hint of what marketing cryonics will be like between the time it becomes a viable large-scale business and the time it becomes obviously the right thing to do. Maybe we want to study life insurance sales techniques? The problem with marketing cryonics isn't that it is particularly scary. The problem is that it reminds people of death, and it is unusual (that is, not part of the cultural worldview). The theory predicts that marketing something like this will not be straightforward, and that's what we observe about cryonics. Somehow the important part of the sale has to happen before the potential client is reminded of death. Tim Freeman Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7060