X-Message-Number: 8830
From: 
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:08:52 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Organizations, humor

1. Organizational viability:

Robin Helweg-Larsen notes various concerns about Cryonics Institute, Alcor,
and CryoCare. A few comments about CI's outlook:

SIZE: CI (like all the organizations) is indeed still small, especially in
active members and leaders. But we do have several relatively young people
among our actives, some of them with very high levels of competence and
commitment. The relatively young people include my son David and his  wife
Connie, Vice President/Treasurer Pat Heller, Steve Luyckx, Royse Brown, Paul
Michaels, Joe Kowalsky, and York Porter. We also have other relatively young
and competent members (mostly out of state) who only need to be given some
direction and direct requests in order to pitch in more, and we will be
working on that.

CI is on a very firm financial footing, with over $1.7 million in assets, no
debt (not even a mortgage), and low minimum overhead. Future revenues are of
course somewhat murky, but will include substantial bequests (from Mae and
me, among others).

The original goal of the founders of CI was not necessarily to become the
biggest organization, but a very modest one--to improve the long term chances
of ourselves and our families through a very stable organization. If I could
get some people, in addition to my own family, to share the expense and work,
fine. If not, we would do it ourselves. We more than succeeded in our minimal
objective, and have never raised our prices--but our primary commitment is
still to KEEP our present and future patients safe. Of course, our ambitions
are now less modest.

Have we made mistakes in the past? Certainly--but none of a doomsday nature.
Was it a mistake for CI (along with Alcor) to invest in the Visser
technology? On the basis of what we knew then, I don't think so. We saw rat
hearts beating after immersion in liquid nitrogen, something never before
reported--so we took the risk, which was not a huge one. Was it a mistake in
retrospect? Too soon to tell. It does not now appear that the Visser method
will be directly applicable to human patients or to large organs. At the
least, however, it resulted in a spurt of new research, by CI and people
sponsored by CI/IS, among others; in the end, this may prove well worth the
relatively modest investment.

2. RECRUITMENT AND HUMOR

Cryonics Institute and Immortalist Society expect to have (by the end of
1997) a Web page as one of our main recruitment tools (along with THE
IMMORTALIST). This will be dynamic and various, including humor and "human
interest," which Olaf Henny says have been somewhat lacking on Cryonet. 

Olaf is right, of course--and we have noted this many times over the
years--that organizational recruitment (in any field) usually depends on a
milieu of support and comradeship, more than on logic or ideology. An example
I have often used is that of political parties and their volunteers. In many
or most cases, the choice of party is accidental or inherited, and the
volunteer workers do it mainly for the feelings of comradeship and virtue
that result, essentially a hobby. Cryonicists--again, as often noted by many
people--tend to be more cerebral and less social, and we need to remedy this.
Special meetings and gatherings have often been tried, with indifferent
success at best; but a different tone to our publications is easier and
potentially more effective.

For new Cryonet readers, a few examples of cryonics humor or pith:

Old musicians never die--they just decompose.

Dead people don't suffer--but they don't enjoy life much either.

Cryonicists are God's frozen people.

Many are culled, but few are frozen.

If you like being blind, deaf, dumb, and totally inconscious.....you'll
really enjoy being dead.

There is a cure for life, but on the whole I prefer the disease. (Ashleigh
Brilliant)

If the rich could hire people to die for them, the poor would make a good
living.

If you don't go to a friend's funeral, don't expect him to go to yours.

On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. (W.C. Fields epitaph)

Mental health--having the same delusions as your neighbors.

Death must be a great occupation.....since no one ever seems to quit.

Death is lying there with dirt in your face and holding your breath forever.
(Character in THE END, a Burt Reynolds movie.)

Dying is easy; comedy is hard. (Mel Brooks)

I don't want to live on in my works--I want to live on in my apartment.
(Woody Allen)

If freezing doesn't work, I would just perish from embarrassment.

One light bulb to another: "I wonder where our light goes when we burn out."

Dying is no way to live. It's a grave mistake. (Leonard Orr)

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society

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