X-Message-Number: 9144
From: 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:24:05 EST
Subject: Tigers & Taxis

Rand Simberg (#9137) says the survival instinct is hard-wired into us.
Well--yes and no, but mostly NO.

Most of us have the survival instinct AT TIMES OF CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. We
will jump to avoid a tiger or a taxi. But if the threat is less clear and less
immediate, or if it is an "attractive" threat (fatty food, cigarettes), forget
it. Also old, sick, or depressed people have greatly reduced survival drives,
as a rule. 

Furthermore, "survival" is an abstraction, and evolution deals in the
concrete. Do you think a lower organism worries about oblivion? It doesn't
know from oblivion. What it wants to avoid is being hurt, bitten, eaten,
trapped, suffocated, starved, etc. 

Furthermore, "survival" is only one drive or goal or value in Konrad Lorenz'
"parliament of instincts." Others usually include comfort and avoidance of
responsibility. Dostoevsky: "Men prefer peace, even death, to freedom of
choice in the knowledge of good and evil."

But we must keep in mind that human stupidity, ignorance, laziness and
cowardice, while formidable, are not invincible. Education and leadership can
accomplish a lot.

Part of the problem in marketing cryonics is that the people best able to
understand and afford cryonics (healthy, vigorous people) generally feel the
least threatened and feel the least urgency. Those who need the availability
of the service most urgently are the ones least able to act decisively.
Again, we can make at least marginal gains simply by improving our
communications and public relations. 

Meanwhile, in the background or under the surface, powerful secular trends are
working for us. The constant advances in science and medicine make our thesis
ever more credible. Our own research will help. Most important of all perhaps,
in the longer run, is the coming, relatively abrupt change in perception of
the human condition. When people begin to realize that their children may
never die a "natural" death, their own acceptance of extinction will begin to
change.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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