X-Message-Number: 982 Date: 13 Jul 92 16:40:33 EDT From: Charles Platt <> To CRYONET: In response to Thomas's question, yes, Michael Paulle *was* a suspension member for a while. He also paid dues to the NY chapter. (Because Alcor has never established written guidelines for chapters, it is theoretically possible for someone to be a member of a chapter while not being a member of Alcor--which I guess is Michael Paulle's current, odd, position. Having mentioned this, I guess we will now see a couple of people immediately demanding that the man should be thrown out of the New York group. To which I respond: How? Do we call the police, or what?) It has been suggested that rather than throwing people out, Alcor could refuse to accept certain people as members in the first place. But on what basis? Criminal record? Bad credit rating? I think this idea is really foolish. It makes Alcor into an authoritarian organization and threatens people, in effect, with denial of life. Whatever happened to those great libertarian ideals of openness and freedom? I am very, very depressed by the tendency that I see here to clamp down, deny, restrict, and control. It is so incredibly easy to lose sight of an ideal. It is very hard ever to get it back. The US Constitution is a fine document whose provisions have been eroded to the point where some of them now seem irretrievable. Surely everyone understands this? In which case, can't we learn from it? For a couple of weeks, Michael Paulle was going around saying, "This is the organization that once said they would have frozen Adolf Hitler. But some of them want to throw me out. I guess that makes me worse than Hitler." Doesn't anyone see that merely by *talking* in authoritarian terms, you run the risk of triggering a response in people and damaging the image of the organization? I am not excusing Michael Paulle for acting impulsively and foolishly, maybe even dangerously. But I believe that some of his actions could certainly have been avoided if he had been dealt with in a more thoughtful way. Let us please calm down. Let us please *not* print notices in *Cryonics* magazine advising people, "Don't talk to Michael Paulle!" Let us simply use a little more general discretion and caution in discussing details of upcoming suspensions. That is really all we need to do. Incidentally, this prudence applies at all levels. Recently, one of the people who works full-time at Riverside casually mentioned to me the name of the member from Southern California who was frozen a few weeks ago. This was confidential information and should never have been given out. The fact that it happened so easily and casually suggests to me that it may happen at other times, too. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=982