A letter to a supporter of cryonics from Brazil
We received a letter from Brazil from a young man who asks how to explain to his relatives that cryonics is needed. We tried to answer. Here is our answer.
Of course, now people need cryonics, not the state. The state treats us not as separate individuals, but as "electorate", "taxpayers", "population". Medicine, the protection of public order is a compromise between the need for the state to support itself and the demands of the population. Therefore, very often people are ahead of the state in their demands to protect their lives. A vivid example is the community of patients with some rare disease. They self-assemble, people help each other. Then the organizations gain strength and even then they put forward demands to the state so that it conducts some research and introduces the necessary changes in the legislation.
Around the same happens and will happen to cryonics. Now only a small part of people understands the possibility of reviving people after a legally registered death and after cryonics. By the way, any pathologist will tell about cases of spontaneous resurrection of people after the announced death.
Even fewer people understand the theoretical possibility of restoring a person who has been kept in an imperfect state.
Nevertheless, such concepts exist, and they do not contradict the scientific picture of the world. Therefore, those people who understand the prospects of cryonics and who love their relatives or themselves very much, sign agreements on cryonics, enter into public organizations, help existing centers. Some selflessly sponsor cryonics and help as volunteers. This is a natural development of a new, previously unknown idea.
By the way, in Brazil there are a number of supporters of cryonics. From time to time they write letters to us with different questions. There are also transhumanists there - supporters of new technologies who also support cryonics. Sooner or later, but the spread of ideas and the improvement of technology will lead to the emergence of a cryonics company in Brazil ... There are such groups in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador ...
Of course, traditional religious beliefs restrain the development of cryonics. Although, if you think well, all of Christianity is on the idea of resurrection of the dead. At the same time, in early Christianity the idea of reviving people in their bodies and precisely on earth, and not somewhere in heaven, was spread. By the way, many articles are written about it. And if the idea of revival were so terrible, Christ would not revive Lazarus, who had already begun to decompose.
By the way, at the request of relatives, Russian priests always hold a funeral service for dead cryoclients.
So I can say that it is not religion that inhibits cryonics, but the inner conservatism of people.
People are generally divided into conservatives, probably 95% of them, and innovators, those who strive for everything new. It was thanks to innovators that wild people once came out of Africa in search of new opportunities, and later crossed the Bering Strait and settled North and South America.
And Columbus was not a conservative. He - contrary to the then opinion - sailed to the West and discovered America.
We, supporters of cryonics, are also passionaries, discoverers.
There is a variant (allele) of the DRD4 gene called 7R. Perhaps she is just responsible for striving for the new. Someone has this allele, someone does not. By the way, here are some interesting information on the distribution of this allele in South America.
It has long been assumed that the propensity for a risky “search for novelty” (which is typical of 7R carriers) is an advantage in the conditions of lack of resources or in a highly changeable environment.
Now we all just live in a very strongly changing world, we have to spend a lot of energy on adapting to changes. And this is not only moving from one city to another, it is not only a change of work and specialty. It also attempts to save their loved ones by any, including the most new and unexplored ways.
Therefore, dear Pedro, you must understand that your desire to cryonize a grandfather is a very natural desire. The fears of your parents are also natural, perhaps they have not activated 7R allele.
But it’s already wonderful that you exist, that not only in the USA, in Russia, in Australia, in the United Kingdom, but also in Brazil, the voices of supporters of cryonics begin to sound. We wish you to convince your relatives to help you, we wish the development of cryonics in Brazil and you personally success and long life.