Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Jim Fehlinger makes the paradoxical confession
>
> > ...the belief that one's own personality is important enough
> > to take extreme measures to preserve from nonexistence strikes
> > me as -- unseemly, somehow...
>
> and yet would, if faced with conventional death, take as
> many extreme measures as the rest of us would. I've heard
> this meme before---"my personality isn't important enough",
> and can only conclude that it's because the cost of cryonics
> is still high.
>
My personality of the moment truly isn't all that important.
The time and opportunity to change it many times, to grow
and learn without particular limit *is* that important.
I am not limited to my personality.
I do not necessarily believe that even my concept of that
most intimate of conglomerate illusions, "I", is invariant
or deserving of being preserved indefinitely or that it
would be preserved indefinitely even if continuity of
memories and such goes on indefinitely. "I" over time
would change in ways that would seem very "not-I" today.
Even this concept of "me" as distinct from "others" in
quite this way is open to change and modification given
time enough. I want that time and the opportunity to
witness all of these changes and much more.
> Yet that can't explain it, because Jim and those like him
> usually endorse extreme but conventional medical operations
> that are even more expensive. No, somehow the mind-set that
> says that we are only supposed to be here for three score
> and ten has taken another victim, possibly fatally.
>
> As he thoroughly explained in another post, Jim is quite
> enamored of future technologies, and would eagerly pay for
> Krell brain-boosts or retinal projectors. (I do note that
> these options are safely unavailable now.) But the deep
> challenge for cryonicists and other extropians is to try
> to understand what is really going on here. It beats me.
If I thought I was stuck with me just as I am now, warts
and all, for an indefinite period extending away into
infinity, then I would not find that very appealing. It is
not death so much that I seek to avoid but the end of becoming
and being. I am not done with that and don't plan to be done.
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:00 MDT