META: Extropy in the Personal Sphere
Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Fri, 08 Aug 97 10:27:57 CST
Brent Allsop wrote (recalling an exchange with his Mormon family):
I can (without being to much of an obnoxious pain), say
things like: "In a thousand years we'll know who is right, who made
the right choice, who is alive in a glorious, eternal life, heaven and
who is miserable in hell, sheo, or the grave."
Rick Knight responds:
With all due respect, it takes little reading between the lines to see
that your religious upbringing has you by the short hairs. The rather
dubious challenge "In a thousand years we'll know who is right" falls
about as intellectually and motivationally flat as the religious
rhetoric I continue to get from my "dog and pony show" religious
relatives.
You've essentially turned the tables on the religiously devout. They
used to point and judge and wring out the cliches about eternal life.
Mothers would worry, fathers disapprove. But now, the extropian spin
casts as much pity (or indifference) on the "cryonically challenged"
<G>. Sounds like one-upmanship.
A more reasonable and benevolent response to your family's concern
(although we are almost auto-triggered to take our family members on
so I *do* understand the instinct) is that you have chosen your plans
for eternity just as they have chosen theirs. You each think the
other is sadly misguided so what the hell? If you love them, love
them while you're both here and now. Carping over proof that will
show up a millenium from now can't possibly matter a damn except as a
feeble attempt to bolster one's ego. I say this from my own tiring
experience trying to argue down southern baptists who disapprove of
same-sex relations. I am older and (hopefully) wiser. They can
believe what they want and as long as they don't interfere with my
life, they can conjur up any tweaked belief system they please. Just
remember, the conjuring isn't exclusive to the traditionally
religious.