CryoNet #31756

CryoNet - Mon 22 Jun 2009

    #31756: Why hasn't cryonics become a status symbol? [Mark Plus]

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Message #31756
From: Mark Plus <[email protected]>
Subject: Why hasn't cryonics become a status symbol?
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:52:42 -0700

I raised this question with some other cryonicists recently, but we didn't have any good answers.

The misconception persists that only very rich people can afford cryonics, despite all the evidence to the contrary (like the 1989 Subaru station wagon I drive); and that they have signed up for it in considerable numbers. Nicholas von Hoffman promotes this belief in an essay he published in The Nation magazine a few years ago:



Freezing Their Assets

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/vonhoffman

Normally, the kinds of things that only very rich people can afford tend to become status symbols, like mansions, yachts, private jets, or in an extreme case, a trip to the International Space Station care of the Russians.

If so many ordinary people believe that very rich people have flocked to cryonics, why hasn't cryonics become a status symbol like the other goods, services and experiences very rich people tend to buy and that many non-rich people wish they could have as well?

"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life expectancy will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death will be rare and accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).
http://www.box.net/shared/static/ay9lub60ha.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10948503/Up-Wing-Priorities


Mark Plus



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