My commenters are very good to me. If you ever get tired of all that praise of me, think of it this way: Why would anyone take the trouble to participate in BUGS if he didn’t think it was very good. There are, literally, millions of blogs out there.
So when I use a comment as a starting point, I sound like I am criticizing someone who said something good about me. I appreciate the good stuff, I have an ego like anybody else. More important, like every human being, I need encouragement.
Look at what Ben Franklin said about the raw ego it takes to write an autobiography in the Introduction to HIS autobiography.
So one commenter came to my defense in criticizing another for talking about how I should live a long time. I appreciate his coming to my defense, damned few people ever did in my career. But it gives me a chance to talk about his point.
The guy who said I could live long was referring to an article where I mentioned my own death. I do it a lot. So someone who says, “Long may you wave” gets my appreciation, while most people don’t want the subject mentioned.
The writer who waved the caution sign about mentioning my death also went on to make dead accurate observations about me, how I am worried to death about not having people to carry on my THINKING. I keep talking about how Doctor Pierce said on his deathbed that no one alive could take his place in the leadership.
After all, he was talking about courtesy to normal people, and no one here confuses me with normal.
I will be frozen when I pass on. Everybody in my family had to agree not to oppose it, they have since agreed to insist on it, but none of them like it. If you know about the Ted Williams case, you can check the web, one daughter suddenly decided to make the papers by opposing his being frozen, and the legal case made his freezing cost ALCOR a mint.
My family always says I don’t know what will happen when I am frozen. My thinking is that I know EXACTLY what will happen to THEM if they’re NOT frozen.
Actually my being frozen is like BUGS and all the rest of my political life. It’s a lottery ticket. I am a hell of a lot surer about sharing my ideas this way than I am about being frozen. In both cases, I am spending a lot of effort and money on faith.
No one really does anything useful on a sure bet. The only people who do that are politicians looking forward to the next election, which is just MORE of a sure shot.
There are million politicians, but what I do is critical PRECISELY because it is a bet on the future.
How could someone like me, who has had so much power from probabilities, NOT decide on freezing?
#1 by shari on 10/08/2010 - 2:00 pm
Every time you bring up this subject, I’m sure It makes all of us wonder just how it is with you. I,for one, take you at your word. As for being frozen, if you make it back, in this world via your earthly body, maybe you will be a genuine “Rip van Winkle.” I don’t think that what you have sown will be in vain.
#2 by Dave on 10/08/2010 - 2:35 pm
Yes, but it is not really about probabilities.
There are lots of things no one can control, health matters, family pressures, accidents, stuff like that.
But besides that kind of stuff, it is the ends (what a person aims to achieve) that determines their own (and others) fate.
The ends that most people pursue are very circumscribed. They have to do with social conditioning and above all, childish needs. For example, most people cannot tolerate loneliness, so they seek social contact even if it means making “friends” of low character.
This tendency in people restrains their consciousness. It restrains their ability to perceive. They live in silos of limited perception, restraining their ability to connect to reality accurately.
It is all about the ends a person pursues. Loftier ends mean higher perception and better ability to perceive reality accurately.
This is also true of whole societies. For example, is the end “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” a lofty end?
It is a platitude at the level of a nursery rhyme. Platitudes like these can be adopted with little effort. Platitudes like these serve a childish need for moral rectitude. The person adopting such a platitude has no need to engage their mind in real work. That is why platitudes like these slip into dominance so easily. They serve the weak personal character of most people.
But it is precisely here that fate intervenes. Fate is what actually happens despite a person’s aims, despite a society’s stated and orthodox ends.
Individuals have fates and so do nations. Fate is how the world actually works.
Fate tosses people into tempests. It drowns them in rip tides. While it ruins and kills people in their multitudes, it also forces the minds (of the survivors) to be engaged.
Fate also insinuates into the world the clarity provided by real leaders such as Robert Whitaker, who is an expert at extracting clarity from our very confusing situation.
So it is not really about probabilities at all. It is about what is necessary and how the world actually works.
#3 by Berserker88 on 10/08/2010 - 7:24 pm
I have an uncle who’s wishes are to be frozen when his time comes. As a joke I tell him when they unfreeze him only non-whites will exist. Being as much of a racial thinker as anyone on stormfront but not a bugs thinker he is horrified by that possibility. Not realizing that if aryans no longer exist the technology needed to resuscitate wouldn’t exist. Bobs gamble isn’t possibly waking up in a worse world, but that our race will survive. It is no different from how anyone of us gamble on the future we create for our descendants.
#4 by Gator61 on 10/08/2010 - 7:48 pm
Bob,
Personally I think being frozen is bat shit crazy, but every one can’t be right on everything. I am counting on my children for my immortality, so I’m betting your dead right on BUGS.
Just to hedge my bets I’m going to write a letter to my yet unborn great great grandchildren instructing them to send you a fruit basket when they revive you.
#5 by ANOTHERWHITERABBIT on 10/09/2010 - 12:15 pm
Bob,
I hope your health is well so you don’t have to be frozen. Your words will always be here on bugs so your legacy will be here, but if you have the recources to freeze your body why not if any race on this planet figures a way to unfreeze you it will be us due to “race is real and it matters” I say go for it
#6 by Dick_Whitman on 10/09/2010 - 4:40 pm
Bob’s logic is sound. Freezing provides the highest probability of being brought back to life. Obviously the lowest probability for being brought back is being cremated.
If there’s an afterlife then it doesn’t matter anyway. Of course, Bob may be enjoying himself at his afterlife just to be sucked back to earth?
In 1000 years humans may bring Bob back to life just to have Bob yell at them that they took him from his virgins? But here too, it’s better to be frozen because Bob could just go “back to sleep” and be back with his virgins whenever he feels like it.
So yes, Bob’s logic is indeed sound.
#7 by shari on 10/10/2010 - 12:17 pm
Bob has said that he wants to see if we WIN. So he is offering himself as an experiment, on faith. Faith is the “substance of things hoped for,the evidence of things not seen.” It’s the WINNING part we haven’t seen yet.