I imagine this as being a lot like an old fashioned coin sorter--the one where you pour loose change into a slot, shake the container, and the pennies, dimes, nickels and quarters stack into the different sized slots.

By doing a series of ever more extreme thought experiments, possibly one can do a selection process analogous to the coin sorter.

Anyone who recoils in horror from the idea of a ten year old child being an 'ideal' subject for this kind of thing and who were to remove themselves from the discussion--thats one level.

Someone who is horrified but still willing to read the discussion--another level.

Someone who is not shocked at all and continues to participate--thats another level.

The ones who dont freak out at this kind of thought experiment--they self select into a pool of recruits who will tolerate more and more extreme stuff.

The glory and danger of being human is our adaptablity and our sensitivity to social context. If we hang around in a bad situation long enough, it comes to seem 'normal' after awhile, and we get used to it.

If you read Robert J Liftons 'The Nazi Doctors' his interviews of physicians who participated in Nazi KZ torture rationalized as medical experiments was this:

* The perpetrator physicians had already bought into the Nazi ideology which dehumanized certain catagories of human beings.

* They did find it horrifying and shocking at first to be in the KZ camp and to be in the areas where people were tortured in the guise of medical experimentation

But...and this is the lesson for us here..the ones who remained in this horrid environment got used to it. The shock wore off as they coped by dissociating themselves and creating an inner double who rationalized the vile behavior as necessary for the greater glory of the Reich.

It took anywhere from a couple of hours to two weeks for those who remained to get used to this.

So...if one has already bought into an ideology which dehumanizes people, turns persons into a means to an abstract goal, a Future Greatness, and then one chooses to remain in a bad environment in which dehumanizing behavior is chronic, ones lingering human conscience may risk being compromised.

Two..just typing ting material and posting it on a forum may bring about changes in self concept.

Role playing may also shape us. Vampire games etc, rituals can be quite powerful. Its one thing to know that there is a beginning and an end to the role play. For example, most of us put on costumes for a time limited event, such as a party, or Halloween, or a time limited multi day event, such as a stage production, or an event such as Renaissance Faire, Society For Creative Anachronism or Civil War/Revolutionary War re-enactment events.

Friends of mine who do such events state that it takes considerable work to transition from ones every day identity to going 'into character' for the role.


The Anticult has been reminding us of the excellent book by Cialdini. Look what Cialdini tells us about writing:

(capsule summary of Cialdinis book on influence--longer article here)

But..here is what happens if we merely write or type.

[www.fourthwaycult.net]

Quote

Influence and The New American Wing
By JM

Introduction

Robert Cialdini's book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, describes many of the ways in which people influence each other. At first glance, I thought the book was about marketing, and about the techniques used by sales professionals to cause people to buy their products. However, a friend of mine repeatedly praised the book as a great tool for understanding some of the dynamics within cults, and so I finally broke down and read it. I was not disappointed - the book is excellent, and it illuminated many different aspects of my own cult experience.

JM then discusses the role of writing in his group (New American Wing)

Quote

One idea is that we generally judge people by how they act, even ourselves. And therefore, if we repeatedly find ourselves acting in a particular role, we will gradually come to identify with that role and will eventually see it as a natural and immutable expression of who we are. Experiments have shown that this process can occur even while we consciously subscribe to beliefs opposed to the role we are playing.

There are various ways to encourage a person to take on a new role, and one involves writing. Cialdini describes how this technique was used by the Chinese against prisoners captured in the Korean war:

Writing was one sort of confirming action that the Chinese urged incessantly upon the men. It was never enough for the prisoners to listen quietly or even to agree verbally with the Chinese line; they were always pushed to write it down as well. So intent were the Chinese on securing a written statement that if a prisoner was not willing to write a desired response freely, he was prevailed upon to copy it. ... But, oh, those "harmless" concessions. ... Not only was it a lasting personal reminder of his action, it was also likely to persuade those around him that the statement reflected his actual beliefs. (page 76-77)
Writing was also very important within the NAW. During formal meetings, each student was absolutely required to take written notes. The rationale was this: by writing down the information, I involve both my mental and physical sides, and therefore have more of a chance of acquiring the knowledge because I am attempting to assimilate it with my whole being. However, even while my intellect may have retained some sense of critical thinking, I was also experiencing myself as "a person who finds these ideas important enough for written notes".

Our writing did not stop with simple note-taking. We were also required to make written "observations" throughout the day, as we attempted to "verify the ideas". (Notice the presumption of truth in the phrase "verify the ideas", as though the only thing stopping me from accepting them was my own lack of effort - it does not allow the possibility that the ideas themselves may be flawed.) Most of the students carried small, pocket-sized spiral notebooks for these observations, and I personally went through about fifteen or so over my three-year stay.

Every few months we were required to write an essay concerning some aspect of "the Work" (a somewhat grandiose but popular name for our studies). Generally, this report (officially called "a pondering") would be several pages long, typewritten, and eventually presented orally to the rest of the group. Unlike the prisoners of war described above, the other students and I were actively trying to learn these ideas and apply them in our lives. Thus, these essays invariably presented some idea or another as absolute truth, backed by various anecdotal evidence.

This brings up another issue, the public presentation of one's "beliefs". By standing up in front of the group and reading such an essay out loud, I was publicly declaring my approval of the group ideology. After this, I would feel a greater need to live according to the ideas professed in my essay, to avoid the unpleasant feeling of being a hypocrite.

So...in some circumstances, such as illustrated by JM and Cialdini, we may risk having our core identities dislocated by what we write, what we read, what we listen to.

An example from history:

The Nazi doctors, as interviewed by Robert J Lifton, had already been exposed to Nazi ideology, possibly wrote statements of commitment when becoming members of the NSDAP.

And, prior to the rise of Nazism, these persons may well have had heavy exposure to various Volkische theories and ideologies that were very popular throughout German speaking Europe prior to World War I--proto Nazism.

Some of these theories of folk identity and Teutonic revivalism required that certain groups** be deemed inferior and 'other'. Christianity was sometimes considered to be a foreign import, something that estranged noble, pagan Germans from their true earthy roots.

So called eugenics was an acceptable topic in medical literature and popular science in in both the US and Western Europe, just prior to Nazism, and would have normalized attitudes that today seem horrifying.

So when the Nazis came along with their expanded list of undesirables, all this prior exposure would have normalized it and lessened the shock value.

The habit of despising someone, would already have been indoctrinated by what one had read, heard, perhaps even have written in school, as a student, when reading Volkische poets and listening to Volkische music.

So it may be that reading writing, and typing or texting posts on forums discussing was to join the ranks of the Chosen Ones, whether through baptism by liquid nitrogen or through other means can come to seem less shocking than it ought to be.

We can risk having our sensitivities corrupted by what we read and write, and by what media we exposure ourselves to--unless we often step aside, and take time to engage in self scrutiny and recall who we are.

Kindness and empathy have to be practiced, just as one must keep practicing any complex skill--whether it is bread making, playing a musical instrument, etc.

FAO: RR MOD

Is being two faced count as a personal attack?

Enoonsti has a problem with people on this Forum and seems to spend his time trying to harrass, unmask or patronize us - then crows about it to his cryonics buddies on Cold Filter, imminst and less wrong too.: [www.network54.com] - [www.network54.com] - [lesswrong.com] and [www.imminst.org] to name a few

He is also making some rather unnecessary comments on that forum regarding peoples state of mind and making up stories about us.

I don't think he come on here except to "muddy" the waters - I happen to know he is reasonably good "Freinds" With Luke Parrish who I suspect is a Cryonics Marketer. I would just like to say that Luke has been a "sparring partner" of mine for a while and even he hasn't sunk to personal attacks - even though I have! I know hes only sticking up for his pal (Respect) but he is also seemingly a claque for cryonics in general and is not helping this discussion.

[en.wikipedia.org]

@ Corboy - The Nazi Doctor Anaylisis is spot on - People involved in the Cryonics feild think its quite normal to desecrate dead bodies in the "name of science" - being as they are a small close-knit group who big each other up I do think that they think what they do "is saving lives".

I think that one of the reasons they have these "self-help" groups which practice "suspensions" on CPR dummies is to make the more gross things they do with dead bodies "normal".
Lets face it the "washout" when they replace dead blood with anti-freeze is utterly disgusting - But once you done a few of them its going to seem not as distastefull. I have a freind who works in a mourge
and he regulary eats his lunch in there - to him being around dead bodies eating his lunch is quite OK - hes been around 1000's of dead bodies its quite normal!

The bad and stupid propaganda by a few of the cryonics supporters and salesmen, only makes their position look ever more absurd and outrageous to the general public.

Its like when a couple of them tried to smear Melody Maxim. She is obviously telling it like it is, with a very honest and nuanced position, that is quite fair, but tough. Then they come out and try to smear her with some crude lies and misdirection, and the cryonics people look even more ridiculous. Any sane person can see that Melody Maxim is being very accurate, and if anything, at times far to generous to the cryonics people.


Cryonics is full of Cryonics Newspeak. For example, "deanimation" = dead. So they talk about self-deanimation, they are talking about suicide and assisted suicide. Newspeak is the first step towards delusional thinking.
Next thing you have some crazyperson, saying its ok to "deanimate" a 10 year old child in a cryonics experiment. And no one in cryonics bats an eye about it.
The cryonics people/companies have done horrible evil useless cryonics "experiments" to hundreds of dogs, by their own claims.

The cryonics Newspeak even tries to redefine "death" out of existence, saying dead people are "suspended" and that death didn't occur. This is madness. There is no proof of any of it, none. In fact, those people are dead, no matter what word games they try to play

Any science has to start with total honesty, and that is why cryonics is Antiscience.




Some others have said that in fact "Luke Parrish" is just a fictional name, for a cryonics insider. Someone with a slow day, could try to look into that.
But again, its ANOTHER in a long long line of cryonics shills, who are biased in their position. They are selling, what they are trying to make you buy.

Search Google for:

"luke parrish" cryonics

Thought Question: Since When is Mortality a Sign of Inferiority?


Cryonics--a possible new 'Biocracy?'

The Motivation of the Nazi Doctors
How Could They Rationalize Being Both Healers and Killers?
Mar 25, 2010 Kathy Warnes


"The reasons that Nazi doctors who like all medical professionals took the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm", did harm to the Jews are both simple and complex.

"Robert Jay Lifton in his study titled The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing and the Psychology of Geocide explores the motivation of the Nazi doctors through a psychological lens and offers an analysis of how Nazi doctors could function as both healers and killers. He argued that the medicalization of killing or the concept of killing in the name of healing, crossed the boundary between violent imagery and periodic killing of victims – the method in pogroms against the Jews and systemic genocide. Lifton theorized that the medicalization of killing was essential to crossing the boundary and explored the reasons for that crossing.

"Lifton Describes Nazi Germany as a "Biocracy"Lifton described Nazi Germany as a “biocracy,” the idea that the divine prerogative called for cure of the diseased Aryan race through purification and revitalization and the extermination of the infectious agent, the Jews.He said that medical metaphor combined with solid biomedical ideology in the Nazi mind.

According to Lifton, in a logical progression of the purification ideal, the Nazis began with the systematic killing of physically and mentally disabled people between 1939 and 1941, as described in Hugh Gregory Gallagher’s By Trust Betrayed. These state killings and forcible sterilization or “undesirables” were the ideological underpinnings of the biomedical ideology behind the mass extermination of the Jews. The Aryan race was sick and the cure was the killing of the Jews."


Read more at Suite101: The Motivation of the Nazi Doctors: How Could They Rationalize Being Both Healers and Killers? [www.suite101.com];

Read more at Suite101: The Motivation of the Nazi Doctors: How Could They Rationalize Being Both Healers and Killers? [www.suite101.com];
[www.suite101.com]

Some citations on 'The Nazi Doctors' by Robert J Lifton

[www.google.com]

Finally, one of my favorite checklists by which to assess abuse/dysfunction potential for an ideology.

Umberto Eco grew up in Italy during the Mussolini regime. He suggests that any one of these 14 points can become a nexus for fascism.


Eternal Fascism:Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

By Umberto Eco
Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
* * *

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.

In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

* * *

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Umberto Eco (c) 1995





[www.themodernword.com]

Sad note:

I forgot to state that the Nazi medical criminals did not just perpetrate in the concentration camps. Perpetrators experimented on and killed persons deemed undesirables--and did this in hospitals and clinics.

And let us never forget the Nazi breeding clinic (Lebensborn).

One young man who discovered he was a product of such a union, a young and intelligent man was horror stricken. Later, after much soul searching, he told an interviewer

'At this time I am not sure whether I am proud to be a German. I do know that I am very proud to be a human being.'

And so much of what makes for our humanity and perspective is to know that our life term is limited.

Robert Seltzer MD wrote, "We do not know who will stroke from us the last bubbles of our life. That alone should make us kinder to strangers.'

Robert Selzer Mortal Lessons

Speaking Of Nazi Doctors - Heres a Bedtime story from Mike "darwin" Fedowitz.
A history of cryonics from someone who has been playing Doctors since he was 14.

Pretty disturbing stuff, Animal Testing, Corpsicle Mutilation Photo's, insider cryonics gossip and self delusional bullshit

Not light reading...


[cryoeuro.eu]

[cryoeuro.eu]

[cryoeuro.eu]

Classic.

Alcor Life Extension Foundation Names Max More, PhD, as Chief Executive Officer
[www.alcor.org]

Now the old Extropians have decided to try to cash-in too, and get a steady paycheck from cryonics.

Max More has been seen in various media interviews the last years, being quite aggressive, arrogant and angry in defending his cryonics beliefs.
Now they are putting a so-called Transhumanist in charge of Alcor. Get ready for a huge barrage of pseudoscientific antiscience, presenting as supporting cryonics.


Guess who is going to get hired at well above market rates to do this "research"?
More financial double-dipping, and financial conflicts of interest.

[forum.culteducation.com] Max More presents as an arrogant, rabid ideological fanatic on CNN when talking about cryonics.

[cryomedical.blogspot.com] By coincidence, Melody Maxim, has a blog about the crackpot DIY projects at the cryonics companies.
Surely, some of that is arrogance, arrogant guys in their garage thinking they are going to invent a better mousetrap.
But its more than that.

If they just bought off the shelf proven equipment, then that is it.
But if they conduct this cryonics crackpot "research", they get paid alot of money to carry it out. And lo and behold, then they buy their own stuff for the cryonics company.
So that is triple dipping. You get your cryonics salary, you get your cryonics research payment, and you get the cryonics company to buy your DIY crapola junk. And if it breaks in 6 months, then you get to do it all over again.

This is the same principle as the guys above who get their own cryonics companies, to buy their own cryonics PATENTS, like with the cryonics antifreeze.

Financial triple-dipping...that is the cryonics way.

max more being aggressive on US TV: [www.youtube.com] AND [www.youtube.com]

His real names Max T O'conner and hes from Bristol UK - r he moved stateside and set up the extropian cult and a a cryonics company originally called Mizar which became Alcor - [www.reference.com] AND [www.sfbg.com] and [www.theregister.co.uk]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2010 08:16AM by richiekgb.

Its important to keep in mind, that those wiki-based articles, are written by those folks writing about themselves.
[en.wikipedia.org]

Basically, Max More is quite accomplished at tooting his own horn. [en.wikipedia.org]

Only totally objective 3rd party sources can be trusted for information, and there aren't many, if any.