As the spouse of someone who is planning on undergoing cryogenic preservation, I found this article to be relevant to my interests!
My first reactions when the topic of cryonics came up (early in our relationship) were shock, a bit of revulsion, and a lot of confusion. Like Peggy (I believe), I also felt a bit of disdain. The idea seemed icky, childish, outlandish, and self-aggrandizing. But I was deeply in love, and very interested in finding common ground with my then-boyfriend (now spouse). We talked, and talked, and argued, and talked some more, and then I went off and thought very hard about the whole thing.
Part of the strength of my negative response, I realized, had to do with the fact that my relationship with my own mortality was on shaky ground. I don’t want to die. But I’m fairly certain I’m going to. Like many people, I’ve struggled to come to a place where I can accept the specter of my own death with some grace. Humbleness and acceptance in the face of death are valued very highly (albeit not always explicitly) in our culture. The companion, I think, to this humble acceptance of death is a humble (and painful) acceptance of our own personal lack of consequence. To rail against death; to grasp at the faintest of odds to avoid it; these behaviors seem to assert a brazen self interest, an arrogance, and fly in the face of the quiet, self-effacing acceptance the rest of us struggle for every day.
“I have worked so hard to abandon hope,” my heart was saying. “Who are you to arrogantly seize it, as though that was even an option? Who are you to raise the terrible idea of hope, after I have worked so hard to convince myself there IS no hope?” There’s this strange blend of fear and jealousy at work, I think, in the gut-punch reaction that many of us have to the idea of cryonics. And once you start unpacking this response and looking at it with clear eyes, it becomes obvious how selfish, how irrational, and unhelpful it is. So my husband has chosen to pursue an unlikely hope. How does that affect me? Can I seriously say to him, “you must abandon this hope, because for reasons that have everything to do with me and nothing to do with you, I find it icky”? If I did, I would be a terribly selfish person.
Ultimately, my struggle to come to terms with his decision has been more or less successful. Although I am not (and don’t presently plan to be) enrolled in a cryonics program myself, although I still find the idea somewhat unsettling, I support his decision without question. If he dies before I do, I will do everything in my power to see that his wishes are complied with, as I expect him to see that mine are. Anything less than this, and I honestly don’t think I could consider myself his partner.
It’s a good point, and one I never would have thought of on my own: people find it painful to think they might have a chance to survive after they’ve struggled to give up hope.
One way to fight this is to reframe cryonics as similar to CPR: you’ll still die eventually, but this is just a way of living a little longer. But people seem to find it emotionally different, perhaps because of the time delay, or the uncertainty.
I always figured that was a rather large sector of people’s negative reaction to cryonics; I’m amazed to find someone self-aware enough to notice and work through it.
One way to fight this is to reframe cryonics as similar to CPR: you’ll still die eventually, but this is just a way of living a little longer. But people seem to find it emotionally different, perhaps because of the time delay, or the uncertainty.
That’s more comparable to being in a long coma with some uncertain possibility of waking up from it, so perhaps it could be reframed along those lines; some people probably do specify that they should be taken off of life support if they are found comatose, but to choose to be kept alive is not socially disapproved of, as far as I know.
Cryo-wives: A promising comment from the NYT Article:
That is really a beautiful comment.
It’s a good point, and one I never would have thought of on my own: people find it painful to think they might have a chance to survive after they’ve struggled to give up hope.
One way to fight this is to reframe cryonics as similar to CPR: you’ll still die eventually, but this is just a way of living a little longer. But people seem to find it emotionally different, perhaps because of the time delay, or the uncertainty.
I always figured that was a rather large sector of people’s negative reaction to cryonics; I’m amazed to find someone self-aware enough to notice and work through it.
That’s more comparable to being in a long coma with some uncertain possibility of waking up from it, so perhaps it could be reframed along those lines; some people probably do specify that they should be taken off of life support if they are found comatose, but to choose to be kept alive is not socially disapproved of, as far as I know.