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CRYONICS
UK
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A Quest In Belgium
By David
Verbeke
Already
a long time I was annoyed by many people around me, how stupid and narrow minded
they could be, how fast they took something for truth when it was something
totally irrational. I was convinced that if the human kind would like to
survive in the long term we would have to adept ourselves. We would have to
make the human kind more intelligent, because I think the most good things in
life stand or fall with or without intelligence. Just check it out for
yourself, the most of the problems in the world are there because of emotions we
can’t give a good place in our lives. Emotions that people can’t handle with
terrible consequences. I was also aware that new techniques as nanotechnology
would have the capability to destroy our whole civilization. Soon or late some
immoral would get access to this technology so soon or late we would face
destruction of the human race.
What could we do about it to prevent
this, to prevent that irrational, immoral people would use such
technology as a weapon? Of course we can hope that the human race in his
technological developments would also grow morally, but that would
certainly take to much time. Our techniques are evolving very fast so
we don’t have the luxury of having so much time, and stopping the
development of new techniques is impossible, you can only delay them.
Conclusion: there is only one solution and it is to use the technology
to make the human kind a moral, rational kind. A civilization that acts
upon intellect and not upon uncontrollable emotions. This was already a
lot of years my philosophy, that the next evolutionary step of the human
race was to improve itself to prevent self-destruction.
I also often thought about dying and
disliked the idea that one day I would have to miss all the new
discoveries on earth and beyond.
About one and a half year ago I decided
to buy myself a computer, I can’t imagine a life without it now.
Immediately I used the internet, what seemed to be an endless source of
information. Because of my interest in philosophy, that has resulted
now in my study philosophy at the university of Ghent in Belgium, I
searched about information on humanism. Then was the first time I came
along a site of transhumanism. I was delighted to find out that my
ideology had a name, transhumanism, and I wasn’t alone with my ideas. I
also read about cryonics, a year and a half later, I’m the first
Belgian to have a cryonic suspension contract, and I’m very glad about
that, I hope other people in Belgium will follow.
The people around me now that I’m going
to be cryogenically suspended, and I often get reactions like; “maybe
the world will be terrible within here and 100 years”, “all the ones you
love will be gone”, “everybody should dye”, “that’s impossible”. I think
all cryonists now these reactions. I also try to inform the people
about why I do this and why it is possible.
Everybody is looking for a sense in
life. Some find it in there children, others in there career, … But
it all comes down to the same, we're looking for happiness, for a “good
life”, each one in his way. We have our biological restrictions, but as
humans we have our reflection and limited freedom we can use to think
about what’s right for us, how we can make a world where as many people
as possible can live a “good life”. That “good life” can impossibly be
a life full of concern about disease and dead, no rational human being
thinks about dead as a pleasant state, certainly not the people living a
happy life, so we have to work on it that everybody can live a happy
life. We can work towards that “good life”, that is in the first place
a “good life” for the person itself without harming the “good life” of
others. A society where we use one another in a good sense to all live
a happy life in a world without enormous contradistinctions and lack of
moral as we see today.
Verbeke David
I was born on 19/04/1977. I now live in
Kortrijk, where I run a business and in Ghent where I study philosophy.
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