Umm, I didn’t think you were gay, so maybe you can explain this to me. I’m sitting in (of all places) a straight bar frequented by expats in this grungy little town in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, some months ago. I end up talking to this (straight) cultural anthropologist from NYC, who is writing a book on ritualistic homosexual behavior in heterosexual men. I laughed when he told me that and said, “Yeah, they’re straight alright; straight to the next man.” He didn’t think that was funny. He then proceeded to launch into this long dissertation about all these overtly homosexual or homoerotic rituals that groups of primarily alpha straight men engage in. He tells me about this completely unbelievable ritual that supposedly all US Navy ships engage in when they cross the equator. Newbies who haven’t been across before have to dress as women and are subjected to mock intercourse and mock fellatio (and sometimes not so mock). Turns out this has been going on forever, has some kind of special name, but nobody outside of the navy knows about it.
He told me that the elite fraternities, like Skull & Bones, have these rituals of bondage, simulated death and death resurrection, and require servile homoerotic behavior from the pledges. He tells me that recently in the US there has been a big increase in coerced fellatio and receptive anal intercourse in fraternities – possible in response to proscriptions on beatings and excessive alcohol ingestion. It just went downhill from there… I had no idea! Apparently the use of extreme stressors, and in particular the use of restraints, blindfolds and real or mock violence is an almost uniform initiation right into straight male social institutions. Since I have never participated in any of these institutions, and since I’m not into BDSM, this was news to me! I gather his hypothesis is that this behavior is part of the (sexual) and social dominance mechanism in men (straight or gay) and that it is expressed sexually because hierarchical and dominance/submission behavior is part of the brain’s sexual apparatus?

I find it hard to believe that I haven’t heard of this before. For instance, Fred Chamberlain was on aircraft carriers and other ships. But, you never know… as the British say, it’s funny old world. – Mike Darwin

Well, I am certainly no expert, but saying something to the effect that “I am looking for a few good men, etc, willing to sacrifice and work hard etc” and then expressing a lot of moral absolutism etc, well, that sort of talk might well be attributed to someone wanting to start a cult.

BTW, my “cult” remark was meant to be humorous. Hence, the “tee hee”.

I think maybe you should consider taking up drinking a beer or two or smoking a joint to calm down. No offense intended.

mike wrote:
“I urgently need to know how to get this next crop of “bright young men” to do my bidding, or at least not to fuck it all up beyond perdition. How do I do that? ”

Either get lucky or have billions or….piggyback on a major societal/cultural institution.

mike wrote:
“What about dark and terrifying rituals of bondage and humilation, ”

Stop with the dirty talk. I am not homosexual.

/tee hee!

mike wrote:

“So, what exactly should I do, because truth to tell, now that I am solidly in my declining years, I certainly cannot tolerate another round of snotty and ungrateful acolytes and proteges; not only do they refuse to do my bidding, they won’t even talk to me. So please, tell me Dear Abby, what is a person in my situation to do??????”

That bit about the beer and the joint? I was not joking. Just relax a bit and enjoy life…

We all appreciate the sacrifices you made to build cryonics into what it is today. And I think you paid a price for those sacrifices. Remember that part about you wanting people who had not been “harmed by life”? Physician, heal thyself.

Maybe it is now time to settle into a role as an elder statesman of cryonics?

I am an absolute peach of a person compared to L. Ron Hubbard, A. J. Galambos, David Koresh or Jim Jones. These people were horrible. I actually knew two of them (I’m not telling). These guys earned their cults the old fashioned way: they MADE them. First, they had to get the point where they had control of either money or its equivalents – and that is hard to do. Then they had to use those resources to create a strangling ideological environment as that parcels out rewards and punishments solely to further own AND the leader’s interests. That is even harder….

The other cults remind me a lot of what I saw when I went to the parties and salons of the rich and sometimes also famous in Brentwood and Bel Air under the aegis of FM2030 and Tim Leary, many years ago. I’ve seen the same thing many times since with drug lords, gang bangers, the rich, the super rich and the famous. They are surrounded by people who have exactly the same feel as that given off in meetings in of the kinds of groups you mention (I’ve not been to as Terasem meeting). They also often (but not always) create a kind of creepy enthusiasm that is exactly like that of someone in the thrall of multilevel marketing – like Mary Kay or AmWay. These cohorts of acolytes last only as long as the coke, the crack, the parties, the retreats, the free food, the vacation lodging, or whatever other stream of goodies lasts. An old cryonics buddy of mine in the UK bitterly remarked that the only reason many peole came to meetings at one the groupd there because of the “dole” provided by the group’s leader. I told him I thought he was being too harsh. A couple months later I was at one of those meetings and sitting in a restaurant (tab paid by the group’s leader) and I was talking with the people at my table. I asked what brought them to the meeting and several immediately answered, “It’s cold in our flat and we hardly ever get to eat out in a place like this.”
No thanks.

I am searching for people who are not just willing, but who are anxious to march into hell, and back, because of the certainty and the morality of the values they reasonably hold. I was surrounded by men (and one woman) like that once in my life. They were by no means superheroes; nor were they pictures of what is conventionally called courage. Still, they were my betters, and I learned a great deal from them at a terrible personal cost.

What was their use and why were they so unique? Because they made it inescapably clear that cryonics could work, and that if it didn’t work in the face of such courage and resolve, then the world was not merely a place not worth living in, it was a place it would not be possible to live in. THAT is fundamentally all cryonics needs.

– Mike Darwin

I have no idea. Google Analytics seems to be one of the best free solutions around. Googling, I didn’t find any mention of time on site/page for WordPress blogs, although I did find that there apparently is a plugin to insinuate Google Analytics into all pages: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

> In fact, if anything, I’m the best critic of cryonics there is. LessWrong has this thread about arguments against cryonics:http://lesswrong.com/lw/1r0/a_survey_of_anticryonics_writing/ which I find intensely amusing because so far, no one there has cottoned onto any of the really good ones. Hint: I just posted one over the last two days here.

Your criticisms are certainly interesting and seem thorough, but I think you misunderstand the point of that page. It’s pretty specific about the question: is cryonics possible *in principle*? Is the mind meaningfully preserved in the absence of electrical activity? Are there consequences of death that immediately cause information-theoretic death? (the old rupturing lysosomes being an example consequence)

Notice the Feynman example – the general isn’t asking for something that turns out to be infeasible because the processes are too tricky to get reliable or because the organization has such a high rate of failing in a few decades, he’s asking for something infeasible *in principle*. Hence also the first anti-cryonics piece examined, that the freezing process intrinsically destroys cells, or the author’s parenthetical aside about the anti-cryonics pieces that “they all talk about the cost and a varie Interestingly (and somewhat to the author’s surprise) there are no published technical articles on cryonics that claim it won’t work.ty of other issues, but here I’m focussing specifically on the issue of technical plausibility” or the approving quote of Merkle, “Interestingly (and somewhat to the author’s surprise) there are no published technical articles on cryonics that claim it won’t work.”

So, I don’t think your arguments are what ciphergoth was looking for. If you thought cryonics didn’t work even in principle, like a perpetual motion machine, it’d be almost beside the point to discuss other issues. (Your alluded to arguments would be those cost and other issues.)

Yeah, well, let’s see how that worked out last time. Someone recently snarled at me that I should be happy as a clam since, and I quote, “Mike Darwin proteges are now in virtually complete control of cryonics.”

“What the fuck do you mean by that smart ass remark?” I replied.

“Well, think about it,” came the reply. “Ben Best is President of CI, Max More is President of Alcor. Steve Bridge was President of Alcor, and that was entirely your idea, and Brian Wowk is probably the most influential scientist in cryonics other than Greg Fahy. And BTW, you were also bosom buddies with Greg Fahy.”

I wish I could say I was momentarily sick to my stomach, but the fact is I’m still sick to my stomach these many months later.

A couple of days ago I got a letter from Steve Bridge which conisted of one line to the effect that he was “ashamed to be my friend.” I’ve been told that Max More despises me and “wanted to cut my head off with no intention of freezing it, let alone vitrifying it.” Somehow I don’t think he has chemical fixation and plastination in mind, either. Ben Best? Well, Ben was becoming so agitated and overwrought communicating with me that, as an act of mercy, I decided to spare him further anguish – that ws at least a year or two ago.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t ban you from commenting here. I probably should, and I damn well would if I were in the cult business. But the fact is that while you can be incredibly irritatinga and obtuse, you do ask questions that no one else would either think to, or have the bollocks to So, now its my turn to ask you a few questions. Can you PLEASE tell me how to create a cult? I urgently need to know how to get this next crop of “bright young men” to do my bidding, or at least not to fuck it all up beyond perdition. How do I do that? Should I get a signet ring for the acolytes to kiss? What about dark and terrifying rituals of bondage and humilation, like Skull & Bones practice? Or maybe I should go the route I hear so many campus fraternities are now pursuing: they force pledges to engage in degrading homosexual behavior just for laughs and giggles; it’s safe, nonviolent, and I suppose, politically correct these days. The trouble with that last one is that I happen to like good sex, and I can’t imagine competence, let alone excellence and enthusiasm under such circumstances.

So, what exactly should I do, because truth to tell, now that I am solidly in my declining years, I certainly cannot tolerate another round of snotty and ungrateful acolytes and proteges; not only do they refuse to do my bidding, they won’t even talk to me. So please, tell me Dear Abby, what is a person in my situation to do??????

Sincerely,
A grateful reader in Yucca Valley, CA

“Similarly, while I definitely need to refine my message and make it more on point, I’m not the least bit concerned that it is going to be opaque to 99.999% of the population. I wouldn’t know what to do with even 5% of the population if it showed up on my doorstep. ”

Ha ha…I don’t think you have any worries, there….

MIKE WROTE:
“I want very smart and very motivated people who are curious, adventurous and still largely unharmed by life and free of burnout. Alas, wanting and having are two very different things.”

The Mike Darwin Cryonics Cult…er..Club!

Tee hee!

– Mike Darwin