This year I updated the "Life is Limitless" section of my Optihumanist Principles to state the following:
We invent and innovate to make aging and death optional.
Speaking of death as an option, today I launched a new website, cryothanasia.org. The site provides a list of articles about the practice of euthanasia followed immediately by cryonic suspension.
In mid-2003, I launched the Transhumanist Church website to announce my intent to create a Religious Transhumanist organization. The goal was to combine elements of the Society for Venturism with the spirit of early twentieth century American Religious Humanism. Religious Humanism does not exist as an independent movement today as the bulk of it morphed into secular humanism while the religious remnant was eventually absorbed into Unitarian Universalism.
Depending on the context, the term
"Church" either means a Christian organization or any religious organization in general, whether Christian or non-Christian. To disambiguate, you might use the alternative term "Fellowship" for an organization that is religious but maybe not exclusively Christian. The term "Society" feels similar to "Fellowship" but maybe more secular.
The Society for Venturism was originally known as the Church of Venturism. After a founding member of the Society for Venturism joined the Transhumanist Church, the members voted to change the name of their organization to the Society for Universal Immortalism (SfUI). After that, the Transhumanist Church domain name was no longer used.
On my Cryonics Industry Consortium (CrInCo) website, I have a directory of cryonics organizations providing services in the United States. It recently dawned on me that I could create a similar website listing Transhumanist religious organizations. To promote growth in this area, I have relaunched the Transhumanist Church website.
A few months ago I was in a conversation in which someone asked what happened to the soul when someone went into cryonic suspension. I remember having a conversation with my Christian father some decades ago that touched on something like this. He had replied that God knows when you are really dead.
I think this is a good response for those who believe in the supernatural soul. You could try to tell them that there is no such thing as the supernatural but that would just trigger their defenses against mortal terror. It is probably best to just get them signed up for cryonics with their current worldview intact and then maybe only later try to persuade them otherwise when they emerge from their baptism in liquid nitrogen.
Recently I finished listening for a second time to an audiobook on the subject of Terror Management Theory entitled The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death. It explains how our Denial of Death drives many of our defensive behaviors including religion and war. It makes me wonder how human culture might change for the better when future medical technology makes us effectively immortal.
The Worm at the Core helped me make yet another connection between an Old Testament story and an earlier Sumerian myth. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, after Gilgamesh acquired a plant that would make old men young, a serpent stole the plant and consumed it. The serpent then shed its old skin, becoming young again, leaving Gilgamesh to realize the inevitable.
The serpent from the Epic of Gilgamesh reappears in the Garden of Eden to teach Eve the same lesson. The authors of The Worm at the Core assert that one of the ways we attempt to distinguish ourselves from animals without immortal souls is to clothe and decorate our bodies. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they became aware that they were naked.
The consequence of their eating from the Tree of Knowledge was not their deaths but rather the knowledge of their deaths. Before the serpent tempted Eve with the gift of foresight, Adam and Eve
could simply gather fruit from the trees of the Garden whenever they
were hungry, blissfully ignorant of what would happen when the fruit
went out of season. Afterwards, they became aware of their fate in a way that non-human animals cannot.
The curse laid upon Eve for her transgression was the knowledge that the only existing route to immortality is through the pain of childbirth. The curse for Adam was the knowledge that only through the pain of his labors to till the soil in the present could they reap a potential harvest to permit them to survive in the future. The same foresight that pushes us into denial and paralysis can also drive us to labor today to conquer death tomorrow.
My wife Shannon and I had another anniversary recently. She is a good mother to our six children and a good wife. I am happy she said yes when I proposed thirty years ago.
My parents had their sixtieth anniversary recently. I look forward to another thirty years of marriage to my best friend. I love Shannon.
Here in Texas, we have had a hot summer. Whenever I wanted to do something outside on the weekends like sailboat maintenance, I had to get out there at dawn to beat the heat. I expect that future summers will be even hotter.
I started thinking about climate migration again. I learned that the Great Lakes Region is a climate haven. Many of my family members and friends are already up there, some having moved within just the last few years.
In my search for a new home, I saw that Michigan came up repeatedly as a future refuge. Compared to Texas, Michigan is cold but like everywhere else, it is trending warmer. In a number of decades, it could be quite pleasant.
I also saw that the Cryonics Institute is in Michigan. I am a twenty-plus-year member of the cryonics organization Alcor located near Phoenix, Arizona where it gets unbearably hot. A few days ago I became a Life Member of the Cryonics Institute located near Detroit, Michigan where it does not.
Some counties in Michigan have laws that are friendlier toward cryonics than others. Macomb County, home of the Cryonics Institute, has better laws than some adjacent counties. It also has good public schools.
Macomb County prides itself on being Boat Town, U.S.A. It borders Lake Saint Clair which is part of the Great Loop. They have many yacht clubs, marine businesses, and Coast Guard stations in that area.
As a first step toward my migration to Michigan, I am selling my sailboat and slip here in Dallas. I will buy another boat after I make the move. I look forward to sailing up there with other members of the Cryonics Community.
Congratulations to my son Thomas Edward Croft on completing his initial training in the United States military. Ensign Croft is a fourth generation United States military officer. Our family history includes Air Force, Army, Navy, and now Coast Guard.
Thomas is stationed at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) where he is training to become a medical doctor. USU is in Bethesda, Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C. I look forward to seeing where his career takes him next.
Recently I finished reading a library copy of The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story by Marie Kondo. The author explains her approach to minessentialism in somewhat mystical terms but you can often figure out a practical rationale for each of the rules that she teaches. I found this graphic novel to be a quick easy read and now my family members are enjoying it.
I have recently decided that I need to start digital tidying on a periodic basis. I think I will start alternating my daily practice of cleaning my physical space with cleaning my virtual space. My digital maintenance could include uploading all of my files to the cloud and then deleting them off of old laptops, sorting the contents of my cloud folders so that I can find the files that I am looking for when I need them, deleting files that are no longer needed, and making offline backups of my cloud data.
I recently attended a Zoom presentation hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association (UUHA). Rabbi Adam Chalom gave a talk on "Imagine There's No Heaven: A Humanist Approach to Mortality and Memorial". The UUHA just launched a new YouTube channel so the talk might be archived there soon.
While he was speaking, I was thinking of how an Optihumanist memorial service might differ, especially for someone who was in cryonic suspension. Like a Humanist service, it would not offer comforting words to the grieving survivors that they might meet again in a supernatural afterlife. Unlike a Humanist service, however, there would be some hope for a reunion in a different kind of afterlife, either physical or virtual, via some future medical technology.
Congratulations to my daughter Ada Beth Croft and my new son-in-law Coleman Anthony Cotton on their marriage earlier this month.
I telecommute from my home office so I like to get out of the house when I can. On weekends, I frequently hang out with the other sailing enthusiasts at the Dallas Corinthian Yacht Club. Since I work from home, you might say that my third place is actually my second place.
In addition to messing about in boats at the Club, I also enjoy the commute to and from. It takes about an hour to get there from my home in Far North Dallas so I like to listen to audiobooks and technical podcasts while I drive. It is usually a peaceful excursion.
Last year while returning from the Club, however, I did get rear-ended while I was waiting at a stoplight. The road was still slick from a heavy rain so I suspect the car started hydroplaning when the driver applied the brakes. The damage was minimal so we did not even bother to report it.
The jolt was a reminder to me just how dangerous driving can be. While the probability of dying in a vehicle accident on any one trip is very low, the probability of dying in a vehicle accident over a lifetime is over one percent. Until self-driving car technology becomes consistently safer than human driving, motor vehicle crashes will continue to be a leading cause of death.
I am not too worried about my weekend jaunts since I am passing through two of the five safest cities in the United States with particularly low vehicular mortality rates. If I had to commute for work in the opposite direction toward downtown Dallas during rush hour traffic, however, I would be worried. The safest commute is the telecommute.
One of the many things that I have learned from the Church of Perpetual Life is that eating legumes is good for you. The next thing that I learned was what legumes are: beans, lentils, and peas. More recently I learned that pulses are the edible seeds of legumes.
The United Nations promotes the consumption of pulses by observing World Pulses Day. They point out that pulses are better for the consumer, the economy, and the environment. I would add World Pulses Day to my list of Optihumanist Holidays except that it is too close to Darwin Day.
In addition to skipping supper, one of the other changes that I have
made to my diet recently is to eat canned beans for breakfast. I avoid baked beans because of the sugar. My children do not eat beans but I am hoping to ease them into it.
Today I added a section to Papa's Anthology of Paternal Advice (PAPA) about meals:
Eat dinner at midday and skip supper.
This practice is described in the scientific studies as early Time-Restricted Eating (eTRE) or early Time-Restricted Feeding (eTRF) and is considered to be a type of intermittent fasting.
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