What is the immortalist viewpoint, though?

Well, it started with the Immortalist Society, so let's begin there.

Back in the Sixties, a number of people galvanized by Robert Ettinger's book, The Prospect Of Immortality, got together to talk about Bob's new idea -- 'cryonics'. Meetings started to take place on a regular basis, and after a while the people attending decided to organize themselves formally.

They settled on various names -- the Cryonics Society of Michigan, the Cryonics Association, and finally settled on the Immortalist Society.

Their purpose (as stated in each issue of their magazine publication, The Immortalist) was not to perform cryonics suspensions, but to "disseminate information and support research in immortalist/cryonics fields, including gerontology and cryobiology".

The term immortalist was perhaps not the best choice of terms. The word sounds to some as though it refers to eternal life in the religious sense, and cryonics is only a scientific procedure -- not a religion. Neither cryonics nor the Cryonics Institute tells people what they ought to believe or not believe about religious matters.  

But both religious people and non-religious may mistakenly assume 'immortalism' is some different new religion or ideology, and understandably not want to get involved . And that's unfortunate, because IS, like CI, advocates no views on religion or politics or philosophy at all. Both open their doors to all people regardless of their personal views.

The 'immortality' of cryonics isn't Christian resurrection or Buddhist reincarnation or anything of that sort, and it isn't in competition with it. It's simple clinical resuscitation, the sort of things that happens thousands of times each year after a person drowns, or his heart stops, or he stops breathing, or his EEG is flat. Such people 'die'; and modern technology revives them. And people of all faiths, and no faith, agree that it's a good and right thing to do. The average life span was once thirty; now it's over seventy. And no one is upset about it, because everyone knows a long full life is better than one needlessly cut short.

Immortalists, along with most doctors and researchers, do believe that most every disease will sooner or later prove to be curable, and that aging itself will soon be overcome or greatly lengthened. But that doesn't mean eternal life.  CI is not trying to guarantee you that you'll be sitting around a thousand trillion years from now. We all may face irreversible death at some point, through accident or natural disaster, and at that point we'll each find out if the afterlife expectations we hold will be realized.

But IS and CI members, along with most of the rest of humanity, think there's nothing wrong in putting that day off until we've made something more of our lives. There's no need to die today, or to let our families or friends die today.

And there's also no need to restrict ourselves to just a few decades, when much more now seems scientifically possible. You can have a lot more fun in a few centuries than in a few decades -- or perform a great many more good deeds, or put in a great deal more Scripture study, if you're so inclined.

What you do is up to you; immortalists only wants to be sure you have the time to do it.

And so 'immortalists', as the members of the early Immortalist Society called themselves, read about and advocated and spread the word about the idea of cryonics.

But gradually, as IS members watched other early cryonics suspension providers form, disband, stumble, collapse, or inflate their prices out of people's reach, several members of IS, under Robert Ettinger's leadership, decided it was time to form a new and better organization, the Cryonics Institute, to learn from the others' mistakes and try to provide the best, most stable, most affordable cryonics services possible.

Needless to say, holding general discussions is one thing, and providing patient care services is quite another. Members felt it was better for those handling the business and patient care services end of cryonics (namely CI) to concentrate on just that. Whereas people who wanted to discuss cryonics and technological developments and life extension and the like (namely IS) would be better off remaining with IS.

One of the reasons that CI is unusually ideology-free and hasn't suffered the factional squabbling and splits of other cryonics organizations may very well be that separation. Talkers take their talk to IS. CI focuses entirely on taking care of members and patients the best way they can.

And so we came to have two separate organizations: the Immortalist Society, working for cryonics through words and education and fund-raising, and the Cryonics Institute, working to help save actual cryonics patients.

Of course, the two organizations have some overlapping membership. Many CI members are IS members, and vice versa, and CI and IS people often work together, sharing thoughts and information. The IS publication, The Immortalist, often gives reports and updates on CI , and features articles by CI members.  

Often many people who aren't quite decided on arranging suspensions for themselves join IS first, just to stay in touch with developments, or get a feel for what CI is doing, or to support CI without committing themselves yet to suspension. (IS is a tax-exempt non-profit organization, and contributions to IS may often indirectly be of help to CI as well.)

So what, finally, is immortalism?

A fairly common and humane thing: people in the Immortalist Society don't like to see people get sick and suffer and die. They'd like to see people be healthy and stay that way, as long as they can. They'd like sickness to be cured, and old age to go away, and people to live a long, long time. (Though even the most ardent immortalist feel that living literally forever in the here and now may be over-reaching a bit.)

The interesting thing is, current scientific developments are making it look as though curing most diseases, including old age, really is possible. When it becomes actual, then our children or grandchildren could indeed live a long time. A very long time. And so could we, perhaps -- if we become cryonics members, and make the effort to be there with them.

Science is pushing back disease and extending people's life spans. That's a fact. Quite apart from cryonics, advances in biological science and the statements of more than one researcher indicate that aging itself may end up being slowed down, and quite possibly stopped entirely.

This is something to think about. Immortalists think about it.

Some other people have thought about it too. Robert Ettinger in Man into Superman may have given it the classic formulation, but also 'honorary immortalists' like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Olaf Stapledon, Ben Bova and Arthur C. Clarke, Mike Perry and Natasha Vita More have joined in the great dialogue too. Some of these people call themselves transhumanists or venturists or extropians, and mix up long-term futurology and radical speculation with a general support of cryonics. Some of it's quite interesting -- and some of it's pretty silly.

CI and the Immortalist Society are more down to earth than that.

Immortalism is about trying to live long into the future and trying to live well in the present. The way to do that is not to argue about what's going to happen a few centuries from now, but to watch your health today, take care of your finances, keep informed about technological developments, and do your bit towards making the world a better place.

That why IS' publication, The Immortalist, contains news about cryonics, but also contains information about exercise, vitamin supplements, financial projections, book reviews, commentary on and from the Internet -- in short, information to help keep you safe, healthy, and well informed in the here and now.

The Immortalist is the best place around to find out about the Cryonics Institute. And joining the Immortalist Society or subscribing to The Immortalist is one of the best ways to support CI. A number of articles and features from The Immortalist are available on our web site right now -- free. Along with membership and subscription information. Why not click over to The Immortalist Society & THE IMMORTALIST Magazine and have a look?