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Self-Preservation

In daily living we work hard to extend this sense of our self beyond our life, yet we have no interest in extending the sense of our body beyond our life. Instead we are prepared to accept that it will slowly rot away, eaten by maggots and bacteria, or be burnt in an oven to ash and the bones ground to dust. We have no interest in our bodies remaining preserved, tangible, except perhaps minimally as a cellular legacy passed on as genes to our children.

The wish to preserve the self seems normal, natural. So why should we be interested in bodily preservation? What good is inert flesh compared to a person≠s living memory? At first such questions seem to be well put until one reflects upon the fact that bodies are indeed preserved, just not very well. People keep photographs, videos, clothes and other representations and possessions of the living and the dead. Aggrieved people might maintain the body≠s image and presence through smelling old clothes, leaving a persons room untouched or keeping a favourite photograph of the departed close by. Famous people are preserved in film, paintings, sculptures; their posthumous presence in body and self is even bolder. The Russians were aware of the inspirational and affective power the dead can have when they preserved Lenin≠s body for all to see. Clearly then, it is not just the perceived good deeds of a dead personality that can inspire and comfort the living, the presence of a dead body, in image or in actuality, can serve the same purposes.

A cryonically preserved body would give the living the best form of preservation for their dead. Not only does the name and memory of a person continue, so too does their physical presence, the literal structure of their memory, the unique face to which the name belongs. The bereaved would no longer go through the process of a loved one taken from laying-in-state, only to then disappear forever into the earth or flame leaving nothing but a sense of absence behind. Instead the dead remain in stasis with a chance that they might be revived. At the very least they might still be visited, just as one would normally visit a grave stone.

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