Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment
- By dj
- 31 August, 2015
- Comments Off on Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment
How far would you go to avoid death?
Frozen to Life is the true account of the author’s extraordinary answer to this question: If he cannot escape the constraints of a ‘natural’ lifespan, he will, upon his death, have his severed head preserved in a vat of liquid nitrogen in the Arizona desert.
This book illuminates the astonishing science behind his decision, and the transformative power of the patternist thinking that carried him to it. From the initial confusion and isolation of his upbringing on the Scottish islands of Benbecula and Skye comes a curious inkling that collides with dominant religious dogmas and alters relationships: What am I? What is a ‘self’? Must selves die?
Neuroscience – including the latest theories about the way mind emerges from the architecture of the brain – interweaves with philosophy, Buddhism, and personal testimony to create a fascinating and emotionally-charged insight into the psyche of a ‘cryonaut’ in waiting.
Written with empathy, searing insight, and dark humour, Frozen to Life is both cutting edge and bleeding heart: a postmodern experiment in falling in love with life while preparing for death, in ways we can change ourselves radically without losing our treasured humanity, and in coming to understand that neither life nor death is what we think it is.
Review
“I don’t think I’ve read a better or more poetic exploration of what it means to be. Or indeed not to be, or only potentially to be.”
– Steve Grand, roboticist and creator of the Creatures artificial life simulation
