Frozen body: Can we return from the dead?

[Mikko-kun]

A quarter of a million dollars seems like a whole lot of money to throw away for a person to indulge himself/herself with fairy tale thinking to allay the fear of death. If the person has no heirs, or simply no one to whom he/she wants to give it, then I guess I say, fine, you can't use it anymore and you can't think of anything better to with it, so if you want to donate your life savings to some Charlatan, go ahead, I guess. Too bad the person won't give the money to a worthy charity instead, but whatever. I completely believe future societies will no doubt have amazing advances, the likes of which are primitive minds can't even conceive, including extending human life indefinitely. I see no possibility however that science will advance to the point to make it possible to restore life to a person who died hundreds of years ago and was frozen with the technology available at that time. I understand the fear of death...the unimaginable concept of non-existence for all of time, never to have a conscious thought ever again. I find the thought of this terrifying too. I have to assume the fans of cryogenics reject the possibility of an afterlife...heaven, if you prefer. But how can they see belief in an afterlife as hokum, yet put their money on a sci-fi dream like cryogenics? The concept is so absurd and outlandish, I can't fathom anyone taking it seriously. It's an obvious grasp at a fantom straw to escape the realization of their mortality. If it gives a dying person comfort to face death and the guy has the money, I guess I see no real harm. Who among us doesn't tell ourselves a few lies now and then to deny a reality we aren't ready to accept? I just find it obscene there are exploiters making millions on selling delusional people a fool's dream, and that it's legal.

You nail it with the money especially. There's a lot of good things you use that money for, 250k € or $, when you know what to pick with it. But if you think of it, money itself is kind of worthless. And I know that people like me believe you can bring anything back to life in the future, the people who have an "everything's possible" -mentality. With that mentality you can always conceive possibilities where others dont. Bringing dead back to life can be made more possible by advances in the CPR-kind of technology, from understanding better how life starts from things that aren't considered living, in what kind of conditions, understanding those conditions better, and learning to backtrack brain impulses of the past so even dead and damaged brains might be repaired one day. It's all possible if you think of it, because things leading to another. But...

Do we need it? Life is good because of things past, the first love, first crush, the you spent with those you loved. Playing outside with your friends, doing forbidden things, living a life where you dont need to worry about regrets but just take the consequences... that life is all in the past when you're old. You wont get back it and what you're holding onto may just be a demented mind, a body that can move 100 meters on it's own if you're lucky, and a good likelihood you'll only get rarely visited where they treat you. When you're there, saying you can't go back to your memories is a cruel thing to say but it's still true. They never be as good as they were in the past, and all you've really left with is your dreams and then you wish you'd have more imagination to at least have some fun without doing really anything.

If you're one of those overoptimists like me, you can see a lot of good things where others see none. But this really stretches even that kinda mind.

My time to go is when I either can't survive on my own, or when I've grown myself such an ill heart it can't love anyone anymore. Each to their own, but life past that point might as well be gambled on something where odds of survival are slim at best.

[MorbidVampireica]

What if you are reincarnated and are alive in another body and they try to bring you back to your old body?

[Mikko-kun]

MamaTweedy, it'd probably leave either of the bodies soulless or spiritless. If your spirit had already moved to another body, I doubt it'd jump back and leave the new body spiritless, but instead a new spirit would either be born or an existing spirit would occupy your old body. That sounds more natural to me than if your spirit ripped itself out of your new body to return to the old one. If your spirit has left once, you should not have a reason to return, because usually we have no recollection of our past lives. Or if we do, it's a bit iffy still.

[Kaa-Tzik]

Maybe, only maybe, in the future we can put a person into the at present sci-fi only "stasis" while they still live. We cannot bring anybody back from the dead, otherwise death has no meaning and we need another word. Dead is dead, the end, final, dropped of the perch. As for "soul", that is another question.