My project idea is to start a compilation of all known or possible ways to combat the psychological fenomenon many of us Immortalists encounter frequently called the Pro Aging Trance. This is very important because it will help speed up the process of recruiting more people to the movement.
We must have a list of techniques and comebacks to say to all of those Deathists and people trapped in the pro-aging trance so that they will have no choice but to agree! Lets all discuss our own theories and solutions about this issue. Maybe one day we can make a book titled "your guide to convince everyone to support the quest for Immortality!" We can post conversations that we had with people who were negative about the idea of life extension and then discuss what went wrong, then we can post conversations that were successful with people who did not have prior knowledge of our cause and discuss those as well.
we need not be psychologists but it would surely help if we had people who have some background in psychology to help. We could also contact some distinguished psychologists to hear there opinion on the matter.
I've contacted Kelsey Moody who was studying psychology at one point and the pro aging trance and this is what he had to say, "I could probably speculate on this for hours but I'll be brief. My hypothesis is that the pro aging trance is caused by a psychological phenomenon known as learned helplessness, and the widespread occurrence of learned helplessness among people can widely be described by a collective theory called terror management theory."
I asked him what his theory was about why us Immortalist are so strongly bound to this movement and prolonging life, this was his response, " In response to your second question, I think that reasons for us being so committed to this cause may be explained by necrophobia, though I don't have a lot of evidence for this and have not spent much time researching that yet. It should also be noted that not all animals exhibit learned helplessness (though a vast majority do) so perhaps we are simply the special cases where learned helplessness doesn't occur."
I have my own Hypothesis about the pro-aging trance,
There is a time in every humans life when they are a child that they first begin to understand the concept of death, when they realise they may die they usually get upset (at least I did) and consult their parents, the parents being programed by society usually to believe there is an "afterlife" tell the child that death is not a problem their is an afterlife. The child being very impressionable psychologically by there parents and because of there young age is "indoctrinated to believe death is okay they don't have to worry and that there is a heaven to go to. Also because most humans are programmed to mindlessly follow social norms they just believe what everyone around them tells them.
Now as for what I think about us Immortalists
Necrophobia an extreme fear of death is a factor that may influence us Immortalists and even those "indoctrinated" to seek ways to prolong life, this is certainly a case for myself because since I was a young child I have always been terrified by dieing this is what probably motivated me to support this cause, I don't have such a great fear of death anymore though.
Also I looked at a pole about "what your personality type is" in the introduce yourself forum it was a test to see what your personality was, even though I don't think these types of tests are exact, I believe they are useful in general grouping people into different categories of personality and how they think, over 60% answered "rational" which on the tests website it said it was the rarest personality type in the general population, interestingly the website said "rationals" are generally non conformists and they are very logical about how they think of things and tend to not base their decisions based on emotion and they are generally introverted people who are not as social as most other types of personalities. Is this why most people are caught in the pro-aging trance but not people like us are we the way we immortalists are because we do not conform to society and have a mind of our own (which of course is a good thing?
I should also point out that hardly anybody voted for the emotional extroverted personality types. They are also the most common personality types in the world and also I personally don't associate with people with those types of personalities.
Please share your insight into this issue.
Edited by The Immortalist, 12 January 2010 - 11:27 AM.