The selfishness accusation surfaces regularly in cryopreservation discussions. Critics suggest that choosing preservation represents narcissistic refusal to accept natural limits, that resources spent on speculative future revival could help present suffering, that clinging to individual existence reveals inability to embrace proper relationship with mortality. These charges deserve examination rather than defensive dismissal.
Start with what selfishness means. The term suggests excessive concern with one's own welfare at the expense of others. Selfish acts prioritize personal benefit while ignoring or actively harming others' interests. By this definition, cryopreservation's selfishness depends on whether it genuinely harms others or simply pursues personal interest in ways that happen to be unconventional.
Resource allocation creates the strongest version of the selfishness charge. Money spent on preservation could instead fund malaria prevention, clean water infrastructure, educational programs, or direct poverty relief. Every euro directed toward your potential future revival is a euro not feeding hungry children or treating preventable diseases. From utilitarian perspective emphasizing greatest good for greatest number, preservation might seem indefensible.
This argument has force but applies to nearly all discretionary spending. The vacation to Southeast Asia, the premium coffee habit, the larger apartment, the entertainment subscriptions, funding hobbies or collecting art could all be redirected toward more immediate human welfare. If choosing preservation over charitable giving is selfish, then so is choosing restaurants over donations, new clothes over medical aid, or concerts over poverty relief.
Most people don't actually live by the principle that all resources beyond bare necessity should go to those suffering most. We maintain personal spending that serves our own interests while doing some amount of good for others. Cryopreservation fits within this normal pattern of balancing self-interest with concern for others.
The more specific question is whether preservation represents unusually selfish allocation compared to other personal spending. It's speculative, serves only you, and provides no guaranteed benefit. But the same applies to many accepted expenditures. Life insurance benefits primarily your family. Retirement savings serve your future self. Education spending develops your capabilities. Health optimization extends your own life.
Preservation arguably represents similar category to health spending: investment in your continued existence. If we accept money spent on gym memberships, preventive medicine, and healthy food as reasonable rather than selfish, the logic extends to preservation. Both invest present resources in future vitality.
The charge of selfishness often carries implicit assumption that accepting death represents proper humility while fighting it reveals narcissism. But this conflates unconventionality with selfishness. Choosing unusual methods to extend life doesn't inherently reflect greater self-regard than choosing conventional methods. It reflects different beliefs about what's possible and what's worth pursuing.
Consider too how cryopreservation affects others beyond resource allocation. Your continued existence has value to people who love you. Children benefit from parents remaining in their lives. Partners want more time together. Friends value your continued presence. Choosing preservation honors these relationships by trying to extend them.
From this angle, preservation might be less selfish than accepting unnecessary death. If others want you to continue existing and you have means to increase that possibility, choosing conventional death could be the more selfish act. It prioritizes your comfort with conventional endings over their desire for your continued presence.
This doesn't mean you owe others your continued existence. Your life remains yours to direct. But it does complicate the selfishness charge. Preservation often reflects concern for relationships and recognition that others have stakes in your continuation, not just solipsistic focus on personal survival.
The accusation also sometimes masks discomfort with mortality itself. Calling preservation selfish can be a way of defending one's own choice to accept conventional death without investigating alternatives. If preservation is selfish narcissism, then accepting death is mature wisdom, and no deeper examination is necessary. The charge protects against uncomfortable questions.
Some version of the selfishness concern does have merit. Preservation pursued purely from fear with no consideration of others' needs or broader ethical questions might genuinely reflect unhealthy self-absorption. If you'd sacrifice anything for personal continuation, ignore family welfare for preservation costs, or view your life as infinitely more valuable than others', then selfishness concerns become valid.
But most people considering preservation don't fit this extreme. They're balancing personal values with family needs, allocating discretionary income reasonably, and pursuing continuation alongside maintaining concern for others' welfare. They're making unusual choice but within normal bounds of self-interest.
The intergenerational question adds complexity. Resources spent on your preservation might otherwise benefit your children or grandchildren. Is that selfish? It depends on specifics. If preservation costs undermine children's welfare, that's problematic. If it uses discretionary resources that would otherwise go to adult luxuries or remain unallocated, it's harder to call selfish.
Many people arrange preservation through insurance that pays out at death regardless. The choice isn't between preservation and inheritance but between preservation and nothing. Insurance funds either support preservation or expire unused. In this scenario, selfishness concerns lose force.
The environmental angle deserves mention. Some argue preservation represents selfish disregard for resource limits and planetary carrying capacity. If everyone lived indefinitely, Earth couldn't sustain current populations. Therefore choosing potential indefinite existence shows indifference to collective welfare.
This argument assumes preservation success, widespread adoption, and absence of offsetting technological development. These assumptions may prove wrong. More importantly, the logic applied consistently would condemn having children, since they also consume resources and increase population. Most people don't consider reproduction inherently selfish, suggesting that continuation of existence carries different moral weight than resource consumption in abstract.
The comparison to actual selfishness helps calibrate intuitions. Selfish people typically ignore others' needs, manipulate relationships for personal benefit, refuse reciprocity, and damage others to serve themselves. Does someone who chooses preservation while maintaining normal relationships, contributing to society, caring for family, and living ethically fit this description? Usually not.
Preservation becomes genuinely selfish when it crosses certain boundaries: impoverishing family for personal continuation, pursuing preservation while ignoring dependent children's needs, viewing own life as inherently more valuable than others', refusing to help others while demanding maximal life extension for self. These patterns reflect actual selfishness rather than merely unconventional choice.
Within normal bounds of self-interest, preservation represents personal priority-setting rather than selfishness. Humans legitimately value their own continued existence. Acting on that value through available means doesn't constitute moral failure unless it genuinely harms others or reveals pathological self-regard.
The deepest version of the selfishness charge might be existential rather than practical: that preservation reveals inability to accept proper relationship with mortality, refusal to recognize that endings give meaning to existence, unwillingness to make peace with natural limits that all humans face. This version suggests selfishness in the sense of immaturity or lack of wisdom rather than harm to others.
This philosophical objection deserves respect but not automatic acceptance. The claim that death gives life meaning is contestable. Many find meaning precisely in continuation, growth, and ongoing experience. The assertion that accepting mortality represents maturity while fighting it represents immaturity is cultural judgment rather than objective fact.
Different wisdom traditions and philosophical frameworks yield different conclusions about proper relationship with mortality. No single view holds monopoly on maturity or wisdom. Choosing preservation might reflect different but equally valid perspective on existence's meaning and value.
Ultimately, the selfishness question requires honest self-examination. Ask yourself: Am I pursuing preservation in ways that genuinely harm others? Am I prioritizing it above responsibilities to dependents? Does it reflect healthy valuing of existence or unhealthy self-absorption? Am I balancing self-interest with concern for others?
If honest answers suggest your preservation interest sits within normal bounds of self-regard, maintains appropriate concern for others, and doesn't genuinely harm anyone, then selfishness charges lose their force. You're making unusual choice but not immoral one. The unconventionality makes some people uncomfortable, which they express as moral criticism. But discomfort with novelty doesn't constitute ethical argument.
Choose preservation if it aligns with your values, serves your interests, and doesn't genuinely harm others. Reject it if those conditions don't hold. But don't reject it simply because someone calls it selfish without examining whether that charge reflects legitimate ethical concern or just discomfort with unconventional choices about mortality.
