A Proposition Contemplated Upon The Carefull Consideration Of Existence

It's something I wrote while at my Grandfathers side while he lays awaiting a much belated death from Cancer. I was more praticularly thinking of this whole Terry Chavio case, and why any sane being would chose to live in seclusion and exile of said faculties.

I would rather have my tubes taken off.


If by any means, and by no will of my own, were I to loose the faculties that necessitate and discern between moral, ethical, and virtous volitions, actions, and contemplations, and by that I mean of reason, then to and of what end do I live? Driven by biological predispositions of necessity in conformity to the utility of self-preservation, I am no more a man than I am a bacteria driven soley upon the will to live, and no more. Then, I say...

I was cut short by visitors, and I will continue to write more when my mind is free.


Deep

Why would you want your tubes taken out?

Maybe you still would have your imagination to play with? A low level form of consciousness?

As long as you were treated well and were generally left alone, I would rather be kept alive in peace. As long as I didnt have some nurse seuxally molesting me, or being tortured somehow, I would want to live.


But I dont think Schiavo has ever said what she would prefer, so I dont think people should be making that decision.


[edit on 26-3-2005 by Ritual]

Deep, removing the fifty-cent words, you're saying that when you lose some portion of your faculties you want to die -- because, in your opinion, there simply isn't that much worth living for. And your request to have your own plug pulled is based on "the careful consideration of existence".

But you can't do a careful consideration of existence -- in my opinion, anyway -- for twenty-three different reasons, and each one of those reasons is a year of your life.

You simply can't contemplate existence carefully in twenty-three years, Zero, no matter how smart of sensitive you are. No one can. You have never looked at life from the aspect of a thirty-, forty-, or sixty-year-old. You can intellectualize about it until the cows come home, and you will think you have the answers -- but you won't know.

When I was in my twenties, I was sure that any sort of meaningful life ended at around the beginning of one's seventh decade; now that I'm there, I realize that life has more to offer me than it ever did when I was a young man.

Now I'm not saying that there is anything "meaningful" about life as a pain-wracked and confused eighty-year-old. I don't think it does, but I don't know, and the reason I don't know is that I am twenty years away from being 80. Perhaps life to him is as precious as it is to me at sixty or you at twenty-three.

Right now I wouldn't want to live like that either, but I may change my mind when I'm his age, just like I changed my mind about my age -- now -- when I was yours -- then.

Moral: Don't be too ready to pull the plug on anyone just yet; you might regret it bitterly (but not for too long, of course) when someone pulls it on you.

[edit on 26-3-2005 by Off_The_Street]

Originally posted by Ritual
As long as I didnt have some nurse seuxally molesting me, or being tortured somehow, I would want to live.

I wouldn't mind being kept alive for a few years just to make sure they couldn't get me going again, but 15 years would be torture even if I could see what's going on - that would be like 15 years in a prison cell where all the guards were deaf & blind you weren't allowed to communicate with the outside world. If you weren't mad in the first few years you'd surely be mad after 15.

If it were me I'd say stop the torture & let me move on in peace.

I've not written anymore that what has been touted, and I will continue to beset in the atmosphere of elderly folk seizing the oppurtunity to escape from thier rooms.

Sitting alone with my grandfather allows me to peer into his complex self as he lays further deteriorating into an atrophic model of his former being. His nuerological systems, now quite obviously degenerated, seem to impede his rationality and the volitions he makes; he's quite often bi-polar and heavily depressed, and at other times, he's angry at others and himself. Maybe it is my youth that is detrimental to my contemplation of what merit life deserves were it wiped of any extension that allows me to reason and make volitions, and by this, I mean in the case as it has been found in Terry Chavio, but I do not make a haste claim beset in hubris or irationality, instead, I'll give it intuitive thought and universality; I'll not simply imply that I wish to cease all life that fails to live up to my standards of what a sentinent, self-aware man should be, I'll simply imply that, were I not a sentient being, than I not a man, and If am by no means a man, than I have no purpose in life but to only delve deeper in viscercal, biological dispositions.

A carefull consideration of my own existence, and that of man, began when I joined ATS, and will continue untill my eventual death. I've grown more in this last year, than most men in 20, and I've come to realize that I'll grow even more as I consider this existence of mine upon this wholly irational societies, and universe.

I have to go, I'll continue when I return and allow you understand my viewpoint of why I would rather die, than be allowed to live as a brain dead being straining society economicaly, moraly, and pyschologicaly.


Deep

That truly is Deep.

I disagree with the older bloke, i'm 17 and from enjoying the company of my 73 year old opa I know that there are many pleasures to be had in that decade, as are the preceding ones, just because i'm young doesn't mean I have the same misconceptions as you did mate

Deep I tend to agree with you buddy, best wishes to your family mate.

ZeroDeep, were you raised in India? Your style reminded me of this article published in the Feb. 27/95 issue of "Time" magazine:



"Inglish" Made Simple

"Doing the needful", Britain sends an expert to help India curb its proclivity toward prolixity

In India, Police don't make arrests, they swing into action to apprehend absconding miscreants. Secretaries don't ask who you are, they request your good name. Bureaucrats rarely say yes but instead promise to do the needful. That's because the English spoken in India --some refer to it as "Inglish"-- is a unique product of two centuries of Britisdh colonial rule and the commingling with India's 15 principal languages and some 3,000 dialects.

"Inglish" is certainly lively. (...) But it also can be antiquated, prolix and opaque, especially as used in official correspondence and the court system. (...)

An Indian consumer group has gone to the source and asked Britain for help. In response, the government-funded British Council late last month dispatched Martin Cutts, whose yearly awards for best and "most" dreadful writing have made him a major arbiter of the mother tongue. "It's the reverence for heavy style that is puzzling to me," he says of his latest assignment. "One day the people here are going to say they are too busy to read these turgid documents written by some self-important ninny." Cutts is not exaggerating: insurance policies in India typically begin with the same 191-word sentence.

(...) Cutts held seminars in three southern Indian cities, informing managers and professionals that language is for communicating, not impressing or imploring. "There is a strong tendency to use phrases like 'begging the favor of your esteemed perusal' [meaning 'please read this']", Cutts said at his final seminar in Coimbatore. "Why can't Indian managers just order their staff to stop groveling?"

(...)

-------

On the other hand, maybe I should've started a thread over at BTS with this off-topic stuff...but it seemed like the right place to put it, right next to a good example of Inglish....sorry for the inconvenience....best of luck to your long-suffering grandfather....
*



[edit on 27-3-2005 by Macrento]

Originally posted by ZeroDeep
It's something I wrote while at my Grandfathers side while he lays awaiting a much belated death from Cancer. I was more praticularly thinking of this whole Terry Chavio case, and why any sane being would chose to live in seclusion and exile of said faculties.

errr, i'm of a mind that, the natural course of nature- makes senility,
confusion, perhaps delirium a compassionate & humane condition at that
end-of-life life horizon.

I would rather have my tubes taken off. (Deep)

errr,
in your present, lucid & vital condition of mind & health..can choose an
appropriate outcome concerning your boundaries, & Quality-of-Life issues.

besides the 'Living Will' avenue
there is the Hemlock Society
whose inspirational founder , i think, was Socrates....
~~~~~~~~~~~~

All that burden on society & draining the family fortune stuff
seems a bit of illogic, to me....

what about the nursing homes, trained professionals, the support & logistics provided by a vast network of infrastructure for the care &
maintenance of the infirmed, the terminally ill, etc

there is an interwoven dynamic involved with the living and those approaching death....and don't forget the transfer of wealth between generations...

you, can choose to have the plug pulled on you, that's freedom of choice,
just don't legislate or decree that outcome on me or anyone else.
~~~~~~

I opted to NOT be an organ donor, on both of the drivers licenses i've had

and that option actually saved my life, because they were required to
'recessitate' , twice if necessary (at judgement/discretion of physician).

after 1 week ICU, , then 2 months in the death-watch room,
i only vaguely recall the 2 different room-mates that passed away while still on the respirator machine and the man that had a feeding tube who got infected real bad. Then the 4 additional months where i graduated to therapy sessions...the whole time was a minituarized form of; prenatal state-to-infancy-to-toddler, a compressed progression of life...including
the visual cortex, as it took over 1 1/2 years to gain a semblance of clear focused eyesight.

i put before you, that much has still to be learned, concerning rehabilitation from the dead....but if 'they' pull the plug...well, there's no new information being passed on to doctors, nurses, therapists and others

food-4-thought???