To Be or Not to Be

[Marat]

If people were playing high-stakes poker, making the kind of bets that could cause a whole family's home, college education savings, cars, etc., to be lost on a single hand, most of us would refuse to participate because we would prefer to avoid that sort of stress. Even if there was an even chance of winning that much money, we simply would not want to have to endure the tension and dread of something that bad going wrong.

 

But then what about life itself? Even if you believe that there is a good chance that your fortune in life will bring as many entertaining and rewarding experiences as negative ones, having human physical existence means that you constantly have to live with the awareness that, at any moment, some terrible fate may befall you that would make life infinitely worse than death itself. After reading this message you might take a bathroom break and find yourself urinating blood, leading to a diagnosis of cancer, resulting in your having to make an existential choice between gaining a few years of low-quality life at the price of enduring the monstrous torture of chemotherapy while sacrificing your children's education fund to pay for your treatment, or just giving up and dying a horrible death instead. The terrifying process of dying that way could go on for years. Having to go around all your life knowing that things like this are always possible creates a dreadful uneasiness, and when evil actually materializes, people often wish they had never had consciousness in the first place so that they would not have had to endure what now occurs.

 

But your chance of escaping the ultimate terrors of life is small, given the certainty of death and the fact that as a being who depends on organization for your health and happiness, living in a world governed by entropy means that the odds are stacked against you. A stab wound in the stomach happens in an instant but can produce an injury lasting a lifetime. If you were just an animal, the fact that half your experiences would probably be good and half bad might give you an acceptable existence, but as a human, your awareness of the possibility of evil will always overshadow your hope for the possibility of things being good, thus giving a negative tone to every experience.

 

The Ancient Greeks understood all of this, which is why their Myth of Silenus had the wise old centaur say, "The best thing for mankind is never to have been born, or failing that, to die as soon as possible." Once you come into existence you are trapped, even if you find life and its negative possibilities too terrifying, since your irrational instinct to keep living no matter how awful life is also closes the escape of suicide.

 

So rather than papering over the insight of the Ancient Greeks with various mythologies about benevolent father-figures in the sky making things all right, wouldn't it be better just to devote the energy historically wasted in religious indoctrination to teaching people how to commit suicide without Angst if that's what they felt they needed to do?

[islamuzlum]

I don't think it's a good idea either! I mean I've got my own beliefs and committing or teaching or even allowing others to commit as such for me is not morally correct. It's so great to be alive and experience everything of which of course must in accordance with laws of the land and conscience.

[Spyman]

...your awareness of the possibility of evil will always overshadow your hope for the possibility of things being good...

Nah, all those bad things won't happen to me anyway...

[Hari Seldon]

I believe that most likely the exact same number of good things happen to you as bad things do. I always try to look at the bright side of everything. I have lived on 3 different continents and I have experienced so many different cultures, it is almost bordering on the impossible considering I am 18 years old. That is the bright side of things. However I could look at it like this I have had to move twice always leaving all my friends behind and having to start from new, to make new friends that would be the bad side of life. But I choose to focus on the good side of life because in the end how you experience life is just a choice of your perspective. I choose to pay attention to the good things in life and try to make the bad things into good things as much as possible. For example today I bought a packet of chips and it had double the amount of chips in then it was supposed too. This will cheer me up for the res of the week and just make all of the bad things happening this week seem not so bad.

 

I also don't think suicide is ever an option. It is actually avoiding the problem.

 

As for us expecting the worst again it depends on your view. Of course we can also let some of our fears just rule over our life. I for example have a fear of heights but I always try to face that fear, for example recently I helped a friend set up speakers on a roof to help me face my fear.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Hari

[michel123456]

Very logical approach, Marat.

That makes me think we don't act logically in life.

 

As for teaching suicide, it is forbidden by the law I think.

One could at least learn how to avoid stupid ways of dying horribly, like by burning, hanging or drowning.

[Marat]

I agree that the human persistence in life is illogical, given its actual and potential horrors, and the fact that the threat of its potential horrors always exists as a background terror to everything that happens. Unfortunately, we are trapped by our animalistic drive to continue living no matter what the cost, and this is perhaps our greatest misfortune. You would be overwhelmed to see old people dying in the hospital from the most terrifying medical conditions -- with more pieces missing than present, and the remaining pieces swollen, deformed, and rotting with decay -- but nonetheless clinging to their utterly meaningless life-as-perpetual-torture. How do we keep ourselves from finding ourselves in that predicament someday, when our own stupid, tasteless, but overpowering will to live becomes our own worst enemy?

 

I have often thought that terrible medical diagnoses should always be delivered to the patient not as an actual verbal diagnosis, but instead just as a massive bolus of morphine secretly delivered before the patient notices what is happening, so that there would be no need for the patient to experience the terrifying news, to undergo the slow and horrifying decline into death, and finally to die via the usual ('life sustaining') medical torture delivered at the end of life.

 

At 18 it might be tempting to say that you can make of life what you want but choosing how to view it. This was the idea of the Ancient Stoics, encapsulated in the phrase in Shakespears's 'Hamlet,' where it is said, "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." However, the sad fact is that because we are existing beings, actually thrust into the reality of life, rather than just thinking beings contemplating life from the outside, whatever happens to us grabs us with such intimate, visceral force that we cannot think it away into the interpretation that we want.

[Spyman]

I have often thought that terrible medical diagnoses should always be delivered to the patient not as an actual verbal diagnosis, but instead just as a massive bolus of morphine secretly delivered before the patient notices what is happening, so that there would be no need for the patient to experience the terrifying news, to undergo the slow and horrifying decline into death, and finally to die via the usual ('life sustaining') medical torture delivered at the end of life.

Sounds like murder to me, IMHO the only person able to determine the worth of his life is the patient himself.

[michel123456]

Sounds like murder to me, IMHO the only person able to determine the worth of his life is the patient himself.

 

Yes and no.

Murder yes.

And no, in most countries the patient is not allowed to decide if he will put an end on his own days: suicide is an offense and euthanasy is illegal.

Edited May 27, 2011 by michel123456

[TonyMcC]

Marat - None of us chose to be born and all of us must die. It is best to accept these as facts and make the best use of what lies between - because basically that is all there is for each of us, at least in this world. Since we don't really have a choice in the matter we might as well enjoy what gives us satisfaction and pleasure and accept that life will throw at us disappointment and pain from time to time. That is the nature of life and in my experience, as a man in my 70's, most people do not dwell unduly on possible misfortunes that may or may not lie ahead. Perhaps one day when you are in your 80's you will walk round a corner and be zapped by a stroke of lightning which will kill you in an instant! If something like that happens what benefit will you have obtained by a lifetime of dark thoughts concerning suffering and death?

[Marat]

In the old days of medicine the doctor was supposed to take a fiduciary approach to the patient and not tell him about any frightening diagnoses if this news would harm the patient's health. Now there is more emphasis on patient autonomy, and thus on the duty of the doctor to share his diagnosis, no matter how psychiatrically damaging the news might be. But if you take the view that the doctor has a greater duty to spare the patient from harm than to respect the patient's autonomy, and the doctor knows that the patient will respond to a fatal diagnosis by stupidly clinging to life out of an irrational survival instinct and thus endure unspeakable horrors, then perhaps you could say that the doctor's duty is to kill the patient by some disguised and painless method so that the patient can avoid a fruitless and horrific dying process. Wouldn't this also be a kind of medicine, taking medicine in the sense of the effort to diminish human suffering rather than to prolong life?

 

While I agree that it would be better not to think all these dark thoughts, the difficult thing about human existence is that we cannot force our minds to think only those thoughts which are most beneficial to our flourishing. Instead we feel called upon to understand everything, whether it is harmful or beneficial. I think this is part of the message of the Ancient Greeks' myth of Silenus, since the wise centaur begs the humans not to force him to tell them the ultimate truth of life, but the Greeks make him do so anyway, and then discover the awful truth that life is so terrible that it is better never to have been born.

 

Perhaps all of the artificial business of life -- the compulsive shopping, self-medication with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, and trinkets, pointless accumulation of money past all genuine need for material things, obsessive curiosity about miniscule academic points -- is just a gigantic effort at distraction from the insight gained in the myth of Silenus.

 

The practical point of these thoughts would be to lead people to stop having children so that at least this misfortune would not continue indefinitely, even though we who already live are trapped in it. But whenever I haved discussed this idea to people considering having children, they just look at me as though I have two heads, or, more accurately, as though I have lost my head. I am constantly puzzled that no one seems able to understand all this.

[Basi]

Easy to mention that view point now but what happens when that line is drawn (allowing patient euthanasia) and it comes to a point where doctors are advising that patients take their own lives because it is the logically right choice? they (the patients in question) are serving nothing positive on society, draining society's income, etc. Do you think it would be 'right' for the doctor to push his medicine on the patient, even if that patient has a borderline desire to live?

 

surely the 'logical' decision would be the next categorical step if patient euthanasia was ruled legal, ie - if the patient isn't providing any positive to society why keep him/her. not to mention this would open a whole new can of worms for insurance companies that could do research on 'pleasurable death medicines' and no doubt they would have lobbyists and reps attempting to persuade doctors (just like they attempt to do now except with non-lethal medicines) to use their new death drugs.

 

i understand where you're coming from but i personally feel the precedent it would set would be an awful scenario.

[michel123456]

If we had to kill all those who are serving nothing positive on society, draining society's income...

[Basi]

If we had to kill all those who are serving nothing positive on society, draining society's income...

 

Forgive me but I don't understand the point here...

 

 

Are you suggesting performing the italicized would be a positive outcome in the grand scheme of events or a negative outcome? If you are indeed suggesting it would overall be positive I have a reply.

[michel123456]

Sorry i thought it was obvious. No positive outcome of course. Other societies applied the italicized and we know the result.

Note: I am trying to avoid Godwin's law.

But the law is the law.

[Marat]

The proper way to address all 'slippery slope' arguments, where something which is in itself good is rejected on the speculation that it might, if extended, lead to something bad, is just to endorse only the good part and recommend clear legal restrictions to prevent the bad part. "We shouldn't permit driving, otherwise blind people may get behind the wheel and kill people!" Well, we could just license driving so that blind people wouldn't be allowed to drive. Similarly, we could make incitement to suicide illegal (as it already is, if done on a personal basis rather than in a theoretical discussion), if the reasons given for urging someone to consider seriously whether he should die were that his death would have a utilitarian benefit to society, rather than a benefit to his own interests.

 

Most of these suicide-persuasion danger arguments seem to suppose that people are much more easily persuaded of very difficult things that they don't naturally want to do than they really are. Have you ever tried to persuade an aged relative to make an obviously rational choice about what to do with his own money, even if the benefits to him are overwhelmingly clear? "Garl darn it, I just don't trust banks, and that's all there is to it." -- "But dad, don't you realize how much interest you could be collecting?" -- "Ma mind's made up! Now git, or I'll cut you outta ma will!"

[DrRocket]

So rather than papering over the insight of the Ancient Greeks with various mythologies about benevolent father-figures in the sky making things all right, wouldn't it be better just to devote the energy historically wasted in religious indoctrination to teaching people how to commit suicide without Angst if that's what they felt they needed to do?

 

Just selected people.

 

Suicide is pretty much a sure cure for angst.

Edited May 28, 2011 by DrRocket

[Myuncle]

As for teaching suicide, it is forbidden by the law I think.

 

I don't think teaching suicide it's necessarily positive, but what I find disgusting is that since we are born they teach us that we have to live at any cost, even if we don't like it.

[TonyMcC]

 

The practical point of these thoughts would be to lead people to stop having children so that at least this misfortune would not continue indefinitely, even though we who already live are trapped in it. But whenever I haved discussed this idea to people considering having children, they just look at me as though I have two heads, or, more accurately, as though I have lost my head. I am constantly puzzled that no one seems able to understand all this.

 

This is a member of my family 3 generations from me. I don't believe anyone can look her in the eye and say "You would be better off dead". I don't believe any prospective parent would not be delighted to have such a child. Would you really advise me to persuade her parents to painlessly end her life to spare her from the imagined "horrors yet to come"?

Edited June 1, 2011 by swansont
remove photo at user's request

[michel123456]

It is my policy never to publish any picture of any relative on the web, especially a young one.

[Spyman]

I don't believe anyone can look her in the eye and say "You would be better off dead".

The child is adorable and in general I agree with your argument, but:

 

Photographs on the web could potentially draw unwanted attention, so I agree with Michel you are exposing {name removed}.

 

You better belive that there are some who not only can say it but eagerly desire to prove it too.

Edited June 1, 2011 by Spyman

[TonyMcC]

On reflection I have to agree that putting my greatgranddaughter's picture on the web was unwise. I don't know how to remove a post, so if someone could advise me or perhaps a moderator could remove it for me then I would be grateful. Thank you Michel and Spyman for your advice.

[Spyman]

On reflection I have to agree that putting my greatgranddaughter's picture on the web was unwise. I don't know how to remove a post, so if someone could advise me or perhaps a moderator could remove it for me then I would be grateful. Thank you Michel and Spyman for your advice.

Send a PM to a Moderator, they can help you to edit and remove the image.

[michel123456]

This is a member of my family 3 generations from me. I don't believe anyone can look her in the eye and say "You would be better off dead". I don't believe any prospective parent would not be delighted to have such a child. Would you really advise me to persuade her parents to painlessly end her life to spare her from the imagined "horrors yet to come"?

 

I agree 100%.

 

to me the goal is do avoid as much as horror possible. One has to realize that nature can harm badly, there is no need for the humans to help Charos in his work.

 

the french-speaking here must know famous George Brassens song "Mourir pour des idees" very difficult to translate due to the poetic language.

 

The last couplet says (my translation)

"O you, the agitators, o you the good apostles,

die therefore the first ones: we yield you the step.

But of grace, morbleu! let the others live.

Life is almost their only luxury here below.

Don't worry, the grim reaper is rather vigilant.

He does not need that one holds him the scythe.

No more gruesome dancing around the gallows!

To die for ideas: agreed, but of slow death.

but of slow death "

 

the last could be "but dying slow-o-oho-ly", which gives maybe a better idea.

Edited June 1, 2011 by michel123456

[Marat]

I wouldn't recommend that anyone be forced to die for their own good! That is a judgment that everyone has to make for himself or herself. However, it does seem reasonable, with a firm eye on the potential horrors of life, to consider before having children that it might be better for them if they were never born, since at least at that stage they can't feel the injury of being made to die when they don't want to, or of having to kill themself if they find life too terrible to endure.

 

The Ancient Greeks had another myth (was it that of Croesus?) whose final lesson was, 'Count no man happy until his death!' meaning that no one could truly say that his life had been tolerable until it was finally over, given the potential of life to impose unimaginable emotional and physical suffering. I've known mothers of extremely sick children who actually exclaim, 'I wish to God I'd never had any children,' speaking not just of how badly the experience of observing suffering at close proximity affects them but of how much they regret having imposed the risk of life on those who just feel trapped in suffering by being alive.

 

If you're outside a medical field you really have to enlist your imagination to understand how awful things can be. I have seen someone born with Progeria, which is a condition of rapid aging, causing deterioration unto death by about age 20, with cataract formation, baldness, loss of musculature, failure to grow, deafness, and failure to grow en route. These children look essentially like tiny plucked chickens with a piping voice and thick spectacles. The true horror of this condition is that the intellect of its sufferers develops with unusual speed, so the children can savor the full terror of what is happening to them with a prematurely adult mind.

 

And that's just one thing can go wrong that takes just a few pages to describe in a standard work like Cecil's Handbook of Medicine, which is itself circa 1500 pages long. Long before you get to page 1500 you think, what are we humans doing to ourselves by existing and making future humans exist ... forever!

[TonyMcC]

Marat - Before I begin I must make clear that I am just a fairly old chap with quite a lot of experience of life and absolutely no experience that parallels yours. Please feel free to think me a silly old fool if I am way off the mark or, if there is truth in my observations, a sort of Granddad figure.

You seem to me to be a compassionate, caring and sensitive person. I wonder whether your admirable traits of compassion and caring have led you into a sphere of experience where compassion and caring are certainly needed. Also there is merit in trying to work out some way to negate the suffering you have had to work with. However I feel that your experiences have given your sensitive side such a battering that you have become unable to see the wider picture of the sort of life that most people experience. To use an analogy we are all born with a hand that we can play in the game of life. The hands are not equal in strength and some people get such a raw deal that life may not be worth living. Although this is a sad and undeniable fact, for the vast majority of people the hand they are dealt at birth is well worth playing. Most people, in my experience, are glad that they were born, enjoy life ,accept as a fact that one day they will die and just hope that death will come peacefully in old age. I am not experienced in any medical matters but I do wonder if your experiences have left you clinically depressed. You would be in a better position than I to consider that possibility. There is an old prayer( which contains good advice for anyone) that you have probably seen before. I hope I haven't offended you.

 

God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change;

The courage to change those things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.