Wish I hadn't come across this. Now I'll have to put down my feelings in writing.
After being in and out of hospital for a while my dad is now in intensive care. The doctor took me and mom to a private room today where they explained that he's so frail, if anything happens there's no point in trying to help him. No CPR, no respirator. Basically, it's going to be either this time or another time, but it's going to be like this.
My main thought is that he's doing the opposite of being born. When I watched my kids get born, they were little things with no personality. As they grow more and more of them gets created. Their habits, what they like to eat, soon their friends and interests. Opinions about every little thing in the world.
Now I'm seeing that deconstructed in my dad. I stopped being able to talk to him about adult stuff some time ago. Science, politics, history. His thoughts on being transplanted to the west as an adult. As he's gotten more ill recently it's degenerated into what is essentially teenager stuff: why won't he exercise to improve his heart condition? It's not like he doesn't understand what the doctors say.
I might not have another conversation with him, and the last one was last night. We're beyond teenager stage now. He kept asking the same series of questions over and over. Is my heart OK? Nose? Ear? Brain? Leg? Tissemand? Yes really, he said that. The only part of his body he asked me about in Danish, not Chinese.
I feel bad about being angry with him, too. He's basically not followed any medical advice since his bypass. Many family members have brought it up with him. He's just sat there for the best part of three years, doing nothing to get better.
And part of me thinks I caused him to check out of life. Before he had his surgery I sat down with him, when we were both adults, and talked through what might have been the last conversation. He said he had no regrets, the world had treated him just fine, and if the end was now, that was fine. There was a peaceful resignation at that time. Perhaps having the sign off conversation made him not want to struggle back to fitness.
Hi, sorry I'm not sure it will help, or if it's the place, or my place, but here it is. Hearing you hurting about your inability to convince him, and his inability to change, I feel like sharing something I learned the hard way with family, friends, loved ones : he made his choices. In the end, he somehow chose this life and this end. It's not your fault. You tried to change his mind, and you should feel OK that you tried hard. He might have been grateful for your advice, he might be grateful you're still here, with him, right now. I don't know him.
But with people, if really you think they're independent, free intelligent beings, the only thing you can do is /try/ and give support. It's very good that you took time with him before his operation and that's not something you should feel guilty of, even if it sometimes seems so.
I hope you'll feel better or at least OK in the coming weeks. Be well.
Towards the end of his life, my grandpa told me he carried around a little index card. That index card had a simple drawing of two straight lines with a small dot in the middle.
He said he used it to remind him that the only thing he had control over was that little dot in the middle. The rest was outside of his control.
Acceptance of death is as much about accepting that we only have today and should focus on steering it in the best direction we can as it is about accepting there is an end. Don’t beat yourself up over your feelings or past conversations that you feel influenced his decision.
I have been dealing with cancer for the last year. And they do radiation and chemo, and then I get a break for a few months and another PET scan, more radiation, a few more months and a CT scan and pembro. Another scan and another spot. More radiation (last Friday to be precise).
I have accepted that I will probably be dead in a few years. It is why I haven't had the PEG removed. I'm keeping it in so I can dump pills and vodka directly into my stomach if things hurt too much.
I have accepted things. I have all my end of life stuff sitting in a envelope on my desk. I have already paid for my remains to be taken care of. Sigh, the funeral home I paid in advance is probably going to end up on a episode of of American Greed.
But yeah, don't take it personal if we give up. There is a point where the bad is greater than the good and just checking out is the smart thing to do.
Yeah nothing against someone who is terminal giving up. For instance, his brother has cancer right now and is not expected to make it either, and everyone simply accepts it. What seems wrong to me is we know plenty of people who've had a bypass surgery and are now back to normal, because they did what the doctors said.
Was given these when my Dad was clearly failing to thrive and had given up. He basically stopped caring about living after my Mom died, although it wasn’t entirely clear at the time.
My father hasn't had bypass surgery, but he's drank and smoked for 60+ years and has a number of health issues. He's stopped smoking (for my mother's comfort and health, not his own) but continues to drink, eat everything, and lead a mostly sedentary lifestyle. Everyone in my family has pleaded with him at various times to make some effort to get healthier so we'll have him around longer.
His reply: he's already lived longer than he expected to (he's in his late 70s) and is satisfied with what he's done. There's no doubt he loves us but he doesn't feel obligated to stick around for our sake. It's taken a long time for me to accept this as his right.
I wish I could change his mind and every day I try and think of ways to get him excited to stick around longer. I'd love for my (hypothetical future) kids to meet him. There's still so much I want to learn from him.
But I don't know what it's like to be as old as him, and I don't have a right to ask him to do more than he already has. Maybe when he's closer to the end I'll be mad at myself for not fighting harder for him. This piece - and your comment - have made me more determined to do so.
End of life stuff is always hard. This sounds very similar to how my grandfather with congestive heart failure was near the end. In retrospect I wouldn't be surprised if he was depressed, but at the time doctors didn't screen for it like they do today. If your dad makes it this time and your family is interested a psychological evaluation might be worthwhile.
I would also caution about taking what the doctor says at face value. Right off the bat, the elderly are a population that has the lowest ROI for care because the older we get the less likely we are to survive, and I've seen many doctors on autopilot with my grandparents. Medicine is also a very difficult field where even experienced professionals can make mistakes when it comes to diagnosing something, and the elderly also tend to be the most complicated medically. It's also confounded, at least in the US, by care being doled out based on your insurance, which can further complicate an accurate diagnosis by restricting access to resources and care.
It's sad that we as a species waste our time & resources on bullshit such as wars, parasitic businesses like advertising, etc instead of focusing on solving the most important problem that affects us all across all races, religions and cultures: death.
Not all of us view death as the worst thing that has affected this species, not sure why we should all “fight” against this. Afaik there’s no way for this planet to hold and accordingly feed hundreds of billions of people (us, our kids, our-grand-grand-grand.....-kids, none of us dying), so what will happen in case we were given the “eternal life” curse is that we will stop having kids. I for myself would always choose the world belonging to kids/younger people instead of older people.
I agree. Far more destruction happens in life, in our callousness with each other. The way we tear down each other's minds, piss in each other's homes.
Death is as natural as birth. But sadism, addiction, domination, waste... those are not natural. They are a force from another place, one many religions have a name for.
This does seem to be the point many religions try to make. That there are things in this world worse than death, worse than suffering. There are things which strip you of your nature, and many of them may even feel pleasant, tempting, satisfying as they wrap their hands around you.
Sadism, addiction, domination, waste, these are all completely natural. Nothing that's unnatural exists. All existence is natural.
What would make you believe otherwise? Just the fact that they don't align with your particular survival agenda?
Unless we can somehow reintroduce neural plasticity, conquering death will probably be a very very bad thing for the species. I'm not sure it's a good thing even if we do find a way to reintroduce it. Constantly getting new generations to replace old ones is how we adapt to changes as a species, and how we evolve in our thinking, in addition to physically.
Phrasing it as "killing" automatically disqualifies your argument as illogical
The comment you linked also makes many flawed assumptions. For example: infinite population growth is always good. That idea is literally cancer and deeply ignorant of ecological homeostasis
Yes, a permanent overclass of wealthy, inter-connected, powerful elderly people, locked into the cultural norms and mōrēs of their youth, ruling over newer generations for all eternity. The ultimate gerontocracy. How delightful. /s
If we had that setup and faced those problems, would starting a mass holocaust that will kill everyone who ever has or will exist (inventing death) really be the best solution? I feel like human ingenuity could probably find a better solution than that.
We are talking about a far future of people whose sense of self-preservation is so strong that they are willing to place their continued existence, presumably at their current level of comfort and power, ahead of every single other concern in the universe. (Anyone else who did not already checked out "on their own terms" as xxvector says.) I'm not persuaded that they will be inclined to make any significant sacrifices for the good for the rest of humanity or for future generations.
[EDIT] I knew I was reminded of something from SF. Quoting from the Wikipedia article for Pierson's Puppeteers from Niven's writings:
> "In Ringworld, Nessus, a Puppeteer, explains how his race's cowardice is partly a result of a science experiment (the details of which are not given) that proves the Puppeteers have nothing equivalent to an immortal soul, and therefore death is, for their species, eternal oblivion. As a result, the Puppeteer race is fanatically devoted to its own safety...."
Now that reminds me of Kuttner's Fury. Though his 'immortal' elites were simply having 200+ years lifespans, but for peasants that felt as good as actually being immortal.
I often see this sentiment here. And part of me, of course, agrees.
Of course, it would also mean the total upheaval of human society. Not just in terms of our environment and physical space, but all of our customs and culture. What's the point of any rite of passage if the group you enter is ever-expanding, never diminishing?
How would we even look back at what we've done, our own past, and have it matter if our future is essentially infinite? Death provides us with a context to make our lives meaningful. I cannot for the life of me even begin to imagine the sort of society that would emerge if humans didn't die.
This isn't a compelling pro-death argument. Yes, culture, rituals, customs would have to change in a negligibly senescent society. Yes, it's hard to imagine what that would look like. Avoiding that difficulty and ambiguity is not worth the preventable deaths of all human beings though.
Trying to imagine social impacts is too grand and can lead to making you think it's hopeless because you can't imagine how to order the future society. Of course, you aren't in charge of society, so don't worry about it. Worry about yourself and your family.
Imagine that you're at the hospital with your grandmother, or your mother, or your wife. The doctor says "She's got a degenerative disease. She's going to become frail, lose her mental faculties, and die. Oh, of course, I could prescribe this medication which would restore her to perfect health, but I'm not sure about the broader cultural implications..."
Would you prefer that your loved one sicken and die? I wouldn't. I think we can figure out the social and economic problems. We should solve aging and death as quickly as possible.
Sometime in the next 500 years we’ll figure out how to extend life to be at least a couple hundred years. Then we’ll look back and wonder how people managed such short lives.
The universe is a pretty big place. We’re going to need long lives if we expect to go anywhere.
Needing to live longer is not the main problem. I'm not sure it's even a problem at all. Whatever our expected life span is, we will adapt and think of it as "too short". The main problem is to figure out how to die (1) with dignity and (2) without physical pain. I say "physical" pain because I don't see any way we can learn to die without some level of mental agony, even if of the bittersweet kind; it's always hard to say goodbye.
We're born; we live; we die. Just like every other living organism.
This line of thinking seems to also argue against trying to cure any diseases. What's the point of curing a disease that makes someone's life span shorter if all life spans are too short anyway?
I'm not sure. Having been born, it's natural for us to want to live longer. That's the impetus for all this. Okay fine.
But if you to try to objectively answer a more abstract question, "Is it better for humans to live to 150 years of age rather than 75 years of age?", I don't think there is objectively a right answer.
It's not very different from the question of whether having more people living on earth is a better or worse thing. Is having 5 billion people living on earth better than having 1 billion? Or 100 million? Or 1 million? Or 50,000? Why?
You might end up making an argument that "more progress is possible" if we have more people, or if people can live longer lives. But the idea of "progress" for the sake of "progress" is not necessarily one that enhances the human lives being lived.
There is a current strain of thought that the pinnacle of happy lives for humans was during the hunter-gatherer stage tens of thousands of years ago, and that the switch to agriculturally based societies did not enhance human lives, although once it happened it was not possible to reverse the change. For one example of this, refer to Noah Harari's first book, _Sapiens_, an excerpt here: https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/
Something very similar may have happened with the industrial revolution, and be happening now with, e.g., the digital revolution. IN the realm of medicine/health there are many areas of "progress" that have the potential to make our lives worse. E.g., cloning. On another note, there is little doubt in my mind that merely inventing new ways to prolong human lives is by no means necessarily a good thing. You can see that in current medical world, where many people are kept alive in an undignified state and with extremely low quality of life, while at the same time voluntary euthanasia is illegal.
At the very least, more careful thought should be put into what impact major "progress" is likely to have on human life. Unfortunately, in our world things are driven by corporations, profit, and a mostly unquestioned assumption that "progress is good". As it is, technological progress continues at a pace we can't really grasp, and we're left to try to make sense of it after the technology is here. Not a good scenario, it's like unleashing the genie in the bottle, opening pandora's box.
> But if you to try to objectively answer a more abstract question, "Is it better for humans to live to 150 years of age rather than 75 years of age?", I don't think there is objectively a right answer.
This answer depends on the definition of what is "better".
Is it "better" to have two "medium" happy people or one "very" happy person? On a societal level, should we be measured by collective happiness (the sum), average happiness, the most happy person, or the least happy person? Or maybe "happiness" should not be the measure at all. Evolution dictates that the "best" is the one that survives the longest as a species, so maybe we should tune society simply for long term survival, regardless of happiness. Or maybe you believe in god, and "be fruitful and multiply" is the standard, so the more the better, regardless of other criteria. Maybe the answer is to maximize GDP. Or perhaps seeking knowledge is the pinnacle, so any society that builds the largest pool of knowledge is the best.
There are countless other ways of determining "better". Take a philosophy course and dig into it.
If individuals did live longer, then we as a society might get better at forethought, as we have to live through longer-term consequences of our actions.
Maybe if more people remembered relatives dying of polio or measles, we would have fewer vaccine scares.
Maybe if more people remembered seeing great species going extinct with their own eyes, we would be more concerned about conservation.
I think the most positive outcome would be that we actually stop thinking about our own little lives and get a sense of the bigger picture - all of the other humans and species that matter as much as the I that I send all day thinking about.
I really hope that if we could live longer as individuals, we would mature as a species. But I'm not convinced that that's what would occur.
". . . die on our own terms rather than on nature’s."
Have you fleshed out what that might possibly mean, or how that could ever happen? Unless our body/mind is "naturally" declining (i.e., because of nature), there would seem to be no reason for a well-functioning person to choose to die. Nature is always going to dictate the most important terms.
> "...there would seem to be no reason for a well-functioning person to choose to die..."
-Plain old ennui. Don't underestimate this.
-Depression from alienation because society and culture has evolved over centuries beyond their capacity to accept change or has evolved to a point that society no longer accepts them.
-Grief at the death of loved ones, either accidentally or through their own choice to check out.
-Grief at the estrangement of loved ones as their personality and beliefs change over time.
-Loss of one's accumulated wealth and privilege, whether by accident, incompetence, or malice of others
Precisely why I included the adjective, "well-functioning". . . .
I would add that basically everything you list is why there exists in human cultures a general disapproval of suicide, because people may feel bad in the situations you list, but suicide is not a good answer; in most cases the person's feelings will change and they will be glad they chose not to kill themselves. Deciding to die for reasons like those listed is not generally considered "dying with dignity"; it's a tragic case of people becoming overwhelmed by feeling to their own detriment.
True but the point is that immortality doesn't automatically include "well-functioning" as part of the deal. Life goes on even if one isn't subject to aging.
Ha, yes, true. But I was also specifically responding to the OP who was excited that with a longer life we would be able to "die on our own terms". I would say, first, that our lives are already plenty long enough to "die on our own terms" for any of the reasons you listed (and, sadly, many people do). And second, I would be a little surprised if any of those reasons match what OP was thinking of when he/she expressed a longing to "die on our own terms."
> I would say, first, that our lives are already plenty long enough to "die on our own terms"
I wouldn’t agree. Plenty of people - I’d argue most - would not want to die at 75 years if they were still in their mental and physical prime.
And after a few hundred years, I imagine some people would like to close their own story. Point being - we shouldn’t lose everything unless we consent to losing everything.
Adding on to my own last post, here is a link to something that I would describe as an admirable death, a death a woman made "on her own terms".[1] And yet it was most certainly one that was forced on her by "Nature", by her own natural decline, a woman who took her life because her Alzheimer's disease was advancing.
I think that you have an internal voice in your head, some way of interpreting the world. I think there are thoughts that you have had that have never occurred to anyone else. I think that your thoughts enrich those around you.
Accepting death is accepting that those unique thoughts will disappear, and that the universe will be lesser for it. Accepting death means looking at each person, intellect blazing like stars, all the clusters and constellations and galaxies of humanity, and accepting that each point of light will sputter, shrivel, and extinguish.
Beating death means that these unique views will not be lost, will not be extinguished. Beating death means that there will be the time to talk to each other, to get to know every person one at a time, and to become the greater for it. It may be tomorrow, it may be in ten thousand years, but I'd like to get to know you, too.
But we can’t live past the heat death of the universe, so does it really mattter? Nothing lasts forever and just increasing the time doesn’t change anything. Moreover, if people never died of old age, they would die of something else. The last study I read about this put the average lifespan of humans without death from natural causes to about 4000 years.
Speaking of dying, the world would be so much better if people died without pain. They would spare themselves and the closed ones from a lot of pain when the end result is obvious (death).
The family dynamics get really messy with this. I have an uncle who regularly expresses to me his desire to "get put to sleep peacefully like the family dogs" rather than be terrified all the time and waiting around to choke to death (late stage Parkinson's, and everything that can be is done is being done). My response is always, "I'll be the first to make that drive with you, but not while your brother is alive." There are some types of dog owners who as the dog ages will hit point where they're no longer keeping the dog alive for the dog's sake, but for their own. It's a bit like that, except they're not in a position to make that decision for them. But they'll do it all the same.
A family member with Stage IV cancer who can hardly move has to Uber into NYC weekly for them to 'approve' his pain medication. What are they worried about?
The system isn't flexible enough to account for the obviously correct cases. It has to be designed to combat the malicious actor (at least ostensibly... in practice it generally fails on both ends)
I'm not afraid of being dead but I'm worried about the experience of dying as long as we haven't fixed the broken way our laws make it so difficult for medical caregivers to use drugs for pain management.
It's funny I don't fear death and I don't fear the process but there are a few ways that I would not want to die. Burning to death would be high on that list as it is extremely painful to burn. I was burned fairly severely on my legs as a kid. The pains of death from old age that I have seen do not really scare me.
That being said, and what I wanted to mention is that I don't fly, not because I fear death by plane crash but because I made the mistake of listing to a flight recorder one time and I developed a phobia of dying around a bunch of other people sharing that same fate. It really shook me that to die in a situation like that, it would be very hard to make your peace with death. With all the screaming and pleading going on around you. Not that I don't have empathy for those people but I have to steady myself and god forbid my family for the inevitable.
I always liked the quote from Marcus Aurelius "Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back"
I think of that quote a lot when I am spearfishing and there are sharks around.
Yes I understand it is irrational. It's not the fear of death, I just don't want to die with a bunch of people I do not know that cannot steady themselves.
I just read that article couple days ago. Incredibly difficult, and I get stuck wondering what it'll be like for me and make myself tear up.
I highly suggest subscribing to the New Yorker. It's not cheap, I renewed my subscription gift for my sister which was $150 for the year, but there is really great writing in there, and it's fun to have something like this type of writing to look forward to coming in the mail each week.
“Life doesn’t go on. It goes nowhere except away. Death goes on. Going on is what death does for a living. The secret to surviving in the universe is to be dead.”
Think of the wake of a ship slicing thru water. The very distant past you can barely see anymore. The present is very bubbly and froth with waves. After the wake is completely gone, did it even happen? The body of water is calm and smooth again, no record of this "event". See Alan Watts on cause and effect; really discrete events like birth, death or is all of nature just 1 big event?
Beautiful writing by a man who seems to have lived exactly the kind of life all of us should aspire to: a life that encompasses the totality of the human spirit. While not always easy and most certainly chalk full of regret, the alternative is of no life at all. I firmly believe one should die thinking about what a crazy trip it’s been.
"Life doesn’t go on. It goes nowhere except away. Death goes on. Going on is what death does for a living. The secret to surviving in the universe is to be dead."
After being in and out of hospital for a while my dad is now in intensive care. The doctor took me and mom to a private room today where they explained that he's so frail, if anything happens there's no point in trying to help him. No CPR, no respirator. Basically, it's going to be either this time or another time, but it's going to be like this.
My main thought is that he's doing the opposite of being born. When I watched my kids get born, they were little things with no personality. As they grow more and more of them gets created. Their habits, what they like to eat, soon their friends and interests. Opinions about every little thing in the world.
Now I'm seeing that deconstructed in my dad. I stopped being able to talk to him about adult stuff some time ago. Science, politics, history. His thoughts on being transplanted to the west as an adult. As he's gotten more ill recently it's degenerated into what is essentially teenager stuff: why won't he exercise to improve his heart condition? It's not like he doesn't understand what the doctors say.
I might not have another conversation with him, and the last one was last night. We're beyond teenager stage now. He kept asking the same series of questions over and over. Is my heart OK? Nose? Ear? Brain? Leg? Tissemand? Yes really, he said that. The only part of his body he asked me about in Danish, not Chinese.
I feel bad about being angry with him, too. He's basically not followed any medical advice since his bypass. Many family members have brought it up with him. He's just sat there for the best part of three years, doing nothing to get better.
And part of me thinks I caused him to check out of life. Before he had his surgery I sat down with him, when we were both adults, and talked through what might have been the last conversation. He said he had no regrets, the world had treated him just fine, and if the end was now, that was fine. There was a peaceful resignation at that time. Perhaps having the sign off conversation made him not want to struggle back to fitness.