I just turned 43. At times I can't hold in my head the notion that I could die today, or I could live another 60 years. The only answer is to live fully each day.
My heroes are people like these. Live a full and active life, and accept death as part of life. I hope we sort out end of life legalities so more people can be as involved in their own deaths as they are in the other major decisions in their lives.
I'm pretty sure, as a millennial, I'm supposed to agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. But this "individuals should be able to do whatever they want" mentality is harmful to society as a whole. Society is made up of individuals. The actions of individuals do in fact affect the rest of society, even when it's not immediately apparent how they do. We don't live in a vacuum.
People making intentional, reasoned end of life decisions is beneficial to society. Viewing death as something to put off as long as technologically possible is not a universally good thing.
I don't see why the way one chooses to die should affect society as a whole, specially when it's done on the terms described. The fact that they were courageous enough to live the entirety of their lives the way they wanted to is to be admired and respected, even if you don't necessarily wish to follow such footsteps.
As I've gotten older, and by no means do I consider myself old, I'm growing more content that I will die. My children are growing. Watching them age and mature, and tackle new things brings me the most joy in the world.
It is right that my life will end. It is right that the old must clear the way for the young and the new. It is the way of things.
The probability of my death is 1. Fighting it is useless -- living what I have is not.
Best of luck. I hope you come to terms with it in whatever way makes sense for you.
> It is right that my life will end. It is right that the old must clear the way for the young and the new. It is the way of things.
Lots of people say that but it's because we are resigned to it. We don't have a choice about growing old and dying.
Just imagine for a minute though that some life extension technology began to really work and could dramatically extend lifespan or prevent aging. Almost everyone who was resigned to aging and death would have a change of heart and would be demanding arbitrarily long lifespans and freedom from aging.
Does even radical life extension technology "fix" this? If I live a year longer or until the heat-death of the universe, I still face the same existential questions... and I'll still feel like it flew by and wonder where it all went.
I existed. Compared to that fact, the duration is nearly meaningless.
> > It is right that my life will end. It is right that the old must clear the way for the young and the new. It is the way of things.
> Lots of people say that but it's because we are resigned to it. We don't have a choice about growing old and dying.
hm, maybe, but that doesn't explain the steep and quick change in my attitude towards the perspective of my own death after my first child was born. i realized how much of the feeling is "the other side" of my sex drive: our primary purpose in life is to procreate so our genes can carry on. once that's fulfilled, the fretting washes away very quickly.
When I had children I experienced a significant drop in fear of death. Now if, say, someone were pointing a gun at me, my greatest emotion would be fear for how it would hurt them.
Fear of death is just a piece of hard coded programming to make sure we successfully reproduce and raise healthy offspring. It's not an intrinsic part of being sentient or conscious. It's possible that intelligences that reproduced in some other way would lack it entirely, e.g. AIs that explicitly create their offspring or hive like aliens. For ants only the queen might fear death, and we indeed see ants behaving this way.
I think this explains why radical life extension tech is underfunded. Even being a billionaire doesn't change this. Bill Gates has kids.
I remember being very young and starting to think about death, and thinking it the most horrible thing imaginable. That the beautiful experience of life as a human should end in annihilation. That we would just stop existing at some point.
Now I'm watching my oldest daughter suffer the same realization. I tell her that there are a few people who are working on solving the problem, that I hope they can figure it out fast enough, that I understand and share the same fears she does. I tell her to live each day to the fullest anyway, and to enjoy life and not dwell on death too much. I don't know what else to say.
I've been in extreme pain, and I've been pumped full of enough morphine that I've been pretty incompetent. At least I still existed! And even in all the pain and incompetence I still found my own existence precious and worth hanging on to. Assuming we don't solve death in time for me, I have an eternity to not exist. Why would I be in a hurry to get started?
(Still, I found the article interesting and respect the decision of anyone who decides they actually prefer annihilation to pain and incompetence, even if I don't understand them).
I don't have kids, but I find it curious when parents have that mentality. If you're kids feel the same about their kids, and so on, then we're not much different than apples, existing only to spread our seed.
We are sentient but we emerged from a system that works exactly that way. I do think we will eventually transcend the limits of our origins, but I was speaking to the reality of what we still very much are.
I found this book to be a very interesting and affecting discussion of the end of life. Unfortunately it gives fairly cursory attention to the topic of suicide, assisted or otherwise. Otherwise highly recommended. http://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/
Their downfall was pride: they were so proud of their intelligence and competence that senility and incompetence seemed to them worse than death (I wonder if they would have supported killing the young mentally deficient as well, but that's a different subject).
But I've had relatives who were senile and incompetent, and it's not actually bad, when one is surrounded by family and friends. We were all born dumb and helpless, and many of us die that way. A senile, frail old man is no more worthless than is an infant. Sure, he won't ever grow out of his state (as an infant will), but he once was otherwise and has hopefully earned some love and respect.
There are worse things than helplessness. I think hubris is one of them.
I do, however, see extreme arrogance in your comment. You've decided that just because you don't consider senility or incompetence to be horrible that nobody else should either.
Those two people made a reasoned decision about what they wanted their lives to be like and what they wanted to happen when they could no longer live the way they wanted to. Thankfully their children, who obviously didn't want to lose their parents, understood that being forced to continue living with declining mental and physical capabilities was a fate worse than death to their parents, and did not interfere.
One key to happiness according to several studies is to devote a bit of your time to others. Advanced senility deprives you of this once you're unable to actually help another, and I understand how one could want to end it, even without hubris.
Not only will an old person never grow out of his state, he has to carry the burden of being aware of it. This is another huge difference.
I'm going to try and stay polite, but as someone who's has had family members die from dementia, you are an idiot.
Your mind failing you slowly over time so that you are aware for periods it is happening slowly with each one becoming more and more infrequent, going in to see a relative who was one of the wisest strongest people you knew now wetting themselves and crying because they are frightened because they don't know where they are or who they are or how they got there.
There is no hubris in wanting to go out of life on your own terms with your mind intact.
I agree with you. They have the right to choose but I believe that their decision is prideful.
There are great people in this world who choose to fight to the end and continue to accomplish great things beyond what ordinary men can do. These people will stand by your opinion.
Stephen Hawking.
My heroes are people like these. Live a full and active life, and accept death as part of life. I hope we sort out end of life legalities so more people can be as involved in their own deaths as they are in the other major decisions in their lives.