From: Tom (tomwhore@wsmf.org)
Date: Tue May 15 2001 - 08:40:40 PDT
On Mon, 14 May 2001, Jeff Bone wrote:
--]Ah, but I disagree. I do believe it's contradictory. On the one hand, you're
--]counting as human a bundle of undifferentiated cells that has no more humanity" in
--]it beyond its genome. On the other hand, if you favor pulling the plug, then you
--]advocate terminating a fully-formed human with a once (and possibly future) working
--]nervous system and a brain that is by itself millions of times bigger than the
--]earliest stages of that zygote.
So you are finaly realizing that things are not as pure and pristine as
they are in the lab?:)-
WElcome to the human race, where decissions are not easily drawn on a
blackboard so the dorm denizens can play disention games with it.
Now lets follow the train one more time. Any life is pretty cool. Human
life is really cool in that it appears that given some time it becomes
conscious enough to interact with. Many times life ends, the ends can come
by no fault, some fault or all fault of your doing. The end of a life
means the end of that lifes potential (whatever that means we have no way
of knowing). This often sucks, often it does not. There is no real good
way of saying when its either, its really on a life by life basis, because
no two lifes are really the same or have the same impact.
HEnce Each life is of value, and each death of that life ends that life,
so if you have anything to do with ending that life you must either accpet
the ending of the potentioal or be oblivious and just end it.
Therefore... I value life and recognize that death ends it.
I have had instances in my life to be around folks who have had to make
these choices. Abortions, plug pulling, withholding care. The people
making these choices spent time, care a nd much thought making the
choices. A life was being ended, a potential was being cut down. SOmetimes
the answer was obvious, sometimes it was not. All the times though the
life that was ended was honored with at least a thought to the action.
It is not black or white.
--] So here are the possibilities: you can either choose to preserve the
--]*potential* for futher experiential life, which argues against pulling
--] the plug and in favor of banning abortions, or you can choose to
--] define human life as some function of consciousness, which argues for
--] choice and for termination of the "brain dead."
--]
--]I think any gray areas introduced here are red herrings. It's either
--]a biological question or a neurological one, in this context. You
--]can't have it both ways, IMO.
Both? you see just two? I see a few billion ways.
How is it you see the multitude of life as an either or thing. I dont
think I have thought that way since maybe the age of 5 or so. No dig, its
just things become, upon living around them, more and more
individualistic, decissions seem more multifaceted and multi impacting,
then just THis or THAT. Yes multifaceted complex equations can be borken
down into smaller parts, but even those parts hold a Mandelbrot set of
complexity. Patterns emerge, fade, and morph and this can help us from
decissionto decission..but until your there then doing, its all conjecture
and spec... it might be good conjecture and spec and given the
patternization might even hold up to be valid, but the cat is still
unkown while its in the box.
SO would I kill an elderly patient...I dont know till im in the situation,
but from expereince I would have pulled the plug on my Grandpop when he
was in for cancer and I probably will pull the plug if the same type of
things happen to my Dad, but these ar both from experience and talking to
the persons. About these hypotheticals,heck i dont know, hypotheticaly if
such and such a thing where in the mix and in play the answer could be
yes. The answer could be yes up until I touch the plug and then I might
chicken out.
Ther are those who will say "whats all this emotional crap, its a yes or
no answer" and to that I gota say "how little do you value life?"
Compassion means valuation of life and the choices that need to be made
each moment about aiding its continuing or its end. It means giving a shit
enough to care even across the far reaching nodes of interconnectedness.
Without compassion I dont see much a point for being.
I know its not the answer you wanted, but its the one I wrote.
--tom_wsmf
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 17 2001 - 14:06:40 PDT