“Old Age ain’t for Sissies”—Betty Davis

“Old Age ain’t for Sissies”—Betty Davis

Technology has increased longevity thereby making death even more frightful, expensive, tortuous, and perhaps accumulatively more painful than before. Is this progress?

“Never before in history has it been so hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were "visited" by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process.” Craig Bowron, Physician

Bowron speaks of a woman who suffers from something that physicians call "the dwindles", which is essential a characteristic of old age in modern times. Three days a week she spends in dialysis so that she can spend the remaining four days of the week recovering; she is miserable seven days a week.

Bowron speaks of another patient who is 91 who lies in his bed helpless with painful swollen arthritic joints after being felled with a stroke.

There are no lifesaving medications in such cases; only life-prolonging pain can be offered.

Bowron informs us that “everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some very dull dentures. It can be a torturously slow process, with an undeniable end, and our instinct shouldn't be to prolong it. If you were to walk by a Tilt-A-Whirl loaded with elderly riders and notice that all of them were dizzy to the point of vomiting, wouldn't your instinct be to turn the ride off? Or at the very least slow it down? Mercy calls for it.”

The good doctor is not speaking about euthanasia or even about the spiraling cost of health care; he is speaking about a sympathetic and rationalized dignity for those who have reached the end of a life worth living.

“In the past, the facade of immortality was claimed by Egyptian kings, egomaniacal monarchs and run-of-the mill psychopaths. But democracy and modern medical advances have made the illusion accessible to everyone. We have to rid ourselves of this distinctly Western notion before our nation's obesity epidemic and the surge of aging baby boomers combine to form a tsunami of infirmity that may well topple our hospital system and wash it out to sea.” Bowron

I think that the good doctor and I agree that there comes a time in life when “the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/story/2009/01/09/ST2009010903215.html

You're just jealous, he's more famous than you.

This does raise an interesting issue though.

The right to perish might be thought
An undisputed right,
Attempt it, and the Universe upon the
opposite
Will concentrate its officers -
You cannot even die,
But Nature and Mankind must pause
To pay you scrutiny.

Emily Dickinson

To be kept alive for the 'scrutiny' of others. To serve their purposes - to push the 'boundaries' of medicine or to ease the burden for those who cannot face either going without you or being next in line. Yet another hell on earth.

what did I say?

If you continue posting all over the net, you old fart, you may feel like you are actually thinking...when you are simply cutting and pasting and vomiting your regurgitated slop all over the net.

Do yourself a favor and shove-off.
Here you may be treated like the retarded, half-wit, imbecile that you really are, and not humored, as you are everywhere else.

free speech? Hah!

Drone wrote:

what did I say?

If you continue posting all over the net, you old fart, you may feel like you are actually thinking...when you are simply cutting and pasting and vomiting your regurgitated slop all over the net.

Do yourself a favor and shove-off.
Here you may be treated like the retarded, half-wit, imbecile that you really are, and not humored, as you are everywhere else.

free speech? Hah!

Free speech, imbecile, does not entail the idea that all speech will be respected, irrelevant of its quality and intent.

Free speech, retard, means having the possibility to express yourself honestly and then facing the consequences of this self-expression, without having Big Brother there to protect you from yuor own stupidity.

Survival of the fittest, moron, does not mean that weakness will be offered anything more than what it deserves. It will not be censored or prevented from expressing its weakness, but it, and it alone, will face the repercussions, without having a nit-wit, high on his new found power, and driven by his own naivete and romantic idealism, masking a self-serving motive, there to expel anyone that reminds you of how stupid and pathetic you are.

In time, imbecile, such an environment would promote those that actually have something to say and the ability to defend what they say, against all types of assault or, at least, the balls to stand behind their opinions.

Otherwise, shit-for-brains - you who hide yourself behind mutiple aliases, you get groups of retards congregating in forms only to spew out whatever stupidity they've adopted, out of convenience or only there to have fun and socialize, without any consequences.

Then you get, you stupid fuck, retards like ladyjane claiming an opinion is not superior because it is more logical or smears with his endless monosyllabic stupidity, there to only have a good time, or McMiserable making endless declarations with no actual reasoning or arguments, behind it, then threatening with murder, and being tolerated - all of them - or considered as possessing a "challenge" by other retards - because they are, at best mediocre and so part of a more numerous mass.

The forum is about popularity, after all, as another retard in another forum, someoneisnotupstairs, for example, uses these forums as popularity contests, where an opinion is considered respectful because most take it seriously, and the speaker likewise.
Reality, by vote. How fitting.

Does a circle have a center?
For imbeciles yes...in their mind, even thuogh it is nowhere outside it.
This is deemed enough.
What is in my mind, as an abstracted, ambiguous, simplification is real...like a unicorn is, even if it has no correlation to anything outside it.

Then even sex can be equated to rape, as stroking one's head can be equated to violence.
The rise of the simpleton, as an internet phenomenon.

Everything is unreal, fake, except the opinion that it is so...that is real...that and suffering, obviously. No arguments required, just proclamations.
God IS...Why?...Just because I say so and this book agrees with me....or I with it.

Then you get one retard PMing me with a link to a hypothetical "challenge" that contains nothing but statements of personal, emotinoal reactivity.
And I...have to take all this seriously.
Hell declare me a "philosopher king", as if any of this shit affects me.
As if I come here to be worshiped or respected by simpletons.

Has anyone actually seen Fight Club....or understood it?

Then you get hippies just there to shoot the shit, amongst internet friends, because he, presumably, has none in his immediate environment, pretending they are interested in truth and that they are friends of wisdom - philosophers, no less - drunk on their own feel-good mechanizations, content to just post inanities in communal appreciation with no pragmatic effect, or imbeciles endlessly posting the same shit about the same subjects, using the same simplistic reasoning, defended as having the "right" to do so, by those more interested in participation than exploring reality.


How indicative of reality that someone can threaten with torture and murder and still be accepted, by the many who, naturally, feel an affinity to his nihilistic despair, without realizing why this is so, and someone merely expressing his judgment about another's mental quality is expelled as disruptive to the overall ambiance of good-will and self-flattering pretentious altruism.

The town bartender can't even tell the drunkards from the sober ones, being drunk on imagined hope himself.
and what is hope an antidote for?
Fear....you pathetic reject of consciousness.


Am I done?
Wait I have more angry stuff to say.

Why angry?
Because I have to share my world with you, and because your simplicity, whether I like it or not, affects me.
You, people, actually vote! It is your "right" to do so, no matter how poor your judgment proves to be or how influenced you are by current modern trends and cultural ideals.

Why do you not return to your safe haven, where you are protected from reality or anything that reminds you of anything that is disturbing about the world, and pretend that you are a lover of wisdom...or some pretentious shit like that?
Why do you insert your feeble little commentary here, trying to be noticed, when there are many others like you, over there, waiting for you to speak and then offering you the fake respect and interest you thrive on?

what a hatred against ILP's members...

what did they do to you?

'free speech' does not entail the idea that every speech will be respected.... Then it's fairly easy to see why you have been banned again from your online 'home'....you're speech wasn't seen as something very 'respectable' there...

stop with the ad homs, 'man', they make you look sooooo arrogant. What's the use of talking with a person who is permanently offending you, but does not see how these insults he says display a horrendous picture of himself?

and when I think that the revolutionary French of the 18th century lived and died so that....

o but why am I wasting my time with this....?


Mod edit: your free speech is being respected.

The Reta wrote:

'free speech' does not entail the idea that every speech will be respected....

Notice that you are not being IP banned.

The Reta wrote:

what a hatred against ILP's members...

what did they do to you?

'free speech' does not entail the idea that every speech will be respected.... Then it's fairly easy to see why you have been banned again from your online 'home'....you're speech wasn't seen as something very 'respectable' there...

stop with the ad homs, 'man', they make you look sooooo arrogant. What's the use of talking with a person who is permanently offending you, but does not see how these insults he says display a horrendous picture of himself?

and when I think that the revolutionary French of the 18th century lived and died so that....

o but why am I wasting my time with this....?

Imbecile, then why expulsion when ignoring me would do the job?
You certainly had no problem ignoring Mcmiserable and unreal , no matter what they said.

Ad hominem is the catch phrase of anyone who cannot defend his views or cannot discount the possibility that they may, very well, be retarded.
Meaning intellectually stunted.

It is not a defense.

And, you simpleton, my posts were not exclusively insulting.
They contained many arguments and much reasoning.
They were not declarations and statements, like those you tolerate, but were based no arguments and logic and evidence.
When I was confronted by imbeciles with simplistic declarations and personal insinuations, I reciprocated in kind.
You people couldn't even deal with that!

You falsely thuoght I would buckle at the mere insinuation that my views on women were based on some sexual dysfunction or hatred of women.
When I didn't you had no other recourse but to play "innocent victim" and seek out the protection of the forum authorities to cast my disturbing presence out.

But you, like a pathetic idiot, choose to focus on the two or three insults because you can't really provide an argument against my opinions.
Then you wonder why I call people, like you, idiots? Have you given me reason to think otherwise?

anger doesn't lead us anywhere. It never did, it never will.

you could have ignored the ones who offended you or ridiculed your points, you needn't have to be so hateful

if you wasted your time with people whose intellects were beneath yours, then you justified their efforts to deminish you...

however, there still remains a doubt: what kind of users would be allowed to 'post' and to 'exchange ideas' in a forum idealized by your highness?

How is it to grow old?

Old age is the final test.

It's the final test of our internal power to take charge of our lives. All the medications and technology are there yet old people take what they are given without trying to do something about it.

The power to kill one's self is the ultimate personal power summit-- if it is done as a solution and planned. That means saying goodbye to loved ones and reconciling all debts and obligations to the world.

Leaving the world by our own hands while taking responsibility for our suicide places our lives in the hands of Oneself and not in God.

[quote="SpeedOfSilence"]Old age is the final test.

It's the final test ...quote]
Are you old? If so, I thank-you for this advice. If you are young, how can you know?

[quote="Taras"]

SpeedOfSilence wrote:

Old age is the final test.

It's the final test ...quote]
Are you old? If so, I thank-you for this advice. If you are young, how can you know?

I am 13.7 billion years old.

SpeedOfSilence wrote:

Taras wrote:

SpeedOfSilence wrote:

Old age is the final test.

It's the final test ...

Are you old? If so, I thank-you for this advice. If you are young, how can you know?

I am 13.7 billion years old.

Hmm...

Hadji wrote:

SpeedOfSilence wrote:

Taras wrote:

SpeedOfSilence wrote:

Old age is the final test.

It's the final test ...

Are you old? If so, I thank-you for this advice. If you are young, how can you know?

I am 13.7 billion years old.

Hmm...

The wisdom of the Ancients!