Pseudo-Essay Reguarding Seniles and Gossip

gendanken

Ruler of All the Lands
Valued Senior Member
Thin walls and perky people are the scourge of the modern world, not ‘terrorism’.

This planet is crowded with 6 billion some odd people, and 5 billion of them are the
underpaid such as myself that must live in sardine cans with thin walls.

Gossip might as well not be because no matter the number of cackling women and no matter what room you’re in you hear it all- a scintillating conversation covering shoes, boyfriends, pregnancy, 101 Ways To Make Baklava and cassoulet, pregnancy. Pregnancy. Pregnancy.

This is how I first heard of Schiavo. Months after the world learned how to even spell Schiavo or even knew what this smiling genius much looked like, news of it shot right through that paper thin wall in the form of self-righteous gossip…. and here I am writing about a woman that means shit to me because the Self-Righteous and Uninformed are two of my muses.
A little research tells me she was a lively girl and daughter who met her husband at community college and was his loving wife until her heart stopped and gave her a stroke in 1990. She’s been a vegetable since but her name has become a crusade that has made it all the way to the Vatican - not to mention that she’s inflamed school children with a penny-collecting hemorrhoid to pay for Schiavo’s Plight .

You punch in Shavo or Shndler by mistake, and Google corrects it for you.

All this for a woman that would otherwise have been remembered as a really good cook with, like, nice teeth.
And now, she’s got me writing about her.

I wonder if its just me that’s noticed the delicacy of Irony in this whole..thing?
She’s a bulimic.
And the debate is over starving someone.... that spent more than half her life starving herself?

Nonetheless, it was the marked opinion from a self-righteous cow in that living room- a Christian cow, mind you- that’s brought me to talk about a bed sore in purgatory named Terri Schiavo. Otherwise, I’d have left it alone.

This woman I refer to as Cow not only felt all human life was precious but the sound through the wall gave this image of a Holstein pursing its snout just like this *pucker* to quip, arms akimbo,

“Who do they think they are?! To put a price on human life like that! Human life. The government should have no say in whether I should live or die or anyone else or what we should do with it. Poor woman…..its all about money. Her parents love her, and that meany, meany husband of hers looks like a cereal killer. Oh, and abortion…”

Now, keep in mind that despite her oh so many faults, this cow is a productive, tax paying Cow and more than likely has used her city’s emergency services and health care waivers and her workplace is safe because its standardized according to regulations made possible with tax money. Even more likely than not, she has insurance policies on all her children, herself, and her husband.

Her paycheck, like yours, subsidizes the Social Security fund she will retire on years from now or use in case she too becomes the famous eggplant that Schiavo is.

Society, and by this we also mean Government, has long decided your life does have a price tag- getting well takes money and any insurance policy or waiver tells you every day that you agreed to put a bracket price on human life.

The mechanics of pure capitalism calls for a complete separation of state and economy- as we have it, even unpure, it still holds true that it is fundamentally a system of exchange.
It was never meant to be this pussywilled Daisyworld where billions are poured into the dead end of keeping a torso alive for so long because all its citizens are so scared and fragile and dumb that government-funded companies are set up to make sure the office paper doesn’t give your average yuppie a fucking paper cut.

Capitalism is at bottom a system of legitimate trade and, in theory, the closest thing to a meritocracy- socialism was supposed to be the food-source of terrified parasites, not this.
In capitalist logic, a creditor most certainly has a say on the decisions taken by its debtor as soon as those decisions influence that relation.

You and I are its debtors, and vise versa- we have as much right to vote and earn income as the government has as much right to at least have a say on whether it would agree to pay your $5000 a month hospice bill through Medicaid.
Techincally free.

So where abortion goes, a lobby group can’t touch a pregnant teeny until they find she is using disability money to pay for an abortion. Well, they can and do anyway once God gets all involved and opinionated, but the point stands that they shouldn’t.
No?

Back in my day, and I’m only 25, we children didn’t need specialized counseling, paid in tax money, to teach us not to talk to strangers.
If you looked weird, we didn’t like you so we didn’t fucking talk to you.
This is simple.

But now you’ve got a perky social worker slash therapist teaching America’s children the fucking obvious? With gratuitous visuals and step-programs?
Costing you millions?

But that’s beside the point.

We were talking about a middle-classed Chia Pet that can’t even swallow its spit long enough to tell its sadistic parents to PLEASE kill it.
Its been fifteen years of this.

To these gossipy women, Michael Schiavo is a murderous villain but sane, loving people do NOT make their loved one’s life the prolonged torture of a social issue- only perky Easter-bunny people too busy holding vigils and hugging other perky morons can’t see the grotesque in being so “loving”.
If these two were my parents I’d run them over with a bulldozer and put them on a ventilator.

Something that is precious is valuable, and for it to be so valuable to strangers it must also be rare.
And human life, as anyone as suffocated as I by its overpopulated noise can also see, is not rare and therefore is not valuable.

Especially when its programmed to die with its intestine falling out from holes chewed away by age and disease, its not.
Its only the religious, the perky, The Deeply Concerned and the liberal neo-somethingite that will be throwing itself in the ring to heroically drag whatever’s dying back to senile life again.

For a bloody, overscocialized principle that all human life is precious.

Cripples were once hidden or shunned or thrown from the Palatine hill, and now they’re golden child Chiavettes.
I can understand a family member scouting for its welfare and using their own money in private, but John Tesh comparing Schiavo to Jesus considering this is Easter week?

Inform yourself*- in 2003 the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report stating that places like hospices and hospital wards- where those that should have died decades ago are being kept alive in- take up 22% of all medical costs; that’s almost a third of the nation’s total health care used up on Schiavettes.

Now add 25% of Medicaid and close to 20% of the rest in federal money, like SS disability.

Add it up, 22+ 25 + 20= 67% of your money being eaten up by aging blobs that can’t even swallow.

At least I learned something- how to spell Schiavo.

(*
http://www.qualitytools.ahrq.gov/
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nhqr03/nhqrsum03.htm
http://www.ahrq.gov/)
 
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water:
Ah, the irony. In Italian, "schiavo" means 'slave'.
You kid me.
That's perfect.

The woman has been compared to Jesus.

Ophilite:
Gendanken, is this an accurate précis of your post?
Uhm, yes?

This is not sarcasm, if that is what you're alluding to.
The oversocialized advocate a right to Principle, not life.
And they have opinions about things they don't know shit about or don't think before saying.

I was also struck by the irony of millions fighting to stop the cruel starvation of someone that spent their whole life cruely starving themselves.
The way they protect prostitutes from disgrace at the hands of the public.

"I'm for euthanasia."
Why is this in square quotes?
 
gendanken said:
This is not sarcasm, if that is what you're alluding to.
Why is this in square quotes?
I didn't think it was. You appeared to be clarifying your own view and the reasons for it on-the-fly. As such your audience was yourself rather than other readers. Had it been a general audience you were targeting you could have said the same thing much more briefly, though perhaps not as brief as my summary of a precis of an overview.

What's wrong with square quotes?
 
Oh, and Gendanken, you wrote "Pseudo-Essay *Reguarding* Seniles and Gossip".
Re-guarding seniles and gossip ... I actually thought this was one of your pwetty tricks.
 
Terri Schiavo is not as valuable to those defending her right to life as their own viewpoint is.

These people believe that they believe human life has value - Terri Schiavo is little more than a vehicle for them to demonstrate that belief.

But they believe otherwise.
Believe it.
 
Gendanken,

I've been going back over my Nietzsche recently and found this quote from some of his random notes that brought to mind this thread:

But the state is always only the means for the preservation of many individuals: how could it be the aim? The hope is that with the preservation of so many blanks one may also protect a few in whom humanity culminates. Otherwise it makes no sense at all to preserve so many wretched human beings. The history of the state is the history of the egoism of the masses and of the blind desire to exist; this striving is justified to some extent only in the geniuses, inasmuch as they can thus exist. Indivdual and collective egoisms struggling against each other--an atomic whirl of egoisms--who would look for aims here?

Through the genius something does result from this atomic whirl after all, and now one forms a milder opinion concerning the senselessness of the procedure--as if a blind hunter fired hundreds of times in vain and finally, by sheer accident, hit a bird. A result at last, he says to himself, and goes on firing.

What is the purpose of state? (He mentions state and not society. A point to be pondered, perhaps.) Nietzsche mentions the preservation of 'blanks' in the hope of the occasional 'genius'. I somehow suspect that he didn't mean 'blank' in the form of a brain dead individual such as Schiavo though. (And speaking of irony. Nietzsche died in a catatonic stupor as I'm sure you are aware. He and Schiavo could have been twins. But, he showed his value before he was lost to the world. Schiavo only has value because she's a stump.)

Xev mentions, sarcastically I presume, in another thread that she should be pimped out like in Kill Bill. Now, while this idea may sound worse than death to these self-righteous cows of whom you speak, this would be the one chance she could have to justify her existence. Her reproductive machinery still works, I presume, and therefore she could conceivably conceive a genius (or another blank which may someday conceive a genius.) But as she is now, she is nothing but a drain.


It seems to me that we are at our most animalistic in our 'blind desire to exist'. An animal wants to survive at all costs. There eventually does come a time when an animal ceases to struggle for life, but this comes only in great extremity. I've seen footage of animals with their intestines hanging out and still struggling to escape the predator which has ended its life. Still hoping, beyond hope, for another day. One more day in the sun (or night for nocturnal species).

(Strangely, many animals are unable to survive captivity. Cage them and they waste away. Their will to survive sapped in a way that disemboweling is not capable.)

Anyway. This is our most animalistic. And yet. In the circumstance under discussion it is also where we are at our most human. An animal is concerned with his own life. And perhaps the lives of its offspring and immediate family members upon whom it depends. But here, in this Schiavo, is an abstract symbol for this blind desire to exist. And as an abstract symbol it exists apart from us and from its original motivation. It usurps an instinctual response and mutates it into this self-righteous view of the sanctity of human life. All human life. No matter if there is a mind inside or not.


An interesting sidenote on this idea of the state existing for the occasional genius... A genius might use her to further his own ideal. Either a political genius using her to get the people behind him, a medical genius using her to find out how to reverse her condition and 'ressurect' her, a pimping genius might use her to pay for her medical expenses while buying himself a cadillac and a rolex on the side. How many other geniuses might use her in the only way that she can be used right now? As raw material. As clay for the potter's wheel. She is not alive but still she is matter. She is/was human and is now a mighty symbol for the right to life. Comparisons to Jesus are abounding and who knows just how far her symbolism can progress? And if she dies? If this bid to starve her succeeds (and yes, that is fucking funny. I didn't know that about her being bulimic) then that means nothing. Only to a select few does her physical body have any value. It's her symbolic body that is important and that will never die.

Well. Until the next American Idol, that is. Or until those who use her symbolically either overuse her or put her aside for a rainy day.

You punch in Shavo or Shndler by mistake, and Google corrects it for you.

But Schiavo and Shindler are not quite comparable. Shindler was a protector of the jews (and his profit margin as well, of course) while Schiavo would be the protected.

And yet, even so, I think that what you are saying with this is that the world mourning the holocaust of the jews while ignoring the rape of Nan-King and the Tutsi massacre in Rwanda. Right?

It's funny how the human mind works. How we can get on the bus and when the smelly, retarded guy gets on and inconveniences your own personal world, people tend to get affronted. When the stinky homeless guy shoves his dirty paw in your face begging for change for "the bus" with sour wine in his whine, you either give him the money just so he'll get his smelly frame from your presence or brusquely push aside with the mantra, "Get a job." But, when it's a 'media darling' such as the poor, poor jews or dear Mrs. Schiavo so valiantly struggling for life then it's another story. It's safely removed from our presence enough that it is safe to go on about it. To be self-righteous in our distance.

Feed those poor starving kids in Ethiopia and fuck the kids next door.

In symbolic terms, all humans are symbolic to some extent. But the symbols that are close contain added meaning that is distasteful. It is only in distance that we can truly idealize a symbol. Make it something grand. Something to die for.

We were talking about a middle-classed Chia Pet that can’t even swallow its spit long enough to tell its sadistic parents to PLEASE kill it.

Apparently it can't beg to die but it can beg to live. Or so the parents claim.

Really, what it comes down to is that only those close to her have the right to decide. To care. And, I suppose this is the crux. The competition between the husband and the parents. One fighting for death the other for life. I suggest that the husband is closer to her than the parents. It's the way of things. Therefore, to the parents, she is more of an abstract symbol. She is the symbol for their hopes of bringing a human into this world of animals. A bid that failed but they refuse to give up hope.

Someone mentioned to me once the metaphor of a chimpanzee mother dragging her dead baby around for weeks before finally giving up. Such is the case of the parents here. They are invested in her survival. Not for her sake. But for theirs. In this way, the actions of the parents are another example of the duality of man. They are being animals in defending their offspring, and yet they are being human in symbolizing her. Both have the same end. A stump with a feeding tube.

At least I learned something- how to spell Schiavo.

I bet you wish you didn't. I know I do. I wish I'd never heard of her.


Water,

Oh, and Gendanken, you wrote "Pseudo-Essay *Reguarding* Seniles and Gossip".
Re-guarding seniles and gossip ... I actually thought this was one of your pwetty tricks.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, grin, grin.


Fenris,

Terri Schiavo is not as valuable to those defending her right to life as their own viewpoint is.

Exactly, she is symbolic. She is a tool to further their own personal experience and agenda.




Edit:

Gendanken,

I just found out that Shindler is her maiden name.
So. Meh. You weren't comparing her case to the whininess of the jews.
You should have though. I guess I did then. Ha!

By the way, google would have corrected your spelling on Shindler long before this happened.
 
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gendanken said:
inform yourself*- in 2003 the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report stating that places like hospices and hospital wards- where those that should have died decades ago are being kept alive in- take up 22% of all medical costs; that’s almost a third of the nation’s total health care used up on Schiavettes.

Now add 25% of Medicaid and close to 20% of the rest in federal money, like SS disability.

aahhhh!

All this business is philosophical idiocy... people not knowing where and what life is, where it begins and where it ends. And clouded by doubt... at what point does a body become a vegetable? They don't know where to put their marbles so they pay someone to tell them.

<marquee direction= "left">life</marquee><marquee direction= "right">life</marquee>

Can you tell me what life is, Gendanken?
 
Can you tell me what life is, Gendanken?

I don't think it's about life so much as it is about useful life. People are using the argument that Schiavo is already dead, but of course that's bullshit. She may as well be dead, but her body is definitely alive. But it has no mind. It's just a stump.

I think Gendaken's numbers are a bit high. Adding in medicaid and social security is tipping the scales. But, the vegetables should be shitcanned if they're on the government tit. If their families want to pay out the ass to keep them alive, then all power to them. But the government shouldn't be in the business of maintaining vegetables. Perhaps there can be a grace period. 5 years, say. But after that. Out the window they go.
 
Can you tell me what life is, Gendanken?
Life is not mere existence; Schiavo is existing, not living. Life, for a human, is not only survival and reproduction, but also thought.

She's brain dead, as far as I know. She won't get better. There's absolutely no reason to keep her around. She's merely a stuffed toy for her parents. Too bad the public is forced to pay for someone's hobby of hugging cadavers.
 
invert_nexus said:
I don't think it's about life so much as it is about useful life. People are using the argument that Schiavo is already dead, but of course that's bullshit. She may as well be dead, but her body is definitely alive. But it has no mind. It's just a stump.

"Her body is alive"... Does that mean the same as, "She is alive"? Who is "Schiavo"? Either you murder her, or she's already dead. There's no inbetween. If her body is Schiavo... then for that matter why don't you chop off her arm and keep it living in a vat. Is that still "Schiavo"? What percentage of the body constitutes "Schiavo"?

And you might think that it's easy to decide who's it's okay to murder and who's not, but when you let the dawgs out, they're out. And everyone's like "Who let the fucking dawgs out!" Know what I mean? Where do you draw the line?

"Life is precious" may seem oversocialized, but when you're bleeding on the street with your bones crushed, and inches away from death, then you change your mind and you pray to dear God that the doctors think your life is precious.

When I'm sleeping, or unconscious, my brain isn't functioning. Am I dead? When I go into a cryogenic chamber, nothing is functioning. Am I dead?

It's these borderline cases that confuse us. Fetuses, braindead people.
 
"Her body is alive"... Does that mean the same as, "She is alive"? Who is "Schiavo"? Either you murder her, or she's already dead.

Semantics.
Her body is not Schiavo (I don't even know the bitch's first name). The body is a shell. The mind is Schiavo. Lose the mind. Lose the person. Change the mind. Change the person. You can lose practically all of your body and still maintain your personality (within reason). Lose the mind and the body is nothing but a methane factory. (I wonder if that food that slides down her feeding tube makes her fart? Instead of blaming the dog, you can blame Schiavo... Terri. That's her name, right? Anyway...)

then for that matter why don't you chop off her arm and keep it living in a vat. Is that still "Schiavo"?

No. It's not "Schiavo". And why would you want to keep her arm alive in a vat other than as a way to amuse children? But, then again, it serves about as much purpose as her whole body being kept alive in her chair.

What percentage of the body constitutes "Schiavo"?

The mind. Even if it's not "Schiavo" from before the incident. If there's a human mind inside of that brain then it is an entity deserving of care. Without that mind it is a lump of flesh.

And you might think that it's easy to decide who's it's okay to murder and who's not, but when you let the dawgs out, they're out.

The 'dawgs' are out. And have been for quite some time now. The issue is that some are trying to put them back 'in'. It's common procedure, for instance, in long term care units to allow elderly patients to starve themselves, did you know that? Many senile and brain-damaged patients lose the will to eat. They don't force them to eat (in most cases. I suppose the family most likely has final say in the matter.) They let them die.

The only difference here is that there is not even enough awareness within this husk to choose not to eat. It doesn't have a choice in the matter and hasn't for 15 years. The family is the only ones with right to make these decisions. They're the only ones with any investment. And, again, here's the crux. They can't come to a decision. The husband says pull the plug. The parents demand everlasting life. The husband has the weight of law on his side. Case closed (hopefully. Let the bitch die and this whole furor fade into the same oblivion that "Schiavo" has experienced for the past 15 years.

"Life is precious" may seem oversocialized, but when you're bleeding on the street with your bones crushed, and inches away from death, then you change your mind and you pray to dear God that the doctors think your life is precious.

Apples and oranges. One has nothing to do with the other.

When I'm sleeping, or unconscious, my brain isn't functioning. Am I dead?

Your brain doesn't function while you're sleeping? Are you sure about that?
This is an excellent example, by the way. Do you know that if (when) a spider or some other insect crawls in your mouth at night that you will automatically chew it up and swallow it?
You don't need a feeding tube to swallow Mr. Spider in your sleep. Your mind is very much active and functional, even if your conscious is not.

When I go into a cryogenic chamber, nothing is functioning. Am I dead?

This one's even easier. Seeing as how there is no such thing as a cryogenic chamber other than immersion in liquid nitrogen, then the answer is: Yes. You are dead. The cells of your body have been horribly mutilated by formation of ice crystals. When they thaw you out you're going to make a horrible mess.

It's these borderline cases that confuse us. Fetuses, braindead people.

They don't confuse me. I don't see either as 'borderline'.
 
invert_nexus said:
Semantics.
Her body is not Schiavo (I don't even know the bitch's first name). The body is a shell. The mind is Schiavo. Lose the mind. Lose the person. Change the mind. Change the person. You can lose practically all of your body and still maintain your personality (within reason). Lose the mind and the body is nothing but a methane factory. (I wonder if that food that slides down her feeding tube makes her fart? Instead of blaming the dog, you can blame Schiavo... Terri. That's her name, right? Anyway...)

I agree.

The mind. Even if it's not "Schiavo" from before the incident. If there's a human mind inside of that brain then it is an entity deserving of care. Without that mind it is a lump of flesh.

The 'dawgs' are out. And have been for quite some time now.

Yeah, that's partly true. Abortion is legal, but not euthanasia. There are probably a lot more vegetables and incredibly senile people still living... when their once sane selves would have wanted something different.

Apples and oranges. One has nothing to do with the other.

I was just making a point about why it's good to be touchy about how precious life is... for the same reason that we are touchy about the death penalty. Because of the mistakes, not the successes.

One of these days we may find a procedure that reverses alzheimers or even senility. Possibly through the use of stem cells. That situation might be analogous. If you shoot the vegetables, then it may result in one day when you are shot 5 minutes before they find the cure. Which in turn, might take something like fifteen years off your life that you could be spending with your grandchildren and fishing.

Your brain doesn't function while you're sleeping? Are you sure about that?

Well, I'm sure some of it isn't functioning. At least not the part that produces consciousness.

I'm sure examples of more extensive comas or unconsciousness could be brought up.

This is an excellent example, by the way. Do you know that if (when) a spider or some other insect crawls in your mouth at night that you will automatically chew it up and swallow it?

That only proves it. Normally, I would scream like a girl and have nightmares afterwards.

This one's even easier. Seeing as how there is no such thing as a cryogenic chamber other than immersion in liquid nitrogen, then the answer is: Yes. You are dead. The cells of your body have been horribly mutilated by formation of ice crystals. When they thaw you out you're going to make a horrible mess.

How do you know? They're just cells, right? Isn't the only thing that matters, the brain? And not just the actual cells in the brain, just the configuration of them.

In the far future, it's very possible to resurrect- even if it's from something as simple as a 'scan' and then a download of your soul into a computer.

And later on, they may develop forms of cryogenics where the person being frozen knows that they will be revived for sure. Would it be 'death', then?

A cell or bacterium might be frozen for millions of years, then revived. Is the frozen cell dead?

They don't confuse me. I don't see either as 'borderline'.

Then you know where the line is? How well defined is it? In what trimester, what moment of the day, does a simple abortion suddenly become murder?
 
Bob:
Can you tell me what life is, Gendanken?

Would you plant yourself in soil and wait for the dirt to feed you?
Is the life of a plant, then, adequate for the complexity in demand for yours?

There is a difference between life, and life.
Look in any medical dictionary and you'll find that viruses are defined as technically not alive.

They cannot reproduce or metabolize on their own. Yet they've 'lived' that way for millennia as that is the 'life' appropriate to a virus.
A man cannot live this way for long, let alone years, because that is not the life appropriate to a man.
Only by mimicking a life substitute that is human- like can you fake it.
For 15 years, this time.

Paint a smiley face on the surface proteins of a viral shell and voila- a molecular Chiavette.
She, Dear bob, is not alive.

At any rate, I didn’t write this to deliberate on whether That Famous Bed Sore oops Woman is alive or not.
I wrote this because of the self-righteous ignorance of the supra-socialized gimp who never thinks while or before its speaking.

'Can't put a price on human life', my ass.
then you change your mind and you pray to dear God that the doctors think your life is precious.
That's right, my life is precious.

That is why I keep it informed and stimulated.
That is why people like me, who don't just claim their life as precious but enact it, will never be found changing their minds and praying to dear gods and hail Mary’s.

And Why?

Because others are my lessons, not gossip, and I learn from their misjudgments.
Its going to be in writing.


Water:
Oh, and Gendanken, you wrote "Pseudo-Essay *Reguarding* Seniles and Gossip".
Re-guarding seniles and gossip ... I actually thought this was one of your pwetty tricks.

Actually, the title of this essay is ripped straight off Mystech's back:
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=45775

Ophiolite:
I didn't think it was. You appeared to be clarifying your own view and the reasons for it on-the-fly. As such your audience was yourself rather than other readers. Had it been a general audience you were targeting you could have said the same thing much more briefly, though perhaps not as brief as my summary of a precis of an overview.

What's wrong with square quotes?
True enough.

Ever smelled a stench? The first thing one does is look for its source, always.
Unless you're a senile and retarded. Like Schiavo.

And that woman all, like, flustered at society putting a price on human life was limburger cheese (fucking moron).
So of course I was going to look into this Schiavo person and find out what the problem was.

Anyway, I see where I misunderstood you, you didn't misunderstand me.
If you would have put a colon after the question mark I would have read the
"I'm for euthanasia."
as your interpreation of what I am saying, and not in fact your own opinion. That is why the scare quotes were..confusing.
So-
"Gendanken, is this an accurate précis of your post?:

"I'm for euthanasia."



Yes, I'm for euthanasia. Actually, I’d rather her skull be crushed and fed to pigeons but our oversocialized bureaucracies would rather make death look professional and acceptable, like sleeping.
So we could all pretend that death and pain and violence are aberrations that only exist outside the pastel wallpaper of our nurseries.

Invert:
If there's a human mind inside of that brain then it is an entity deserving of care.
Deserving?

How is she 'deserving' of care if just weeks ago you learned the chick's name?
Here, you didn't even care for what, and I quote, 'the bitch's' first name was.

She's suddenly 'deserving' if awake enough to multiply and draw pictures?


just found out that Shindler is her maiden name.
So. Meh. You weren't comparing her case to the whininess of the jews.
You should have though. I guess I did then. Ha!
Funny you should bring!

Oscar Shindler was the guardian saint of Jews.
Looking at it in abstract: the Jews, stripped of all their rights and essentially dehumanized, were cripples.

In abstract, every last one of these Jews were Chiavettes.

Now, Oscar Schindler took them in and gave them sustenance but with his own money.
Who has a right to tell the man yes or no if its his own money?
Who has a say in anything another man does with his property and money?

Yet Emma Lazarus stuck a hand up Lady Liberty's robe and attempted this ventriloquy:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...."

Which doesn't mean the tired, and poor and braindead- all you get from men in comas is piss, shit, and CO2.

The tired, the poor and huddled built upon her shores an empire.
But where you had once rugged individualism, the rugged individual is now in mortgage with his government- he feeds and sleeps on collective funding.
So the state always reserves a right to have some sway on your decisions.

This woman used the term 'state custody' and was so fucking indignant at its mention- yet life insurance, social security, Medicare, Medicai, and pensions are some form of state custody.

Speaking of which:
think Gendaken's numbers are a bit high

"Consider this: Our collective obsession with end-of-life augmentation costs billions each year. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report in 2003 showing that last-year-of-life expenses ate up 22 percent of all medical costs, 26 percent of Medicare expenses, 25 percent of the tab for Medicaid and 18 percent of all non-Medicare health-care costs. If only we could let go of our obsession with end-of-life medical heroics, think how much we could save not only in medical costs, but also in insurance and in heartache. But no, the godly among us will have none of that"

Source


And yet, even so, I think that what you are saying with this is that the world mourning the holocaust of the jews while ignoring the rape of Nan-King and the Tutsi massacre in Rwanda. Right?

Really, I don't care if the woman dies or not or for that matter that any other poor children in Ohio are starving and covered in fleas- and neither do any of you.
If it weren't for the automatic deductions taken from your paychecks, these poor and huddled masses would starve to death 'cause you don't fucking care.

None of you care. None of you posting about the poor in Indonesia, or L.A, or Calcutta, or Russia care.
Especially the intellectual pricks like Tiassa. Or ....the 'do gooders' on this board.

At any rate, Schiavo is the Joan Bennet Ramsey of the cripple ward, the shiniest eggplant in the produce section.
Its middle classed, white, and Catholic.

Apparently it can't beg to die but it can beg to live. Or so the parents claim.,
Excellent point.

Your brain doesn't function while you're sleeping? Are you sure about that?
This is an excellent example, by the way. Do you know that if (when) a spider or some other insect crawls in your mouth at night that you will automatically chew it up and swallow it?
You don't need a feeding tube to swallow Mr. Spider in your sleep.
Again, excellent point.

Life, by def, is preservation. You light her toe on fire and she'd be staring at the ceiling.

(nice quote)
 
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Bob,

Yeah, that's partly true. Abortion is legal, but not euthanasia.

This isn't euthanasia. I've already told you that people are allowed to starve themselves. It happens every day. Right now there are at least several hundred senile LTC patients that are quietly starving themselves to death with no one forcing food down their throats. And these are people with more of a mind than this Schiavo stump.

I was just making a point about why it's good to be touchy about how precious life is... for the same reason that we are touchy about the death penalty. Because of the mistakes, not the successes.

I'm not 'touchy' about the death penalty either.
So you're gonna break a few good eggs with the bad eggs? Well, that's a shame, but even so it's better than the odds you'd have in nature.

Anyway, Gendanken spells out her point perfectly. That your life is precious to you and yours. And to nobody else.

Unless you make yourself into one of those geniuses which make humanity a worthwhile endeavour. And then you can be society's darling. Unfortunately, I think that most geniuses are not appreciated until they're gone. Or rather, that they're not seen as safe until they're gone.

In Homer's Contest, Nietzsche made an excellent argument for the nature of the contest between geniuses. How society demands a genius to oppose a genius. To keep society safe from the peril of a solitary man on the mountain who can single-handedly shake down the fabric of society with the force of his vision.

(*edit* I just noticed that the above link was down due to excessive bandwidth usage (I wonder if I'm too blame? Nah. There can't be that many people reading this thread.) So, here's another link to Homer's Contest for those having problems with the above link. Not sure which is translated better. I suspect that they are identical translations. Stolen from each other or from the same source. *end edit*)

This is why it's so easy to praise the weak and the empty. Because they are inherently safe. This Terri Schiavo is never going to shake the fabric of the world. She is never going to scare the populace by her awesome might and presence of mind. She is nothing but warm, comfortable flesh. We need no Corky to defend us from Terri Schiavo. We can handle her all on our lonesome. And it makes us feel so brave, and strong, and righteous. What great creatures are we.

If you shoot the vegetables, then it may result in one day when you are shot 5 minutes before they find the cure.

Yup. Them's the breaks. So what? It's still better than having your bowels ripped out by hyenas while you're still screaming and struggling to survive somehow.

I'm sure examples of more extensive comas or unconsciousness could be brought up.

We're dealing with states from which there is no exit. You go to sleep and you wake up. You exist in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and you don't. Your brain is damaged beyond repair. Maybe someday it can be repaired but that day is not now. And now is paying the bills. For what? So this woman who is only valuable as a stump can be restored to life so that she can spend her golden years with her family? And not even for an assurance of this happening. But only a gamble. A desperate gamble.

How do you know? They're just cells, right? Isn't the only thing that matters, the brain? And not just the actual cells in the brain, just the configuration of them.

The mechanism by which the brain produces mind is unknown. I suspect that it is a combination of network paths and also intracellular mechanisms. It's even possible that quantum entanglement plays a part. Who knows? Regardless, the ice crystals are going to make a mess of the situation. Who knows what future technology might bring, but do you really think that this 'world of tomorrow' is really going to want to bring back all these people from our time? Why? To study? To laugh at? Ever see Frozen Caveman Lawyer on SNL?

And later on, they may develop forms of cryogenics where the person being frozen knows that they will be revived for sure. Would it be 'death', then?

In this case then it would be a state similar to sleep. It would not be death then. That day is not now.

A cell or bacterium might be frozen for millions of years, then revived. Is the frozen cell dead?

We're not bacteria. Nor are we toads. Or fairy shrimp. We're human beings and we can't survive freezing.

Then you know where the line is? How well defined is it? In what trimester, what moment of the day, does a simple abortion suddenly become murder?

No. I don't know where the exact line is, but I do know where it begins to blur. It begins to blur at birth.

It's funny. People talk so much about nature and the drive to reproduce, but hunter-gatherer societies will actually kill newborns if they don't deem the time appropriate to raise them. They exist in an environment that can only sustain a certain amount of people and they are aware of this. They are unable (usually) to do anything to abort their pregnancy, and they're unwilling to abstain from sex, so they kill their babies.

It wasn't until agriculture became prevalent that the rate of child birth increased so vastly. Labor was needed to till the land, to harvest the crops, to refine the fruit of the field. No. Not labor. Slaves. Expendable and cheap labor.

And how many of them died? How many children died down the years despite the fact that infanticide went out of vogue? How many children out of 15 would survive? 2? 3? Why? So that daddy could bring in the wheat? For who? Lord Muckymuck?

And even when man freed himself from the land, he still continued to produce and produce children because the idea of 'be fruitful and multiply' was already embedded deeply in his psyche. It became a sin to not fuck like rabbits.

So many dead children.

Until recently, parents tended to not invest much emotionally into their children until they reached a certain age. Until they proved that they would survive. This is more a trait of the wealthy, I should imagine, than the poor. Those who could shuffle their children off to the east wing of the house with the nanny and not think about them until their 16th birthday, but even amongst the poor the emotional investment was different than today. Life was precious to them because they saw so much death. They didn't go around investing all their emotions into everything that moved. They were circumspect in their dealings.

Today's age of easy living, of easy loving, of easy everything, while wondrous and magical in so many ways, makes a mockery of life. Nothing is earned. Nothing is special. Because everything is 'special'.

Humans have become careless. This is the true danger of our times.
Carelessness.
Caring about Schiavo is a sign of this carelessness in man.



Gendanken,

There is a difference between life, and life.
Look in any medical dictionary and you'll find that viruses are defined as technically not alive.

“ ‘Life’ and ‘living’ are words that the scientist has borrowed from the plain man. The loan has worked satisfactorily until comparatively recently, for the scientist seldom cared and certainly never knew just what he meant by these words, nor for that matter did the plain man. Now, however, systems are being discovered and studied which are neither obviously living nor obviously dead, and it is necessary to defi ne these words or else give up using them and coin others.”
—British virologist Norman Pirie, c. 1934

“You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead.”
—George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan, 1923

“Whether or not viruses should be regarded as organisms is a matter of taste.”
—French Nobel laureate André Lwoff, 1962

Life is a tricky concept. However, I think that most are able to agree that the woman is alive. But she may as well be dead because she has no mind. A human body with no mind is an affront to the senses. We experience this affront on a limited basis when confronted with retarded people, but when we come across a case like this it is especially disgusting. So much care and energy being expended on this empty thing.

(Aside: Speaking of 'life as concept'. This brings to mind our earlier discussions on Temple Grandin and how her conceptualization ability worked. In an opposite manner to a normal mind. Instead of going from the general to the specific (from Dog to individual examples of dogs) her memory works in the other direction. While I wonder if she actually is able to conceive of general principles in a 'human' way (her examples of doors and visual thinking is sketchy at best. Must read that book someday) it seems that her method might be analogous to how lives are (can be) precious but Life as a general principle is not so much. How smearing emotions to a general all-encompassing concept rather than individual examples is a method for developing carelessness. You lose the trees for the forest.)

Yes, I'm for euthanasia. Actually, I’d rather her skull be crushed and fed to pigeons but our oversocialized bureaucracies would rather make death look professional and acceptable, like sleeping.

Would pigeons eat crushed brain? I suppose they probably would, eh? They are flying rats after all.

Deserving?

How is she 'deserving' of care if just weeks ago you learned the chick's name?
Here, you didn't even care for what, and I quote, 'the bitch's' first name was.

She's suddenly 'deserving' if awake enough to multiply and draw pictures?

Way to watch my language. (By the way, weeks ago isn't right. Make it days ago. Just a couple of days before you posted this thread, in fact.)

It's not that I care about her. But rather that she could care about herself. And because of this care, she would be deserving of some type of government assistance. If only in the hopes that she might somehow engender a genius someday.

I'm sure you're still going to find fault with my use of 'deserve' but how else can you say it? Do you think that people should only have health care that they can personally pay for? By being conscious, she moves into the ranks of those who are entitled to the assistance offered by the government. Remove that consciousness, or rather the real possibility of consciousness (as per my discussion with Bob), and you remove the entitlement.

Now, Oscar Schindler took them in and gave them sustenance but with his own money.
Who has a right to tell the man yes or no if its his own money?
Who has a say in anything another man does with his property and money?

Exactly. I made this same point somewhere up there. My objection to her existence (if you could call it that since I personally don't even care enough to call it 'objection') is that she is on the government tit. If her family wants to pay to keep her alive, then so be it. All power to them. But don't expect the public to provide the money to keep vegetables fat and healthy.

The tired, the poor and huddled built upon her shores an empire.
But where you had once rugged individualism, the rugged individual is now in mortgage with his government- he feeds and sleeps on collective funding.
So the state always reserves a right to have some sway on your decisions.

Exactly. I don't think that tired was the proper phrase for her to use. It's kinda condescending. These people were full of vigour and they dedicated themselves to their own lives when they were allowed to take them in hand in a way which had previously been denied to them. Did all of them succeed? No. Many faltered and failed. But enough succeeded to cede this country to us, their descendants.

Would you get rid of all social services then? To do so would certainly not free you from the grip of government, although it might lessen the extent to which you feel obligated. If government does nothing for you, then why should you do anything for government?

Healthcare is out of control. The price is exorbitant. Most can't afford to go to the doctor even if they think they might be dying. The insurance companies and the malpractice lawyers have seen to that. How would you remedy the situation?

This woman used the term 'state custody' and was so fucking indignant at its mention- yet life insurance, social security, Medicare, Medicai, and pensions are some form of state custody.

Excellent point.
The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.

To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
—Nietzsche

"Consider this: Our collective obsession with end-of-life augmentation costs billions each year. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report in 2003 showing that last-year-of-life expenses ate up 22 percent of all medical costs, 26 percent of Medicare expenses, 25 percent of the tab for Medicaid and 18 percent of all non-Medicare health-care costs. If only we could let go of our obsession with end-of-life medical heroics, think how much we could save not only in medical costs, but also in insurance and in heartache. But no, the godly among us will have none of that"

Ahh. I misunderstood. I didn't realize that the percentages for medicaid and social security were percentages of the end-of-life health care. However, adding them together like that is somehow misleading. Kinda like switching frames.

Anyway. Look at it this way. With Social Security at least, the people have paid into the system their whole lives for just this circumstance. Should they be deprived of the mony because they're going to die soon anyway? How can you know which year is the 'last year'? Is it their fault that medical expenses are so outrageous? Should they be faulted for the fact that inflation and skyrocketing health care prices make their earlier contributions to the system pale to what they're taking out? They paid in good faith.

And now... ha... with good ol' handsome George wanting to make it so that people can invest their social security... We're getting nothing when (if) we reach our 'golden years'. Fucking assholes.

Anyway. Off topic, I suppose.

The point is that there is a world of difference between vegetables and 'end of lifers'.

I recall a documentary I saw recently on a nomadic tribe in eastern Russia (not Russia anymore. One of the many 'republics' I forget which.) They lived simply. Traveling the same routes their ancestors have traveled for thousands of years. The children grow up to be near perfect clones of their parents. There's a river that must be crossed. The whole family must prepare for the crossing. Getting the sheep across safely. It's the most dangerous point of their whole migration. It's at this river that eventually the elderly of the tribe come to the decision that they wouldn't make the crossing this year. That they'd die in the attempt. Or that they'd require too much assistance from their families to make it past and in so doing would sacrifice how many sheep would survive. So. They stay behind. They just sit down and watch their family cross the river and leave. They sit, often with a beloved dog that is as aged as they are, and die.
There's a dignity to this.
A dignity in not clawing so ferociously at life that one forgets what it means to live.
And yet. There is a balance that must be met. For while it may be becoming for their elderly to go graciously to the long night, it would not be so for the young to take on a similar attitude. Is this not the peril of eastern philosophy to a large extent? A life spent in buddhist contemplation is a life spent practicing being old.

Which is worse? The blind desire to exist or zen?

Me: Apparently it can't beg to die but it can beg to live. Or so the parents claim.
Gendanken: Excellent point.

What point is that, exactly? I think that the claims of her begging for life are bullshit. How can a vegetable beg? The parents are seeing what they want to see.
 
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i dont know that its such a bad thing to let her die but i think the way they are doing it is very...cant really think of the word..maybe unnecessary.they could just pump her full of morphine instead of letting her starve.
 
At least I learned something- how to spell Schiavo.

And I've just learned how to pronounce the name. I had been saying it as "Shee-ah-vo" not Sh-aye-vo".

She's dead now.
W00t.
 
Schiavo, that "famous bedsore".....

*giggling like Japanese schoolgirl*
Yo.Reino.
 
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