> Who's to say that an "early" death is not in fact a gift for the living?
You've got to be kidding. (A very dark kind of humor, I guess)
You've got to be kidding. (A very dark kind of humor, I guess)
my wife and i often talk of her life and death as a gift to us and as her two brothers. we see imprints of her in the bonds between us that were galvanized following her death. it's not something that words can convey, i've tried and failed many times, but her gift is an unparalleled understanding of life and a strength that has the potential to be far more powerful than the grief/pain/torment of losing her.
it's more than just a coping mechanism.
Inevitable death awaits while we throw ourselves into the business of living. When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking.
That is absolutely a gift to the living, and his wife and kids are getting that gift deeply, in their bones -- I've heard it called, eating Buddha's rice.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I don't think it's worth losing somebody you love dearly.
To each his own, I guess.
It dawned on me years later that for all of us affected (ripped apart) by his death (age 24) that we were given a gift: suffering.
Looking back, I left my comfortable box -- dropped out of college, shaved my head and entered a monastery -- trying to make sense of it.
That broke me, several family members, and his closest friends in a way that a so called natural death might not do since it was his choice and our guilt.
> That broke me
That's sad. But perhaps if you had had a more natural reaction, that the death was a bad, sad, thing. And not a good thing, you would not feel broken.
Broken, suicide does that to the living.
Mindless suffering is indeed something of no value. But mindful suffering for me has been extraordinarily valuable.
For example, I recently did my first triathlon. The training had plenty of suffering. The race was, in some ways, miserable. But because I embraced the suffering, I've grown a lot. Not just physically, but also mentally.
Losing people close to me worked similarly. The suffering was enormous. But so was the growth.
I know it would be absurd and there is a good reason we punish people who give the "gift of death" with no regards to some bizarre learning experience for the victims.
This is the assumption I'm struggling with reading these reactions to virtualwhys. There is a sentiment that death is an enemy, a veritable monster; but more to the point, there is a sentiment that anyone who does not believe this is deranged and must be attacked.
You _did_ "call to the dirt" virtualwhys coping mechanism, because you explicitly called his reaction unnatural. Can't you see that he is grieving, too? It is a quieter, more subtle thing; neither maudlin nor overwrought, and he has quietly stepped back from the emotionally charged reactions.
But if you look, other people are stepping forward and relating their own experiences of loss in similar terms.
Personally, I find the "death is bad" to be an outgrowth of our attachment to life; an impossible attachment.
At the very least virtualwhys has received double the insensitivity of the perceived insensitivity of his initial post. You're stomping all over his experience with a friend's suicide: you _know_ that, right?
I wouldn't ask you to feel differently, but I would ask you to understand that not everyone views death the same way you do.
"Since people will eventually die, it's better not to grow attached, even more, I should welcome the death since it will inevitably happen, and not only that, the death will actually benefit me."
> You're stomping all over his experience with a friend's suicide: you _know_ that, right?
It's one thing to process death and grieving by looking for the good in it.
It's another to tell people it's a good thing, and that life is suffering so welcome death - and your death will help other people.
It's like he's telling people "don't bother living", there's no point to it.
After all he was told by his monastery how to grieve, and he's telling everyone else here how to grieve (although he did apologize if his views bothered someone).
If you simply relate what you are doing OK, but once you want people to follow your views you must also be willing to accept some opinions back, and it's OK if you disagree. (And obviously actually changing is entirely the choice of the person.)
Plus, keep in mind that he is hardly the only person reading this.
But, all that said, and reading your reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5896351 I do get your point about what I am doing. It's just I VERY strongly disagree with what he said, and I couldn't just leave it unremarked.
i understand what he's saying.
to frame it in a slightly different way: there's a gift of understanding that has the potential to be far more powerful than the pain/grief/torment of the death.
So we'll have to agree to disagree that fucking death is a gift.
You should stop belittling other peoples viewpoints, just because it does not align with your own.
And in fact I find that "viewpoint" totally incomprehensible. I can asure you, I loved my mother much, much before cancer killed her at 52. That was not a gift, that was her body malfunctioning and our ignorance about how to fix it.
I have no need for death or grief to love or to value life, thank you very much.
And I don't keep my mouth shut about this because I worry about the real consequences of that philosophy. At any other moment of human history acceptance of death was perhaps the only sane thing to do, because there was no alternative. But we have now a scientific civilization and we should be fighting it, instead of rationalizing it.
I have a friend who's a very dedicated doctor, and a very dedicated Buddhist. So much so that they're arranging a version of the charnel ground [1] meditation. But rather than sit in an actual charnel ground, my friend has requested photos from the research facilities that study human decomposition.
To the average American, that sounds hopelessly morbid. But people practicing it see it as necessary to fully understanding death. And thereby, to understand and appreciate life.
I don't think you are being asked to be silent, I think this is a question of attachment to life yielding suffering through anger.
What cannot be changed must be accepted, and to you calm acceptance looks like complacency--to the extent that you insist that _no_ one could be free from your horror at death, and anyone who claims otherwise is subject to 'Stockholm Syndrome.'
I seem to hear you saying "Well excuse _me_ for being attached to life." I am of the opinion that attachment to life is readily apparent; of course we are attached to life, that is was it _means_ to live.
It's just... death is just a thing. It is. And it is an experience like any other. To appreciate its unique aspects is part of life. Even should we conquer death, we cannot change the fact that death has happened.
...Now, is it insensitive to be talking about death like this in a topic about someone's death? Maybe. But I am confused, somehow, at a violent reaction to a very contemplative perspective on death.
I really just don't know what you mean by that. I imagine a world in which no-one dies and someone asking, 'What's life?' and people still quite meaningfully pointing to living things and going 'Well, it's that.' Just as I can imagine that people who haven't grieved can still love.
Grief and death perhaps serves as a proof of love and life, I suppose. If they weren't there what would you lose? But I don't see how they're meant to have IFF relationships.
I actually worry about abolishing death, because then what are we? What would define the human existence? Would love be the same, without the fear of loss?
You said it quite well in your last paragraph actually. :)
Yeah why bother with fixing >20% infant mortality, or eradicating polio, or dying from infections we now easily cure with antibiotics. We should had accepted that as part of life and keep dying more, more painfully and earlier.
I don't think he's talking about improving the length of life, but instead not looking for the fountain of life, or anything else that would create those who live forever.
If we all lived forever, then there would be no children, or parents really. If we really lived forever, not drastically longer lives, Earth wouldn't be able to sustain any sort of birthrate.
So yes, we need to attempt to push death off for as long as possible, that's also part of living. Think about a world without babies, or puppies. Just middle aged people who don't die... It would be very different and no one can say good or bad, because humans are really bad at those kind of simulations. We are overly optimistic.
That doesn't mean I'm on death's side, or going to go rob banks for death. Life's pretty swell. But my life is much better, and each moment of it sweeter, in a way that came from experiencing traumatic, irreversible loss.
I'll grant that's weird. But, then, we're made out of meat. The whole thing's weird.
I've experienced the deaths of several close loved ones. Death wasn't a gift to them or others. It was a reminder of the importance of living life. It's life that's the gift, not death.
Everyone eventually dies. This is a meaningless sentence.
> When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking.
And it does a whole lot more than just that, and the cost is way too high for such a minor lesson.
> That is absolutely a gift to the living
Are you crazy? A gift? A gift is something the recipient wants. No one wants the lesson you are offering (even assuming it's something valuable, which I'm not convinced is even true).
I'm not offering anything, when I say gift I'm certainly not talking about a person doing the giving.
"the cost is way too high for such a minor lesson", a minor lesson like death?
I meant the lesson about "arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking".
Death is way too high a price to learn such a thing.
I find your sentiment downright cruel. Excuse me while I go cry and refrain from punching a wall.
ETA: Fallout from death may be construed as a "gift" insofar as some good may come from something bad, but that doesn't make the death itself a gift. Discovering that the wall desperately needed repair anyway doesn't make punching it, out of anticipatory grief, good.
But this was exactly my experience of deep loss.
Fuck you. Fuck your sanctimonious fatalism.
Okay, maybe a few more than two words.
The day I turned twelve, we found my father dead on the kitchen floor. He'd had a cerebral aneurism in the night, before going to bed. No warning signs, he was in fine shape. I sank into a deep, deep depression for about twenty years; I feel like I lost a vast chunk of time to that. I did very little beyond going through the motions of life and not quite being gloomy enough to kill myself.
It may be different if you know the end is coming. I don't know.
But I would much rather have had a father as I tried to make sense of who I'd be during my teen and early adult years than this so-called "gift".
Fuck you, and fuck Buddha's rice.
However your foul-mouthed response to another person's point of view is uncalled for. You'll probably say "F You" to me also, but if that's the case let me say I think you need some help getting over your self-pity and bitterness about the cards life dealt you. We all lose our parents at one point or another. I lost my mom to ALS. We knew the end was coming, and it was a long, slow, agonizing time. A cerebral aneurism, in comparison, could almost seem like a gift. Or at least a preferable way to go.
Fuck fatalism, fuck acceptance of the inevitable. I'm an agnostic, I don't think there's anything else beyond this life, and having it ripped away that suddenly and unexpectedly is a raw deal, not a gift. I don't know if it'd be preferable to a long, agonizing death; I haven't experienced one of those in my family. Maybe you do end up being fatalistic if you have to live through one of those. I dunno.
It's been almost thirty years. I'm largely over it.
If you think the solution to that way of thinking is for someone to die, that's like thinking the only way to learn about the dangers of a hot stove is to burn your hand on it.
I mean, I don't disagree (though I think you're mischaracterizing his post--he didn't say it was a problem in need of a solution, he was merely saying that death has that effect), but it seems like your example is counter to your point.
Well, I've never been shot either but I still think I'd rather not ^^;
Maybe, someone, let's say, a parent or guardian, telling you that touching a hot stove will burn you, and you taking this seriously.
The tone of his post seemed to me to indicate that he was generally insensitive, and only the death of a loved one could snap him out of it. If he had enough empathy, he would have learned more early on that he should be more aware and respectful of others' feelings.
I _want_ to do what this guy is doing ( http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html ), yet I am still living in the city, writing iPhone apps, rather than living on a farm building machinery. Why? Because I'm still just "thinking about it": I haven't reached a broken-down moment.
It really takes quite a powerful kick to get people to make real changes.
What if somebody you loves dies and suddenly you find that spending time with that person would have meant much more to you than iPhone apps or farm machines?
If you honestly didn't think you knew - or at the very least had a good idea - what was up, ever, then you'd be a complete social wreck; someone gibbering in the corner about how you couldn't tell the difference between a family member who wanted to kill you or hug you.
The world behaves according to rules, people do too, and we make predictions based upon our guesses as to those rules. Generally we're reasonably correct with those guesses. That's how the vast majority of the population behaves with varying levels of understanding and faith in those rules and guesses.
It's not arrogant to think you know what's up. Of course, sometimes you'll be wrong, and you probably shouldn't profess absolute certainty in your predictions, but growing up should have taught you that fairly effectively without the need for anyone to die.