Home of sapient mortality, end of life, art of assisted dying, suicide by natural causes blog & stories by K. D. Kragen.
Natural Causes
Death By Natural Causes - Suicide By Natural Causes - Is There A Difference?
End of life - Do people have a moral obligation to take their meds? Are they committing suicide if they don't?
Death By Natural Causes - Suicide By Natural Causes - Is There A Difference?
End of life - Do people have a moral obligation to take their meds? Are they committing suicide if they don't?
DNC
Do Not Call - If this is a life-threatening emergency, do not call 911, do not try to resuscitate, say goodbye.
Do Not Call - If this is a life-threatening emergency, do not call 911, do not try to resuscitate, say goodbye.
Blood On The Keys
A Play In One Act
ANTHONY
(hunching over his external keyboard,
no one has so far noticed the blood dripping from his hands,
little splatters spreading across the keys, as he mutters to himself)
My death. No. My time. No. My death. OK. That's it.
(He shakes his left hand toward the floor, red drops fly downward.)
Must finish. No time. Must finish. Must finish.
A Play In One Act
ANTHONY
(hunching over his external keyboard,
no one has so far noticed the blood dripping from his hands,
little splatters spreading across the keys, as he mutters to himself)
My death. No. My time. No. My death. OK. That's it.
(He shakes his left hand toward the floor, red drops fly downward.)
Must finish. No time. Must finish. Must finish.
Dessert Zombies
Senior Citizen's rebel against Medicare Part-D pharmaceutical overdosing.
The "walking dead" they're called. They just want the option to trade life-extensionist drugs for sweets.
Senior Citizen's rebel against Medicare Part-D pharmaceutical overdosing.
The "walking dead" they're called. They just want the option to trade life-extensionist drugs for sweets.
Mortality
"Morphology, Longevity, Incept Date" (the dilemma of a Nexus 6, in Blade Runner, from the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick).
We homosapients of the "techno-developed world" have similar dilemmas and issues surrounding mortality and "life-extensionism" (the Alcore Institute, alcor.org; the Methuselah Foundation, methuselahfoundation.org; Life Extension Network, lef.org) and assisted/encouraged suicide.
In light of certain scientific advances (if it can be done it will be done), there is a need to examine a key conundrum of modern human existence: care-giving at the end of life. Lack of wisdom in knowing how to respond to the fact of universal human mortality is a problem which has been greatly exacerbated over the last century by medical science and the pharmaceutical industry. If the military-industrial complex ruled much of the 20th century, a runaway scientific-pharmaceutical industrial complex dominates much of the 21st. Medically assisted suicide is becoming one of our culture's primary responses to the uncomfortable human condition of being mortal. As a counter-cultural alternative, assisted dying challenges our culture's tendency to that easier option, assisted suicide.
Medieval hospitals (such as the 14th century Hospital of Santa Maria Della Scala, Siena, Italy) didn't have the knowledge to "keep death at bay"; yet they afforded monks, nuns, "doctors," nurses and volunteers an opportunity to develop the art of preparing for and practicing for the end of life. This existential art form has been mostly lost to us in the "developed world" of the 21st century.
But what are the stories behind the news? Thus the present project. --K. D. Kragen
"Morphology, Longevity, Incept Date" (the dilemma of a Nexus 6, in Blade Runner, from the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick).
We homosapients of the "techno-developed world" have similar dilemmas and issues surrounding mortality and "life-extensionism" (the Alcore Institute, alcor.org; the Methuselah Foundation, methuselahfoundation.org; Life Extension Network, lef.org) and assisted/encouraged suicide.
In light of certain scientific advances (if it can be done it will be done), there is a need to examine a key conundrum of modern human existence: care-giving at the end of life. Lack of wisdom in knowing how to respond to the fact of universal human mortality is a problem which has been greatly exacerbated over the last century by medical science and the pharmaceutical industry. If the military-industrial complex ruled much of the 20th century, a runaway scientific-pharmaceutical industrial complex dominates much of the 21st. Medically assisted suicide is becoming one of our culture's primary responses to the uncomfortable human condition of being mortal. As a counter-cultural alternative, assisted dying challenges our culture's tendency to that easier option, assisted suicide.
Medieval hospitals (such as the 14th century Hospital of Santa Maria Della Scala, Siena, Italy) didn't have the knowledge to "keep death at bay"; yet they afforded monks, nuns, "doctors," nurses and volunteers an opportunity to develop the art of preparing for and practicing for the end of life. This existential art form has been mostly lost to us in the "developed world" of the 21st century.
But what are the stories behind the news? Thus the present project. --K. D. Kragen
Old Dogs & Drunken Sailors
Concerning the elderly it is very often said, "At the end of life one becomes more and more like a child."
Something like that anyway.
Wrong!
A child, an infant, learns more each day, growing, exploring, perceiving in new and broader ways, making more and more contacts with external reality (of a mostly mundane or physical sort); an infant's health is, in normal cases, good, clear, clean. However, end of life, specifically being elderly and at end of life, rather than becoming again like a child -- for the dying senior person, being at the end of life is much more like becoming an old dog and a drunken sailor.
Here's one way of construing it: Shortly after The Fall dogs began to grow old; a little longer after The Fall sailors began to drink. Old dogs and drunken sailors. This is their story...senior citizens at the end of the line.
Concerning the elderly it is very often said, "At the end of life one becomes more and more like a child."
Something like that anyway.
Wrong!
A child, an infant, learns more each day, growing, exploring, perceiving in new and broader ways, making more and more contacts with external reality (of a mostly mundane or physical sort); an infant's health is, in normal cases, good, clear, clean. However, end of life, specifically being elderly and at end of life, rather than becoming again like a child -- for the dying senior person, being at the end of life is much more like becoming an old dog and a drunken sailor.
Here's one way of construing it: Shortly after The Fall dogs began to grow old; a little longer after The Fall sailors began to drink. Old dogs and drunken sailors. This is their story...senior citizens at the end of the line.
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