I had asked to speak at a debate in the society Im involved in in college. The debate was "this house would legialise euthanasia". I was for euthanasia but I decided to oppose the motion. Heres the speach I came up with...though I'd put it up here;
I’m not a religious person, I’m not a conservative person, I very much believe in live and let live... no pun intended. But I am a practical person.
Tonight, I’m going to try my best not to use the word “wrong”. I feel that my opinion of whether euthanasia is philosophically wrong or not is neither here nor there.
I will not go on about “playing god”- I’m a scientist, I love playing god, do it all the time.
Instead I’m going to try to convince you that while you may have you own philosophical views on euthanasia that is ethically irresponsible and completely impractical.
So I’m going to talk a little about the reasonable doubt involved, what euthanasia undermines in society and really try to challenge why anyone would agree with it
In law you convict someone of a crime when you think that it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty. This is how it works. So I’m going to point out the reasonable doubt of certain aspects of euthanasia.
For instance, the very fact that the option to be euthanized is available, by the fact that you could get euthanized, would be a subconscious pressure to someone who feels they must do the “honourable thing” and stop being a burden. Can the prop prove that no one will feel guilted into opting for euthanasia? Can I prove that definitely someone will? No- but my way no one is killed.
Palliative care specialists report that requests to be euthanized are often used by patients to assess their worth and value to others, any positive response merely confirms their worst fears that they are not valued but given time and support they very often change their mind
If you have a will saying in the event that you are in a vegetative state you want to be euthanized, shouldn’t that be ok? No because it’s a will, as in “I suppose I will...” you cannot assume to know how you will feel after you have a stroke or are involved in a serious accident when your mind is fine but you just can’t move, and then you can’t tell anyone that you’ve changed your mind you don’t want to die! Is it just me or is that not the scariest concept?
The bottom line is there is too much risk. You can’t undo death. It is the ultimate finality
We don’t allow people with brain tumours to drive, because their mental abilities have been affected- but we can allow them to decide to end their life? We can physically restrain manically depressed being if they are trying to harm themselves. So we would have to have some sort of mental assessment of people requesting to be euthanized. Then who makes the final decision about whether the person is approved to be euthanized or not? One doctor? Two? Three? How can the opinion of three people-yes doctors are just people- hold enough weight to decide whether someone should die before they would naturally?
Our health service can’t support a system as complicated as this, it isn’t functioning as it is!
The legalisation of euthanasia would undermine so many things in our health service.
It undermines the fight, that unspoken rule that in a hospital they will do everything they can to make sure you get better. When you are dealing with a serious life-long illness the last thing anyone around you should be saying is that it’s ok to die. On the really tough times when you want to throw in the towel, no system or legislation should encourage you do so.
It would also undermine the financing and prevision of proper palliative care, as it stands we only have the hospice which receives minimal governmental help.
It would undermine research into medicines and therapies to improve the quality of life of people suffering from degenerative and life- long illnesses.
Think of the advances medicine has had in the past decade. It’s highly possible that many of illnesses will be much more bearable in just a matter of years – but the people who get euthanized won’t know because they are dead. You can undo death people!
So who’s at risk?
Ideally, euthanasia would be there for someone of sound mind who has decide they’ve had enough, But the same legislation would be used to abuse the society’s most vulnerable individuals! We don’t yet live in some sort of utopia where justice prevails, no unfortunaly we live in a society where there were 1840 cases of confirmed elder abuse cases last year. And that only that ones we know about. We live in a world where people do bad things like physically and emotionally abuse their elderly relatives. Organisers of the elder abuse hotline say the recession is the cause of a huge increase with elderly people subjected to more and more abuse from family members over issues such as money land and wills. The world is full of greedy, underhanded people. We can’t have something as powerful as a system of assisted suicides, not in this world, not yet.
Don’t you realise that a lot of us in this room will grow old. If bird flu or swine flu or mouse flu don’t kill us off while we’re young we will grow old, our immune systems will get weak of a lot of us will get diseases due to old age. So is it going to become some accepted thing that you hit 85 and get euthanized if you aren’t healthy? It could do; enough people do it and people will think its expected of them. I don’t want to live in a real life version of Logans run
If you don’t understand that reference you need to get out less
I think it’s funny in Europe; we have this really weird warped view on things. We tend to be in favour of euthanasia as a very modern progressive thing. We look at the death penalty and think no- that’s American and wrong we don’t like that. Now I’m not drawing a direct comparison, but can’t you see that they have the same risks?! While in an ideal world, and in some case, you can justify both but all it takes is one innocent person to be killed for the whole thing to not be worth it!
So I can justify someone of sound mind, completely sane who is suffering from a terrible illness not being allowed to choose to be euthanized , because the very fact that they could means someone vulnerable could also be euthanized, someone depressed or feeling guilty or someone pressured into it.
No system or safe guards could ever be foolproof. When humans are involved you can’t eliminate human error. Because of this euthanasia should not be legalised, and for the same reason equally neither should the death penalty. At the end of the day death is too final.
There is nothing simple about this, to look at it in the black and white terms of “you choose, you die” shows an appalling amount of irresponsibility and a narrow mindedness.
The only reason we aren’t have “this house would bring in better palliative care” is because that wouldn’t interest people. It’s easy to say you agree with euthanasia and avoid think about the old people being abused, avoid thinking about the hard issues like what happens when a child wants to be euthanized? You think euthanasia that’s edgy, I’m going to be radical and say I’m for it, because it’s easier then justifying why you are against it. But I’m asking now; to think about all the things that could go wrong, think about the value of life rather than the cost. Be radical and say no, I demand better palliative care, more counselling for people with illness and recognise that it isn’t as simple as we would like to think. Be radical and oppose
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
food and writing
Food and writing
I have a love/hate relationship with writing. And food. I love writing but it’s always really frustrating, because I can never quite convey what’s in my noggin. Some people think in words, they are writers. Others think in pictures, they are artists. I think in like concepts, if that makes any sense. I think in a really general sense, random colours and feelings and smells. It’s so hard to get it into English. The majority is lost in translation.
Its like when I have an idea, my head fills with this purple goo. It’s just like the stuff in a lava lamp, just like that! (Where did all the lava lamps go?) So its there in my noggin, and I try to let it out. When I pick up a pen, or go to type or draw its like a little grid opens behind my eyes in my brain, so the purple goo can drip down behind my eyes, down my neck, across my shoulder and down my arm through the veins. This is a slow process because of the viscous nature of the metaphoric goo. So it’s slowly making its way down my arm, creeping along like lava down a slight slope, or custard down the side of a bowl.
The thing is though, the tunnels it’s travelling down get thinner and thinner. They branch off and go nowhere, curl back around, stop in random bulges. By the time it gets to my fingertips only a smallest tiny drips come out.
I guess the only bodily function I can compare it to, without threading on some very dodgy ground, would be needing to sneeze and being interrupted. You still have the tingle in your nose with none of the satisfaction of the sneeze. (I do enjoy a good sneeze)
So every time I go to write I seem to get more and more back clog of purple goo. The pressure builds, my arms swells and one day it will explode purple stuff everywhere.
Yeah, anyway I couldn’t even convey that idea with the same vividness that is in my head. Very frustrating.
In a lot of ways food and writing are similar. They are both sources of extreme pleasure in our lives. They are both ways we have attempted to reach out to other individuals in our lives and try to connect with them. We break bread, we write love letters, we buy boxes of chocolates for our sweet hearts, and we write away our broken hearts.
If writing and food are comparable then blogging, or prose is definitely a big plate of beans, chips and sausages from a cafeteria; satisfying, fulfilling, and never needs a lot of preparation.
On the other end of the spectrum I guess would be the type of writing with loads of rules. Haikus are definitely sushi. Not just as a general Asian theme but the whole thing, the presentation, preparation, pretention?
I think sushi is just a very expensive way to have very little food. But maybe my tastes aren’t refined enough.
"The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then..."
- Roger Mc Gough
Unruly poetry were you throw rhyming schemes to the wind and just write, that is definitely chocolate covered strawberries.
They say less is more, but less isn’t more that’s why they are different words with opposite meanings. You can have too much of one good thing, but you can’t have too much of good things, and with the variety writing and food leaves you; you could never really get bored!
(Food critics must be the happiest people on earth..eating and then writing about it!)
When it comes to food and writing I’d rather be a big woman than a little girl any day, so I shant be stopping with either!
I have a love/hate relationship with writing. And food. I love writing but it’s always really frustrating, because I can never quite convey what’s in my noggin. Some people think in words, they are writers. Others think in pictures, they are artists. I think in like concepts, if that makes any sense. I think in a really general sense, random colours and feelings and smells. It’s so hard to get it into English. The majority is lost in translation.
Its like when I have an idea, my head fills with this purple goo. It’s just like the stuff in a lava lamp, just like that! (Where did all the lava lamps go?) So its there in my noggin, and I try to let it out. When I pick up a pen, or go to type or draw its like a little grid opens behind my eyes in my brain, so the purple goo can drip down behind my eyes, down my neck, across my shoulder and down my arm through the veins. This is a slow process because of the viscous nature of the metaphoric goo. So it’s slowly making its way down my arm, creeping along like lava down a slight slope, or custard down the side of a bowl.
The thing is though, the tunnels it’s travelling down get thinner and thinner. They branch off and go nowhere, curl back around, stop in random bulges. By the time it gets to my fingertips only a smallest tiny drips come out.
I guess the only bodily function I can compare it to, without threading on some very dodgy ground, would be needing to sneeze and being interrupted. You still have the tingle in your nose with none of the satisfaction of the sneeze. (I do enjoy a good sneeze)
So every time I go to write I seem to get more and more back clog of purple goo. The pressure builds, my arms swells and one day it will explode purple stuff everywhere.
Yeah, anyway I couldn’t even convey that idea with the same vividness that is in my head. Very frustrating.
In a lot of ways food and writing are similar. They are both sources of extreme pleasure in our lives. They are both ways we have attempted to reach out to other individuals in our lives and try to connect with them. We break bread, we write love letters, we buy boxes of chocolates for our sweet hearts, and we write away our broken hearts.
If writing and food are comparable then blogging, or prose is definitely a big plate of beans, chips and sausages from a cafeteria; satisfying, fulfilling, and never needs a lot of preparation.
On the other end of the spectrum I guess would be the type of writing with loads of rules. Haikus are definitely sushi. Not just as a general Asian theme but the whole thing, the presentation, preparation, pretention?
I think sushi is just a very expensive way to have very little food. But maybe my tastes aren’t refined enough.
"The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then..."
- Roger Mc Gough
Unruly poetry were you throw rhyming schemes to the wind and just write, that is definitely chocolate covered strawberries.
They say less is more, but less isn’t more that’s why they are different words with opposite meanings. You can have too much of one good thing, but you can’t have too much of good things, and with the variety writing and food leaves you; you could never really get bored!
(Food critics must be the happiest people on earth..eating and then writing about it!)
When it comes to food and writing I’d rather be a big woman than a little girl any day, so I shant be stopping with either!
Friday, September 18, 2009
Television
I’ve been sick recently so I’ve been able to catch up on many a missed hour of TV watching. I just have a very bad cold, and no, it’s not swine flu. I’m not hip enough for swine flu, it’s far too current. It’s probably bird flu, so 2006.
Television is definitely at a height, there’s always something on...usually it’s a repeat of show aired an hour previous on the non +1 version of the channel but still! You have to admire the standard of writing these days. Lost, House, The wire, six feet under, desperate housewives...all compelling shows.
You can’t commit to all of them though, no unless you have a sky plus box, but for us stone-age watch-it-when-its-on types we have to pick and choose what we are going to be in for. There’s only so much I can leave my intellectual college friends because Coronation Street is on. I’m losing face over here. Speaking of losing face, they are bringing back that show “The Swan”. It’s this American reality thing were women who have been insecure all their lives (so all women could qualify) they go for three months to get plastic surgery, work out and get some stick on emotional band aids from a psychologist. They don’t have access to mirrors so there’s a big emotional reveal at the end. I highly recommend it.
Shows these days tend to be move self-improvement than home-improvement. There’s those Biggest Losers shows were people who can’t climb up stairs get thrown into doing more training than an athlete. There’s the one were that demented skeleton woman raids your home and steals the poo right from your toilet and then lectures you about how dysfunction YOU are. (Hey, she may be horrifying but that woman has one fantastic colon).
One of my favourites had to be Gok wan and his wondrous world of fashion puns. (Don’t look old in gold, try babe in suede...etc). At least he’s better than that Trinny and Susana people who had stylists behind the scenes, so they weren’t the talent they were just the hosts! How dare they write a book on the matter?
Probably the best of the reality stuff is the property porn. You know, the shows were people who have a house think they need another one to use once year in Spain. Or the one where people get in an expert to help them sell their home and then ignore their advice.
I love also these new cop/lawyer shows. I wouldn’t say there’s too many, no. There’s only Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds, Without a trace, CIS, CIS Miami, CIS New York, CIS Las Vegas, Canterbury’s law, Monk, NCIS, Cold Case, Close to home...so many of them begin with C.
I really think the appeal here is a grown up version of The Scooby Doo mysteries. I’m very serious, you know you are going to be baffled, a little scared and surprised and relieved and it turns out to be the Janitor. Everything ends with closure, it’s great. Except a haunted hotel and missing jewels isn’t going to ring our bells at this age, so it had to be multiple rapes and stabbings, child abuse and kidnappings. Real edge of your seat, but its still ends up being the grounds keeper with a face full of scratches now doesn’t it?
Still you can never ignore the classics, friends, old episodes the Simpsons, Frasier, Malcolm in the middle and the like. That really is your TV watchers bread and butter. With the new exciting layers of House and the like, TV watching is better than ever.
I’ve been sick recently so I’ve been able to catch up on many a missed hour of TV watching. I just have a very bad cold, and no, it’s not swine flu. I’m not hip enough for swine flu, it’s far too current. It’s probably bird flu, so 2006.
Television is definitely at a height, there’s always something on...usually it’s a repeat of show aired an hour previous on the non +1 version of the channel but still! You have to admire the standard of writing these days. Lost, House, The wire, six feet under, desperate housewives...all compelling shows.
You can’t commit to all of them though, no unless you have a sky plus box, but for us stone-age watch-it-when-its-on types we have to pick and choose what we are going to be in for. There’s only so much I can leave my intellectual college friends because Coronation Street is on. I’m losing face over here. Speaking of losing face, they are bringing back that show “The Swan”. It’s this American reality thing were women who have been insecure all their lives (so all women could qualify) they go for three months to get plastic surgery, work out and get some stick on emotional band aids from a psychologist. They don’t have access to mirrors so there’s a big emotional reveal at the end. I highly recommend it.
Shows these days tend to be move self-improvement than home-improvement. There’s those Biggest Losers shows were people who can’t climb up stairs get thrown into doing more training than an athlete. There’s the one were that demented skeleton woman raids your home and steals the poo right from your toilet and then lectures you about how dysfunction YOU are. (Hey, she may be horrifying but that woman has one fantastic colon).
One of my favourites had to be Gok wan and his wondrous world of fashion puns. (Don’t look old in gold, try babe in suede...etc). At least he’s better than that Trinny and Susana people who had stylists behind the scenes, so they weren’t the talent they were just the hosts! How dare they write a book on the matter?
Probably the best of the reality stuff is the property porn. You know, the shows were people who have a house think they need another one to use once year in Spain. Or the one where people get in an expert to help them sell their home and then ignore their advice.
I love also these new cop/lawyer shows. I wouldn’t say there’s too many, no. There’s only Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds, Without a trace, CIS, CIS Miami, CIS New York, CIS Las Vegas, Canterbury’s law, Monk, NCIS, Cold Case, Close to home...so many of them begin with C.
I really think the appeal here is a grown up version of The Scooby Doo mysteries. I’m very serious, you know you are going to be baffled, a little scared and surprised and relieved and it turns out to be the Janitor. Everything ends with closure, it’s great. Except a haunted hotel and missing jewels isn’t going to ring our bells at this age, so it had to be multiple rapes and stabbings, child abuse and kidnappings. Real edge of your seat, but its still ends up being the grounds keeper with a face full of scratches now doesn’t it?
Still you can never ignore the classics, friends, old episodes the Simpsons, Frasier, Malcolm in the middle and the like. That really is your TV watchers bread and butter. With the new exciting layers of House and the like, TV watching is better than ever.
Karmic Recycling
I definitely don’t believe in fate. I don’t watch my footing as I walk down the street and hope I don’t fall off my own destiny tracks. No, I think that’s poppycock, its cock of the poppiest variety (ah thank you Dave Gorman) People sit around pondering the complexities of their horoscope I think must get selective deafness whenever Bono or Bob Geldoff talks...(not a bad survivor adaption I must say) But to suggest that we’re here and every road we walk down and person we meet and traffic light we stop at is somehow predestined and written in the stars does not translate over in Africa were people are just dying all over the gaff. Where’s their destiny? So are they just some dark background to make the niceness of our life truly sparkle?
Relax; I’m not on a “suffering of others” rant. No, no, leave that to the experts who go there and know actual statistics and can click their fingers in that menacing way. I was merely trying to convey my feelings on the bogusness of the whole concept of fate. (Sorry if this offends, but if you believe in fate then you believe you were MEANT to read this right?...ha-ha, got you there!)
So yes, not a fate believer. But lately I’ve been thinking about karmic recycling. (I don’t believe in karma either, too many good things happen to bad people for that) Karmic recycling is a term for when you take something bad and turn it into something good (usually by being selfless somehow along the way)
Example; (sex in city style) you get totally stud up for a date so you let your best friend wear the shoes you bought. Something bad, into something good!
I do think trying to spin the good out of the bad affects your whole attitude and probably means you are more willing to accept the good when it comes, which is probably what most people actually think when they say karma or fate. We have so much more control than we give ourselves credit for.
That’s why it’s easier to believe in fate and god and all that jazz. But I don’t want to get into bashing peoples beliefs. That’s Richard Dawkins job.
I gave a map of Berlin I had to my friends’ daughter as she’s doing a project on the Berlin wall. That was karmic recycling on fast spin! I went to Berlin in June and had the worst time ever! Just awful.
Long story short I went there to meet my dad for the second time ever and he wasn’t very nice, he was very critical of me and all over not very loving at all. We didn’t leave it on good terms and I plan not to see Berlin or him again...but that’s another blog.
(I will say though that I found the general crowd, and that doesn’t mean Germans because a lot of them weren’t, by the crowd I mean the type of “groovy” folk who tend to move to Berlin so they can walk their dogs at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and buy beer at every corner shop and still manage to survive...that is one forgiving city. I found them to be extremely judgemental. One should be able to drink a can of diet coke without four people lecturing you on the corporate and dietary evil that lurks beneath. Especially when those four people are smoking.)
So I got to take a token from my horrible experience- the map- and give it to someone who might be able to use it for a project. That’s just fantastic. It’s like I took some negative energy and put it into a nifty little transformer and turned it into positive energy. Good times.
That’s what poetry and music and all that jazz is too, isn’t it? The nifty transformer. I picture it like one of those old fashioned washing equipments were you pull something between two rollers to de-crease it. We all need one.
Clear out your karma closet today! Give away old clothes, teddy bears you don’t cuddle anymore, and items that hold too many bad memories. Shed karmic pounds fast and easy, and you don’t even have to join a gym.
I definitely don’t believe in fate. I don’t watch my footing as I walk down the street and hope I don’t fall off my own destiny tracks. No, I think that’s poppycock, its cock of the poppiest variety (ah thank you Dave Gorman) People sit around pondering the complexities of their horoscope I think must get selective deafness whenever Bono or Bob Geldoff talks...(not a bad survivor adaption I must say) But to suggest that we’re here and every road we walk down and person we meet and traffic light we stop at is somehow predestined and written in the stars does not translate over in Africa were people are just dying all over the gaff. Where’s their destiny? So are they just some dark background to make the niceness of our life truly sparkle?
Relax; I’m not on a “suffering of others” rant. No, no, leave that to the experts who go there and know actual statistics and can click their fingers in that menacing way. I was merely trying to convey my feelings on the bogusness of the whole concept of fate. (Sorry if this offends, but if you believe in fate then you believe you were MEANT to read this right?...ha-ha, got you there!)
So yes, not a fate believer. But lately I’ve been thinking about karmic recycling. (I don’t believe in karma either, too many good things happen to bad people for that) Karmic recycling is a term for when you take something bad and turn it into something good (usually by being selfless somehow along the way)
Example; (sex in city style) you get totally stud up for a date so you let your best friend wear the shoes you bought. Something bad, into something good!
I do think trying to spin the good out of the bad affects your whole attitude and probably means you are more willing to accept the good when it comes, which is probably what most people actually think when they say karma or fate. We have so much more control than we give ourselves credit for.
That’s why it’s easier to believe in fate and god and all that jazz. But I don’t want to get into bashing peoples beliefs. That’s Richard Dawkins job.
I gave a map of Berlin I had to my friends’ daughter as she’s doing a project on the Berlin wall. That was karmic recycling on fast spin! I went to Berlin in June and had the worst time ever! Just awful.
Long story short I went there to meet my dad for the second time ever and he wasn’t very nice, he was very critical of me and all over not very loving at all. We didn’t leave it on good terms and I plan not to see Berlin or him again...but that’s another blog.
(I will say though that I found the general crowd, and that doesn’t mean Germans because a lot of them weren’t, by the crowd I mean the type of “groovy” folk who tend to move to Berlin so they can walk their dogs at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and buy beer at every corner shop and still manage to survive...that is one forgiving city. I found them to be extremely judgemental. One should be able to drink a can of diet coke without four people lecturing you on the corporate and dietary evil that lurks beneath. Especially when those four people are smoking.)
So I got to take a token from my horrible experience- the map- and give it to someone who might be able to use it for a project. That’s just fantastic. It’s like I took some negative energy and put it into a nifty little transformer and turned it into positive energy. Good times.
That’s what poetry and music and all that jazz is too, isn’t it? The nifty transformer. I picture it like one of those old fashioned washing equipments were you pull something between two rollers to de-crease it. We all need one.
Clear out your karma closet today! Give away old clothes, teddy bears you don’t cuddle anymore, and items that hold too many bad memories. Shed karmic pounds fast and easy, and you don’t even have to join a gym.
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