Why Plan For the End of Life When You Don't Die?

One of the benefits of rising at 4:40am everyday is getting KQED on the drive to the gym.

Michael Krasny is a great host and a better interviewer. And he's  an Ohio University graduate I might add.

This morning the topic was end of life care. You can listen here

Well this doctor, a very patient and intelligent sounding fellow, used this word I love: finite

I love that word.

He said our lives are finite.

Now most of you don't believe that shit for a second. Much less two seconds. No most of you believe that we are eternal. You equivocate on death. Yes, you. If you ask me to define death I do it thusly: the cessation of (individual) life.

I get it. Death reeks of finality. Stinks to high heaven (pun intended).

Now you'll come at me with some talk of "oh earthly death and earthly material matters and oh well all of that is fine to plan for: get a will in order, yadi yada."

But how in the name of cognitive dissonance can you plan for your death when you don't die?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. 

You might know it as John 3:16

I sense no cessation in "everlasting life."

My wife tells me that cognitive dissonance is easy to get around. You just add new beliefs. Or one can rationalize beliefs.

But my thesis is that hypocrisy is unhealthy. Equivocating in letter, spirit, action is unhealthy. Hypocrisy is insidious, it festers. I believe there are collective hypocrisy effects as well. The collective belief that we are eternal has physical, material implications.

To be continued

You Cant Always Come Back To Yourself In The Future

I am not a Luddite. Nor am I a doomsdayer. But man I had a cold shiver run through me yesterday that reeked of, if not doom, then the damn precipice of.

I was listening to Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, specifically the final chapter.

Wiki nicely sums up:

He concludes by considering how modern technology may soon end the species as we know it, as it ushers in genetic engineering, immortality, and non-organic life. Humans have, in Harari's chosen metaphor, become gods: they can create species.

And thinking about cyborg engineering and genetic engineering and how these relate to…

IDENTITY…

were what gave me the damn shivers.

Programs implanted to tell us what to want, whom to love, genes implanted for fidelity…on and on.

The way we think about ourselves…how we feel whole and complete from childhood on, how we feel autonomous…

…But Harari posits a future where this changes. And he used the word disconcerting. But it is so much more.

And it just got me thinking about the Pandora’s box “myth”, the door that once opened can’t be closed, the POINT OF NO RETURN.

And I thought about people that refuse medical treatment for ailments, and sympathy ran through me.

Did they possess the long view? Did they know what it meant for identity? Did they have the species in mind, not just the individual?

The scariest part is that it is too late. Harari points out in the book that while capitalism may have its downside(s), it is too late to turn back.

And the brooding horror, sitting in the corner like a petulant child plotting revenge, is the fact that gene editing WILL happen, Cyborg engineering WILL happen. We’ve come too far.

I’m almost fifty so I don’t have to worry too much I guess. Maybe.

Hooking For Dummies

Been making my way through The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman  and this came out:

Hooking For Dummies

His back got all kinds of broken in a fall from a tree. He was in a tree cutting service and though usually there are ample safety measure for this sort of thing, somehow he still fell from way too many feet and landed on a ground way to solid for the human frame. Mind you he was strong as a bull for his age but muscles and will have nothing to do with 200 lbs and gravity from 35 feet. Nada. So with his broken back in traction and his oldest son busting his balls about “never planned for the future,” and “should have left the fucking hewing nonsense years ago,” and “what the hell are you gonna do?” like an angry mother, he dreamed of some hot number blowing him till he came hard enough to kill him right then and there. Blown to death via fellatio. That’s how a man dies. Not with some indignant son chiding you about your career decisions and lack of this financial plan and that bimbo of the month you spent way too much on.
“Are you even listening to me?”
He did recover but the hewing nonsense was obviously a no-go after a broken back. It didn’t have to be; he could have pulled some macho shit from nowhere like an aged, washed-up quarterback trying to come out of retirement (again) for one last super bowl run. Only the oaks and maples in the burbs didn’t carry that kind of glamour. So as he recuped he tried his damndest to do a little bit of planning for a career change or something like it. But he never was one for an office job; he’d probably been the oldest dude ever to go up a tree like a damn spider monkey for a j-o-b. Jesus was he strong and agile. The recuperating took some off the edges of his muscles but once he was up and moving it was coming back in wave of glorious wave of taut, toned meat just pining for resolution. Name another 55 year old with obliques like this. Sons a bitches got nothing on me.  
Muscles: got ‘em. Income: …
Money needed to be made, bills needed to be paid. IOU’s were due and friends sighed when they opened their wallets for the umpteenth time. “Last one oleshevitz. I love ya but it doesn’t grow on trees. Oh sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. You know that.”
None taken. Especially after a few c notes.
So he did what any 55 year old, uneducated, man with oblique muscles and a huge dong would do: he prostituted.
Well, he planned on prostituting. He had no idea how to break into the…business. But what in the hell else was there?
The library was obviously not going to be a resource to help him become a male hooker. Hooking for Dummies? Prolly not. He thought about talking to some strippers he’d “befriended” over the years but as they flipped through the Rolodex of his mind he realized he owed them all money. Wasn’t that an omen of success as a male hooker though? How many dudes borrow money from strippers? Pew research didn’t run such numbers but it had to be rarefied air. He always borrowed after a romp and dammit if they didn’t always pull out a wad and throw him more than a few bones. He’d usually say something like “I could tell from your intro music that you were good people.”
Then get out.
He’d have to find a new club and some new stripper to befriend. He liked this sort of planning. Roth IRA’s, social security checks? No thanks. Gonna see what wisdom Trixie has down at Chikadees Gentlemen’s Club. As night rolled in, he entered the black light tinged, perfume sated, rock and roll infused den of Chikadees. It was early, poles barren, so the Trixies and the Tanyas were floor level with Johns and Johns. With a freshly “loaned” c note he ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks and with his eyes adjusting, scanned the clientele. And there, mixed in among the construction workers, divorced dads, and cops, was his son. His youngest son. He hadn’t seen him since he graduated college and left for grad school to study Theology at Duquesne or Duke or Dubuque. He couldn’t remember. His son caught his glance, Mona-Lisa smiled, and made his way around the bar. He looked damned strong.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “You are not becoming a hooker.”

They Call It A Procedure

Its more common now a days for babies and toddlers to get the tubes “procedure.” 

You know, in their ear. 

Of course, growing up poor in Akron, Ohio, the only tubes I ever got were decade-old tire tubes used to sled down the water tower hill and the only time I got one in the ear was standing in the batter’s box down mound from John Francis who was a little upset about a mom joke I may or may not have told.

I digress.

Our last two tots had to get the tubes procedure.

And I noticed some things in the hospital.

They ask you a lot of questions and they have multiple people ask these questions multiple times.

Check-in Nurse 1
“When was the last time she ate solids?”

“When was the last time she nursed?”

Check-in Nurse 2
“When was the last time she ate solids?”

“When was the last time she nursed?”

Anesthesiologist
“When was the last time she ate solids?”

“When was the last time she nursed?”

EN&T Doc
“When was the last time she ate solids?”

“When was the last time she nursed?”

I get it, redundancy is a safety measure but it just seems like the first nurse could text the others the same way we get umpteen million family texts about whats his face remodeling the kitchen and whats their faces new kid, Molasses or Moses or what is his name again? Just run an electronic billboard in the hospital like the one running the national debt already.

Here is the other thing: they say that your child “did great.”

Well, my child was under anesthesia, so how is being asleep seen as doing great during a “procedure”?

Of course they tell you this to put you at ease because you aren’t there and you can’t see what is going on. I get it. For all we know they could be listening to metallica back there and scrolling through their twitter feed with their free hand.

But I’m honest to a fault and part of my problem is expecting other people to be honest.

I want the doctor to come out afterward and tell me:

“That was a little rough. I’m hung over as shit from a gallon of gin and the dozen Sriracha spicy wings aren’t helping with the bathroom breaks if you catch my drift. Thankfully, your daughter was completely out of it so she had no idea I was sweating like a whore in church and at one point my hands were shaking a 3.2 on the Richter scale. Don’t worry though, any mammal with opposable thumbs could do this; they just aren’t sharp enough to charge 3K a half-hour. Am I right? She’ll be turning hand springs in no time and her hearing should be a lot better so you two love birds will have to tone down the volume on those arguments about just how you are going to pay for this “procedure.”