I'm going to ask you to keep an open mind when you read the subject of this book. Society may have shaped your beliefs to the point you cannot imagine what I have to say having any value. I understand. The messages delivered by authority figures in your life and the beliefs of all your peers are powerful. Perhaps the best way I can suggest you approach the subject is to DARE you to see the subject then KEEP reading a chapter or two before tossing the book in the garbage. If you have a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter and feel compelled to stop reading, I'm sorry for you. I would suggest you've been brainwashed. Even if you are certain of the correctness of what you believe, read the book anyway. Mere words cannot hurt you, can they? And if you are open to the possibility there may be something you haven't considered or if you're genuinely interested in a subject rarely discussed in our society, read on.
"Time For You To Leave" refers to deciding when you should depart this Earth.
Still with me? Congratulations on your courage.
We've been taught the wrong things for countless generations. Those who throw this book away or set it back on the shelf are so conditioned to believe these things that they couldn't even listen to another point of view.
We've been taught that it's our right, our obligation, to live as long as possible. Consider the messages you've heard. If you were to kill yourself, it would be a sin. If you sought assistance from another person to end your life, even if you were at the end of life and in extreme pain, that person helping you would be committing a crime nearly everywhere in the USA. If you say to someone, "It's a matter of life and death," nearly anyone who hears it will rush to help, because a human life is the most valuable thing in the world.
We've been taught that if we live according to a code of behavior (laws or commandments) given by some God to some prophet, our soul will live on after our physical body dies. We will go to an afterlife, whether it be heaven, paradise, a reincarnation or some other equivalent.
In every religion, killing another human being is condemned and forbidden. Killing and eating animals is OK. Murder of non-believers (heathens, heretics, infidels, etc.) is acceptable, however, because they don't worship the same God we do. They are unclean. They are devils. They aren't quite as human as we are. (Just a little dark humor here. The religions and nation states that go to war say our enemies are animals. I wonder we aren't instructed to eat them once we've killed them on the field of battle. Oh, that's right. We're just as forbidden to eat them as we are to kill them in the first place. I think the major problem is that our soldiers don't carry sauces with them.)
To be or not to be. That is no question at all.
Unless science has made amazing advances, within no more than 200 years you will cease to be. In time, every living thing, certainly every living human, dies.
To say you will "be dead" doesn't really communicate the state of affairs. It isn't as though "you" will exist in some state of being dead. Your consciousness will not have continued from life into death, Unless you believe some religion's notion of your "soul" graduating into an "afterlife," such as Heaven, Paradise or Reincarnation, you won't "be" anything at all.
Society and religion say you must live forever. or die trying. Look for that quote by Yossarian in "Catch-22." Medical practitioners do everything possible to keep you alive, but they fail every time.
"Assisted suicide" is illegal nearly everywhere in the United States. Think how we demonized "Doctor Death," Jack Kevorkian. To put it bluntly, we show kindness to suffering pets that we deny our fellow humans. I think something is backwards there.
But I shouldn't climb on that euthanasia soapbox right now.
I have a very different point of view than society's "live as long as you can" mandate. I think society should encourage you to die as soon as you accomplish your mission in life. Rather than have society encourage people to live forever, it should encourage people to do what they need to do, then leave.
o o o
If you have another reason to live, fine. Do so. Without that good reason, the right thing to do, the just and moral thing to do, the thing to do for the planet and your fellow man, is die. Many of you should be dead already.
But who and why?
What do you need to do? What's your mission in life? Let's see.
o o o
OK. What's your mission in life? It's the same as any living thing. Reproduce. Leaving religion and its mandates out of it, it is Nature's imperative that you pass on your genetic uniqueness to future generations. Until we can scientifically design the genome for a baby, the only way to guarantee diversity in the gene pool is to have children, who have their own children, and so on and so on.
Once you have produced offspring, Nature is done with you. Or, once you have decided not to have children, your unique genetic contribution will be lost to future generations anyway, so (again) Nature is done with you.
Society and religion today say you must stay alive. Why do they say that? Do you agree with them or is there a better decision you can make?
Why Live or Die?
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Our lives are accidental and brief. In a very short time we die. And we stay dead forever. If, perchance, the atoms that were a part of our bodies drift together again in what may well be millions of years or longer, they will not contain our consciousness. That ends when we die. (Unless, of course you've been inculcated with some religious belief that says your soul goes on after death. I won't speak to that concept herein, except to say, "Give me a fucking break. What are you, stupid?")
There's an expression "Life is too short." It is usually used in the context of "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's ALL small stuff." I see it from one side of what some call "glass half empty/glass half full." I've heard people say, "Life is too short, so why hasten to end it?" My take on it is different. I say, "Life is too short, so why bother?" By that I don't mean, "Why bother with any particular thing or task?" I mean, "Why bother to live at all?"
I start from the proposition that death, being inevitable, might as well be desirable. In fact, it should be the standard behavior for everybody. To delay it is possible, but not necessarily a good thing. I'll discuss below what I see are the reasons to continue to live.
Beyond Nature's imperative that people reproduce, so that their unique genetic makeup is carried into the future, there may be present in one's life factors that make it attractive to continue living.
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Faith
I may be citing the Judeo/Christian bible a bit here. Not because I have any particular knowledge of it, but because it's ubiquitous in this culture. I'm assuming, admittedly without justification, that other religions have similar concepts. I'm not going to invest the time and energy required to take a course in comparative religions. The way I see it, one person's lies are as good as the next person's.
I wasn't taught any religion. There's good news and bad news about that fact. The bad news is that I cannot fall back on my faith in times of adversity or confusion. "People of faith" always have (simplistic) answers to explain things they cannot comprehend ("The Lord works in mysterious ways." "It's God's will." etc.). One of the songs I think best captures that notion was sung by Dale Evans (of the "Roy Rogers and Dales Evans" TV show in the 1950s). Its refrain was, "How do I know? The Bible tells me so." Can you say "tautology"? You really should track it down & listen to it. Amazing.
Another tautological song is called "I Believe." I haven't sought the company of atheists, but I imagine "I Believe" makes them cringe (as it does me).
OK. The Christians talk about being "Shepherds of Men." They refer to their followers as their "flock." I nod my head wholeheartedly and say, "If you lack the intelligence or the desire to form an opinion of your own -- if you really ARE a sheep -- and you're happy with it, fine. Just don't try to proselytize me." Then there are the people who have magnets on the back of their cars with a fish. This represents, I suppose, the miracle where Jesus made many fishes out of one. I say, "If you are as smart as a fish, (insert sheep comment here)."
They say, "Ignorance is bliss." I'm neither ignorant nor blissful. If I were religious, I might be. That's the bad news.
The good news is that I'm not forced to believe what my religious leaders (a local rabbi, pastor or priest -- or some patriarch, like the pope) say. I can think about things what my reason concludes.
The good news is that I can choose to be intelligent, curious, and informed. I don't have to "grow up," which I interpret to mean "stop growing." I know I don't have all the answers, or any of them. I will never kill anybody for having a different religious belief.
An author, having finished the opus, runs into a world of entrenched opposition to even considering the propositions. The internet, a blog, might be the only way.
I've always recognized I'm too lazy to write a book-length treatment of the subject. If all I can manage is a long essay, I hope to release it on Halloween, calling it my "Trick or Treatise." I crack myself up sometimes.
Sometime later, I might insert my thoughts about expository prose. It will be worth reading, so keep at it.
We've been taught the wrong things for countless generations.
We've been taught that it's our right, our duty, to live as long as possible. If you were to kill yourself, it would be a sin. If you sought assistance from another person to end your life, even if you were at the end of life and in extreme pain, it would be considered murder nearly everywhere in the USA. "It's a matter of life and death" causes anyone who hears it to help, because human life is the most valuable thing there is.
We've been taught that if we live according to a code of behavior, laws or commandments, given by God to a prophet, our soul will live on after our physical body dies. We will go to some afterlife, whether it be heaven, paradise, a reincarnation or some other equivalent.
"Lead, follow, or get out of the way." Thomas Paine
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