Daffodil
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soylent green is PEOPLE!
"Why I [Ezekiel Emanuel] Hope to Die at 75"
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*GG*
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How do you mean?
Forbin
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Warning - Major movie spoiler ahead...
"Soylent Green" was a 1973 science-fiction film based on the 1966 novel "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison. The movie is set in the "far off" year of 2022. In it, population and pollution have grown so out of hand that resources, including food and water, are running scarce as senior citizens are encouraged to "go home" via state sponsored euthanasia facilities. In the end, it is revealed that the dead from these facilities are actually being converted into food for the living in the form of crackers known as "soylent green."
The bumper sticker is a recent joke on the premise, suggesting that you are totally OK with the idea.
I thought it was a pretty apt reference in light of the above article that all but suggests that the elderly should "die quickly" for the greater good of society.
"Soylent Green" was a 1973 science-fiction film based on the 1966 novel "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison. The movie is set in the "far off" year of 2022. In it, population and pollution have grown so out of hand that resources, including food and water, are running scarce as senior citizens are encouraged to "go home" via state sponsored euthanasia facilities. In the end, it is revealed that the dead from these facilities are actually being converted into food for the living in the form of crackers known as "soylent green."
The bumper sticker is a recent joke on the premise, suggesting that you are totally OK with the idea.
I thought it was a pretty apt reference in light of the above article that all but suggests that the elderly should "die quickly" for the greater good of society.
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Gingergrrl
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@Forbin thanks for explaining and I had never heard of that movie but it makes total sense. Great reference!!!
CFS_for_19_years
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Vox interviewed Emanuel here:
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/19/654931...ook&utm_campaign=voxdotcom&utm_content=friday
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/19/654931...ook&utm_campaign=voxdotcom&utm_content=friday
adreno
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"Do not go gentle into that good night" - Dylan Thomas.
There is nothing romantic about death - it is just a loss of everything you have.
Let nature take its course? The argument that "natural is good" is a logical fallacy. Tsunami's are natural, so is HIV and Ebola. Or how about a meteorite that wipes out the entire race? It's perfectly natural!
I suggest Emanuel completes his transition sooner rather than later. He is taking up valuable space.
There is nothing romantic about death - it is just a loss of everything you have.
Let nature take its course? The argument that "natural is good" is a logical fallacy. Tsunami's are natural, so is HIV and Ebola. Or how about a meteorite that wipes out the entire race? It's perfectly natural!
I suggest Emanuel completes his transition sooner rather than later. He is taking up valuable space.
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Forbin
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Well, putting aside the not unexpected finding that creative output tends to drop off as you approach retirement, the Simonton paper upon which Emanuel founds some of his case...
Simonton, K., 1997, Creative Productivity: A Predictive and Explanatory Model of Career Trajectories and Landmarks, Psychological Review , Vol. 104, No. 1, 66-89
...also shows that the output milestones - first, best and last contribution - shift depending on when you start your career. If you begin your career at 20, your last output is in your early 60's. If you begin your career at age 30, your last output is in your early 70's. The other milestones shift by the same amount. Emanuel doesn't mention this.
Again, to a lay person, like me, this just seems to suggest that one's creative output tapers off as one approaches retirement. The paper shows that this tapering is not age dependent, but is, rather, career lifespan dependent. The fact that one's best work precedes one's last contribution by about 20 years could merely reflect that people become more dogmatic and less risk taking later in their careers. People often becomes "gatekeepers" and mentors after their peak (at which point they are often "advanced" into those roles in recognition of their achievements). Some, no doubt, become concerned with preserving their reputations. None of this necessarily correlates to intellectual decline - nor is the occupation of gatekeeper, mentor, or manager non-contributory. It can be a major factor in directing, amplifying and assisting the creative production of others.
It would be interesting to know what the curves look like for people who switch careers after reaching a high point of success in their first. Do they reach an equally high point of success in their following career(s) over the same time scale? Could the key to making continuing contributions be to quit while you're on top, to start a new career and to never retire? What effect would this have on the upcoming generation who would still need mentors and gatekeepers... and jobs?
- - -
Grandma Moses didn't begin her art career until she was 78. She completed something like 1500 - 2000 paintings. Some have sold for over a million dollars. She's obviously an "outlier," but outliers may simply be people who do not accept the traditional path.
Simonton, K., 1997, Creative Productivity: A Predictive and Explanatory Model of Career Trajectories and Landmarks, Psychological Review , Vol. 104, No. 1, 66-89
...also shows that the output milestones - first, best and last contribution - shift depending on when you start your career. If you begin your career at 20, your last output is in your early 60's. If you begin your career at age 30, your last output is in your early 70's. The other milestones shift by the same amount. Emanuel doesn't mention this.
Again, to a lay person, like me, this just seems to suggest that one's creative output tapers off as one approaches retirement. The paper shows that this tapering is not age dependent, but is, rather, career lifespan dependent. The fact that one's best work precedes one's last contribution by about 20 years could merely reflect that people become more dogmatic and less risk taking later in their careers. People often becomes "gatekeepers" and mentors after their peak (at which point they are often "advanced" into those roles in recognition of their achievements). Some, no doubt, become concerned with preserving their reputations. None of this necessarily correlates to intellectual decline - nor is the occupation of gatekeeper, mentor, or manager non-contributory. It can be a major factor in directing, amplifying and assisting the creative production of others.
It would be interesting to know what the curves look like for people who switch careers after reaching a high point of success in their first. Do they reach an equally high point of success in their following career(s) over the same time scale? Could the key to making continuing contributions be to quit while you're on top, to start a new career and to never retire? What effect would this have on the upcoming generation who would still need mentors and gatekeepers... and jobs?
- - -
Grandma Moses didn't begin her art career until she was 78. She completed something like 1500 - 2000 paintings. Some have sold for over a million dollars. She's obviously an "outlier," but outliers may simply be people who do not accept the traditional path.
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CFS_for_19_years
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It seems really odd for someone (Emanuel) to say that one's life becomes meaningless at a particular age (75). I'm sure there are many people living past the age of 75 who have meaningful lives and would take antibiotics and other life-saving measures.
On the other hand, I had a friend whose sister around the age of 60 or 65 decided to end twice-weekly dialysis and let nature run its course over about three weeks' time. She'd had diabetes for some time and it had ruined her kidneys. By refusing traditional care she did end her life. Dialysis was no piece of cake and she basically said, "Screw this." I can support this choice.
On the other hand, I had a friend whose sister around the age of 60 or 65 decided to end twice-weekly dialysis and let nature run its course over about three weeks' time. She'd had diabetes for some time and it had ruined her kidneys. By refusing traditional care she did end her life. Dialysis was no piece of cake and she basically said, "Screw this." I can support this choice.
It's only odd if you're looking at it from the pecspective of society in general. As typical individuals with families and friends, it's bizarre and disturbing, and inhumane.
But if you're a (literally) heartless corporation which wants to pay fewer taxes and maximize profits, then offing those who aren't in a position to serve you as an employee and/or consumer is quite sensible.
Whats-his-name is almost certainly owned by corporate interests. He won't "stick to his guns" when the time comes, because they aren't his guns, and he'll have already been nicely paid off by that point.
whodathunkit
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@Lou: okay, you steel trap, you, you got me. Maybe I *have* watched more than five minutes of Fox News in my entire life.
But quite literally and most assuredly not five minutes in the last 10 years. Is that better?
It was a little hard to follow your post (not sure what I'm supposed to know...you know?) but I *think* you're alluding to the standard media tactic of roiling people up with slippery slope logic. It's used in all media, all the time(it's another reason I stopped watching the news), and is very effective in swaying the opinions of people who only get their information from one or two sources.
But please, read up on the concept of slippery slope. It's can be a fallacy in logic and rhetoric, but "can be" is not synonymous with "always is".
The slippery slope can also be a very real progression of events, where something that seems like a good idea is implemented, but this minor decision leads to the rationalizing of another more serious decision, and then another, and then soon you wind up with something hideous that no longer resembles the original idea in the first place. Also read up on the rise of the Nazis, and how most Germans never thought those things would ever happen, until suddenly the incontrovertible truth was in front of them. What happened in Germany in the '30's is the perfect illustration of the slippery slope.
Personally, after reading about and coming to a full understanding of what happened in Nazi Germany in the '30's, I'd rather take the chance of hyperventilating a little bit and thereby calling attention to folks who may be in the process of leading us down the totalitarian slippery slope, than sit back and say nothing for fear of being thought hysterical or paranoid.
If you're right and I'm just a stupid hysteric, no harm, no foul. I've wasted a bit of oxygen, which is okay. There's plenty to go around.
But if *I'm* right and two people to see things in a different way as a result of my post, which helps them to keep a watchful eye on our dear leaders, and they help two people to keep a watchful eye, and so on, then maybe a future disaster can be averted.
After all, fair is fair. Zeke was just trying to help people see things in a different way, too, wasn't he?
It's a fairly short, slick trip from good ol' Zeke's warm and fuzzy opinions to rationing healthcare based on the likely outcome for the person receiving it. Getting people on board with the idea of death based on physical function by using warm and fuzzy op-eds in major media outlets could be a step in that direction. I'm sorry if you can't see that.
And again, to be clear, I am NOT against death based on physical functioning, so long as the individual makes the free choice of it. If people want to wander off and die in the night, I'm all for that. I may do it myself one day. Sometimes I'm not too keen on the idea of being alive, period. But nobody should be able to mandate that they get pushed out the door to wander.
But quite literally and most assuredly not five minutes in the last 10 years. Is that better?
It was a little hard to follow your post (not sure what I'm supposed to know...you know?) but I *think* you're alluding to the standard media tactic of roiling people up with slippery slope logic. It's used in all media, all the time(it's another reason I stopped watching the news), and is very effective in swaying the opinions of people who only get their information from one or two sources.
But please, read up on the concept of slippery slope. It's can be a fallacy in logic and rhetoric, but "can be" is not synonymous with "always is".
The slippery slope can also be a very real progression of events, where something that seems like a good idea is implemented, but this minor decision leads to the rationalizing of another more serious decision, and then another, and then soon you wind up with something hideous that no longer resembles the original idea in the first place. Also read up on the rise of the Nazis, and how most Germans never thought those things would ever happen, until suddenly the incontrovertible truth was in front of them. What happened in Germany in the '30's is the perfect illustration of the slippery slope.
Personally, after reading about and coming to a full understanding of what happened in Nazi Germany in the '30's, I'd rather take the chance of hyperventilating a little bit and thereby calling attention to folks who may be in the process of leading us down the totalitarian slippery slope, than sit back and say nothing for fear of being thought hysterical or paranoid.
If you're right and I'm just a stupid hysteric, no harm, no foul. I've wasted a bit of oxygen, which is okay. There's plenty to go around.
But if *I'm* right and two people to see things in a different way as a result of my post, which helps them to keep a watchful eye on our dear leaders, and they help two people to keep a watchful eye, and so on, then maybe a future disaster can be averted.
After all, fair is fair. Zeke was just trying to help people see things in a different way, too, wasn't he?
It's a fairly short, slick trip from good ol' Zeke's warm and fuzzy opinions to rationing healthcare based on the likely outcome for the person receiving it. Getting people on board with the idea of death based on physical function by using warm and fuzzy op-eds in major media outlets could be a step in that direction. I'm sorry if you can't see that.
And again, to be clear, I am NOT against death based on physical functioning, so long as the individual makes the free choice of it. If people want to wander off and die in the night, I'm all for that. I may do it myself one day. Sometimes I'm not too keen on the idea of being alive, period. But nobody should be able to mandate that they get pushed out the door to wander.
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Daffodil
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Ren
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So true!
to all.Lou
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Hey, Adreno, guess I've helped to stir this hornet nest, even getting you a bit riled. Sorry. I'm stepping away; too many good people getting overheated over what is probably going to turn out a tempest in a teapot. I just don't quite understand 'Why I hope to die at 75' is so easily interpreted as 'Why I hope you die at 75'.
Some of your normal, extremely brief posts are classic, this one must have seemed like a manuscript. Could account for why you may have made a logical misstep: if the argument that "natural is good" is a logical fallacy, wouldn't it as well be true that "natural is bad" is a logical fallacy? Some fairly good natural things come to mind: a newborn baby, love, a cold drink from a mountain brook.
I'm afraid if the government or private researchers don't come up with better treatments for ME/cfs and Lyme what happens for many of us at 75 may be moot. Okay, that said, I'm slippery sloping myself outta this thread.
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adreno
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I wasn't "riled" before, but I guess you got me there now. I find your arguing-then-stepping-away tactic kind of passive-agressive. You might give the people you argue a chance to reply. If you want to leave, why argue?
I guess you don't understand that. If he had just told his family, it wouldn't be an issue. Or if he was a regular person. But he had to make a public statement about his beliefs. Why, if not to influence others? In his position, he is exactly that; an example to others, and an influencer on politics.
I didn't say that natural is bad. The logical fallacy is known as appeal to nature; the point is that you cannot use this appeal when making judgements. Whether something is natural or not does not influence morality - it doesn't influence whether your argument is right, just or ideal.
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Lou
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@adren
Alright, you've drawn me back in, don't wish to deprive you of an argument if that's what you like.
First, a big hoo ah punch to the stomach calling me passive/whatever/anything. Passive, I ain't. That you described my tactic as 'kind of' passive-aggressive ricochets that barb right back at you.
Think what riled me was all the misplaced outrage and leapfrogging to something akin to fascism and Nazism. What crap, in my opinion. And my original suspicion of regurgitated FXN is not given up completely because, well, it smells like it, and that ilk doesn't end at the internet; quite the contrary, their minions and likeminded far-right bloggers absolutely thrive there.
I hate to say one thing and do another(coming back to this thread). But, in a way, you put me in the position of an accused innocent, demanded by the prosecutor to give a one word and only one word, yes or no, answer to the following question: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
Hmm, the above paragraph is a bit of a reach, you didn't actually go that far, heck, maybe I just like a good argument occasionally, myself.
Take care, adreno, I'm sure I'll be hearing from you again, but if I don't answer it's not because I'm passive-aggressive, it's that this has about run its course.
Alright, you've drawn me back in, don't wish to deprive you of an argument if that's what you like.
First, a big hoo ah punch to the stomach calling me passive/whatever/anything. Passive, I ain't. That you described my tactic as 'kind of' passive-aggressive ricochets that barb right back at you.
Think what riled me was all the misplaced outrage and leapfrogging to something akin to fascism and Nazism. What crap, in my opinion. And my original suspicion of regurgitated FXN is not given up completely because, well, it smells like it, and that ilk doesn't end at the internet; quite the contrary, their minions and likeminded far-right bloggers absolutely thrive there.
I hate to say one thing and do another(coming back to this thread). But, in a way, you put me in the position of an accused innocent, demanded by the prosecutor to give a one word and only one word, yes or no, answer to the following question: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
Hmm, the above paragraph is a bit of a reach, you didn't actually go that far, heck, maybe I just like a good argument occasionally, myself.
Take care, adreno, I'm sure I'll be hearing from you again, but if I don't answer it's not because I'm passive-aggressive, it's that this has about run its course.
whodathunkit
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LOL. The good ol' VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy) again. As if nobody who isn't toeing the hard line with Lefty groupthink (i.e., "All Prominent Party Officials [like Zeke] are Always Correct and Act Out of Absolute Altruism, not Ulterior Motives", and "Socialized Medicine Means Good Health For All", etc.) isn't possibly capable of forming an opinion of their own, absent the influence of media or propaganda. Like, being educated or reading history and stuff never helped anyone form an opinion, did it? Or, if such things do help people form opinions, the opinions formed must always and necessarily be the "correct" opinions. Not stuff Lou disagrees with. Right?
This obsession with Fox News seems to be doubly weird in this case because, unless I am mistake, adreno's signature indicates he lives in Europe. Not exactly a hotbed of Fox News watchers over there, unless I'm sadly misinformed.
Again, such a pat, convenient, dismissive explanation for any viewpoint @Lou doesn't agree with. Must be nice and easy where you live, @Lou, since the explanations for other's opinions are so simple and easily sussed out. People where I live are typically more complicated than that, and tend to do some thinking on their own.
As if nobody who isn't toeing the hard line with Lefty groupthink (i.e., "All Prominent Party Officials [like Zeke] are Always Correct and Act Out of Absolute Altruism, not Ulterior Motives", and "Socialized Medicine Means Good Health For All", etc.) isn't possibly capable of forming an opinion of their own, absent the influence of media or propaganda. Like, being educated or reading history and stuff never helped anyone form an opinion, did it? Or, if such things do help people form opinions, the opinions formed must always and necessarily be the "correct" opinions. Not stuff Lou disagrees with. Right?This obsession with Fox News seems to be doubly weird in this case because, unless I am mistake, adreno's signature indicates he lives in Europe. Not exactly a hotbed of Fox News watchers over there, unless I'm sadly misinformed.
Again, such a pat, convenient, dismissive explanation for any viewpoint @Lou doesn't agree with. Must be nice and easy where you live, @Lou, since the explanations for other's opinions are so simple and easily sussed out. People where I live are typically more complicated than that, and tend to do some thinking on their own.
adreno
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I don't much care what you are. I was referring to your tactics, or way of conduct, which I dislike. FYI I hadn't even read your posts until you adressed me directly, because honestly I don't find them very interesting.
I have no idea what you're talking about, sounds like blabbering nonsense to me. You're saying I'm a fascist? If that's the case you're even dumber than I thought. The arguments of Emanuel sound far more right-wing than left-wing to me, but perhaps you can't distinguish left from right?
whodathunkit
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adreno, IF you care (big IF there), particularly in the U.S., the lines between Left and Right are not so clear cut as they may be in Europe. The Liberal/Progressive Left in the U.S. has absorbed and internalized some of the uglier aspects of what used to be (or still are) hard-right socialist/Marxist ideologies in Europe.
We are living in deeply weird times.
We are living in deeply weird times.
adreno
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I'm aware that if you go far enough left, you'll be coming to the right, i.e, the views of the extreme right and left are in many ways similar.
But please tell me where I'm "regurgitating fascism"?
whodathunkit
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LOL. Yes to moving far enough. And like the snake probably found out, one's own ass doesn't always taste so good, does it?adreno said:I'm aware that if you far enough left, you'll be coming to the right
But please tell me where I'm "regurgitating fascism"?
As far as you regurgitating fascism: sorry. Can't help you. I'm puzzled, as well. But maybe that makes me a fascist, too.