From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 21:36:42 MDT
Anne Marie Tobias precedes her presentation with
>This is a pointless conversation...
lol, I am greatly amused by how many posts start like this.
I think that if the people writing really found it pointless,
they would spend time instead responding to other threads, or
doing something more interesting :-) Anyway, it doesn't
seem to prevent them from responding at length in these
"pointless conversations".
First you write
>To argue that living long enough will be the death of
>who you know yourself to be is silly...
>
>You've already lived long enough to know the death of the infant
>you knew yourself to be, the child you knew yourself to be, and
>the adolescent you knew yourself to be. Do you waste even a
>second mourning their passing????
Aren't you contradicting yourself? In the first paragraph
you contend that it's silly to say that death may occur by
simply living long enough, and then in the second you appear
to acknowledge that indeed the child you were has died,
(perhaps we should talk of the fetus that "you" once were for
clarity as I know certain people who identify totally with
themselves down to age two).
If I may be so bold, I think that it is a paucity of
imagination that causes people not to shed tears in many
cases. Some of us understand that when a military plane
goes down and a number of combattants are killed, there
will be a great many funerals. If you attended any of
these funerals, and became sufficiently knowledgeable
about the deceased and the degree to which he or she was
loved, you'd cry too. I don't shed tears over tragedies
because (a) I don't know the particulars, and (b) I don't
have time. But I do know what the truth is.
There once was a little six-year old boy who loved to
watch Flash Gordon on television, and liked to play so
much with his little friends. I'm very certain that he
was a very sweet little kid, all the records seem to
show it, and there are some testamonials. But he's
completely gone now, and yes, there are tears in my
eyes when I think of that loss. You could search the
universe over, and you'll never find that little boy,
because he's dead. He's the little boy I used to be.
This is a senseless tragedy too, if you can open your mind
and realize it. Given the proper level of technology,
there is simply NO REASON for this little boy to be dead.
There is so much matter that is being wasted just being
bare rock, or composing gas on Jupiter. Why can't that
little Lee have just the tiniest little piece, to stay
alive with, and to continue to laugh and play with
his friends, and watch Flash Gordon on television?
We are simply (and wrongly) merely accustomed to the death
of such. But when we have the strength, the time, and the
luxury of complete compassion, we'll all see the truth.
Lee Corbin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:07:53 MST