8. During 2014, his year of becoming age 114 years, Professor John Edwardes decided to transmit more wisdom to Eddie. He had no grandiose ideas. Simply living 114 years healthy life with a near perfect brain and recall by following Physician's Notebooks allowed him to experience important questions of life. And as an intellectual and professor and holder of the Seminars, he got more knowledge. Here are a few points.
On Life and Death, Preofesor Edwardes: "Science data makes it certain each human consciousness is the result of a chance connection of two living humans - male and female - assisted by various events that affected their behavior. The newly conceived and birthed consciousness develops as the result of the interaction of matter and the production of electricity by that matter in the development of neural tissue and its support systems. The individual consciousness itself is memories of feelings and interactions and an education which informs the new consciousness it exists because it feels and recalls and speaks to itself. The first three to four years of life see the development of most of an adult consciousness (approx. 90%); the remainder continues to develop over a lifetime experience with much individual variation.
"Because of the old, false ideas, there have been and still is agonizing over Why am I here? or Why is this happening to me? A brief consideration should lead most educated persons to the conclusion that life has no meaning that humans can discern. Its goodness or badness are based much on chance but also there may be a place for good decision making in individual cases. Each of us who were lucky enough to get a good life may work for a world in which the chances are arranged so that almost everyone will have a good life. That is our hoped-for future. But still a long way to go.
"In your case, Eddie, it helped much you had good cultural background, good parents, good period of upbringing in the best place on earth to be born then."
Eddie interjects: "Why is death so fearful to us? I mean almost everyone at some time in life gets very paranoid of his or her risks of dying and that paranoia is translated into unnecessary, expensive, often risky behavior such as unnecessary medical testing and changing life patterns? Then as death comes closer some get panicky and quality of life is badly affected overall by fear of death."
Professsor Edwardes: "I have thought a lot about these questions, Eddie. First, it is useful to separate dying from death. Fear of dying includes the actual physical pain, discomfort and mental terror of the dying process, which in many cases begins months or even years before moment of death - often with the first knowledge of a mortal diagnosis. This kind of fear I call real fear because it is based on the reality we have all experienced when perhaps temporarily asphyxiated and gasping for breath, or injured badly in accidents with pain, or suffering severe symptoms of various illnesses that include hemorrhaging or intestinal obstruction or renal colic. Or else we have observed it in others. This kind of fear can be dealt with in direct ways: First, following the advice in Physician's Notebooks to head off these illnesses or at least the worst symptoms by good prevention or, if not possible, then by early effective treatments. Then there is medical palliation, again Physician's Notebooks is the source. And, there is effective suicide/euthanasia, which I have been researching now because at age 114 I have completed my one-million hours of life and it is enough so I want to go out of my life without pain, discomfort or mental anguish by effective voluntary termination. But most important is to have a good continuing self-psychoanalysis as is described in the Physician’s Notebook 9 chapter.
"Let us localize on fear of the consequence of dying - death. One fear is believing the possibility of reincarnation - especially those of us who are lucky to have been born under best circumstances and lived a happy life - we look around and see so many terribly unhappy, destructive human lives and also for those who consider reincarnation as another animal, the dumb, unhappy lives of animals. It can be frightening to believe that one's consciousness may be reborn into a body doomed to great unhappiness. A corollary of this for religious persons may be fear of hell or purgatory. Then there is the fear of annihilation of oneself. We have a built-in feeling for continuous existence and the idea that our individual consciousness may end soon is dreadful to some persons.
"A science-educated person who knows his consciousness is based on the unique chancy elements of matter and energy, and who also knows it can never be repeated or recapitulated or re experienced, can re examine the question of what does it feel like to die. not the dying process but experiencing death itself. Actually it is not hard to come to an idea about that. Think what happens when you are very sleepy and lie down head on pillow, or, even better, if you have had general anesthesia for surgery what happens as the anesthetic is being injected or breathed in. What does happen - and everyone who has experienced it can verify personally - is your consciousness has a complete blanking out, not blackness nor silence nor dreaming but blank non existence. Your head hits the pillow or an anesthetist injects anesthesia and consciousness blanks out and, next thing, you awake hours or days later with all your memories as though no time had passed between the falling asleep or getting the anesthetic and coming back to consciousness - a total blank. That is what death must be like - a complete blank with the difference being you never come back.
If you consider that, then death should not be unpleasant. Death should be - nothingness. And for many persons it solves really serious problems especially if they are old and ill.”
Eddie interrupts: "Yeah! Right now I am worried that something or someone in USA is about to make big trouble for me because of a 30+ years ago mistake. It's starting to really bother me and the thought crossed my mind because I am old - Wouldn't it be a winner, after enjoying all that money, to now avoid the consequences by my death, or by my getting so ill I'll have an excuse to stay put in Japan.
Edwardes smiles at the interruption and continues: "Of course, a young, healthy person is not happy to die but already that leaves a high percent of the population - the old, infirm or unhappy life person, who is happy to experience the blank of death. And for younger persons, if you have arranged your life well and are prepared for the possibility of unexpected,, sudden death; then, it also should not be an unhappy thought. After all, you lived young and healthy and by dying before your own inevitable bad aging and serious sicknesses, you will have had it all - a very joyful life sans its troubles. And as a bonus you may miss the violence of the coming deterioration of our civilization.
Eddie asks: "What about suicide, or voluntary termination?"
Edwardes replies: "In the ideal society as in the ideal life, a life's ending should be planned, its time determined and then executed. What do we wish to avoid by voluntary death? The pain, the discomfort, the mental anguish, the excessive time taken of dying naturally. Also we think of others beside ourselves - we wish to not disturb children by making them view the dying/death; we wish to lighten economic burdens from the financial costs of dying today; we also think of other people - the public - avoid the spectacle of someone jumping from a building or other showing off. Also we wish to lighten the burden on society's paying for our expensive dying.
“The best suicide would be to start an IV drip and inject a deadly dose of barbiturate.”
Eddie interrupts: "What a coincidence! When I was a medical resident, one of my colleagues did just that and the next morning they found him cold dead. It was perfectly done."
Edwardes, chuckles, appreciatively, "You physicians know how to do it best. The problem today is the illegality of suicide except in a few states of USA and even there it is weighed down by rule and procedure. Still it points the way and for us the living, especially at life's end we are willing to break laws but it forces a need for success."
He stops and considers. "But, take me for an instance? - Now having passed 100, I cultivate a suicide mode. I am losing weight purposely down to danger points, which will make the suicide dose much less and assure a successful outcome. So I lighten calories in my eating and my BMI is now 16." He stands and exhibits his almost stick figure, like a Giacometti.
Eddie, laughs, "I've learned a lot from those runs, sir. It will help when my turn comes and also I am inputting in Notebooks 10, the suicide chapter."
"Well, Eddie, any more wisdom of this one-million hour man, or is that enough for this session?"
"Enough, sir. I think we ought to make a record like Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's Two-Thousand Year-Old Man."
"Indubitably my boy. I'll be Brooks and you, Reiner."
"Shall we go out on that?"
"Break open the wine and unwrap Yuko's tuna fish sandwiches."
End of Chapter. Next: 17.8a Seminar - Colonization of Mars -2050 by Cree...
No comments:
Post a Comment