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Anyone else feeling anxious over their own mortality after reading this?
Vos qui transitis nostri memores rogo sitis Quod sumus hoc eritis Fuimus aliquando quod estis Heu quantus est noster dolor
"You who remember our passing, I beg you to be what we are, you will be. We were once what you are
Alas, how great is our grief"
Almost exactly 18 months ago, my then 87 year old father, after feeling unwell and having some fluid problems with his lungs was diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer. He turned down treatment and died at home a couple days before Christmas last year. I've come away from the experience very unhappy with the medical system. There's a long list, things that in any other industry would be prosecuted. The medical and hospic…
And the recent era is not pretty (diminishing healthcare in lots of places .. saying that as a French, covid wiping a lot of professional out of the field).
We can do a lot better, focus and resources must pour where it's important.
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Gah that sucks. The randomness of it all is maddening. I buried an uncle a few months ago, he had a very nasty case of cancer and was in so much pain that we were all so grateful that at least here in NL there was the option to throw in the towel. He was a super nice man and I regret not having more contact with him in my life (my family is rather fragmented). But so much suffering is just too much to inflict on anyb…
Randomness is definitely true. My cousin was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor at two years old. Two! The prognosis was that at absolute best, she would live to 16 years of age. However! Happily, she is alive, well, and living every day like it’s her last at ~31 now. Been in remission for at least 10-15 years or something, I’m not sure the exact specifics. But what a horrible, arbitrary curse to put on a 2 yea…
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> " Imagine for example if we had an obesity tax - everyone obese must pay 30% of their earnings into a Medicare fund. " Imagine for example if we taxed the shareholders of CocaCola instead, they're the ones who got wealthy from obesity. And before you say "it was the consumer's choice", what was CocaCola's $4b/year advertising spend for, then?
I'd totally be up for fining companies retrospectively for harming people's health even before the harm was well understood. That gives the companies an incentive to do the research ahead of time to minimize damages.
If raising the price of Coke is the goal, I believe there are already proposals for a sugar tax in various jurisdictions.
Let’s tax the hell out of processed foods so they become at least on par with the price of healthy food.
It’s very tricky since taxes like that will hurt low income households the most.
Another option: ban advertising of heavily processed food, and while we’re at it let’s also ban advertising prescription drugs (as is the case already in Canada)
Almost exactly 18 months ago, my then 87 year old father, after feeling unwell and having some fluid problems with his lungs was diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer. He turned down treatment and died at home a couple days before Christmas last year. I've come away from the experience very unhappy with the medical system. There's a long list, things that in any other industry would be prosecuted. The medical and hospic…
I won't agree about the American medical system but I'd say that our hospice system is pretty much Soylent Green .
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I couldn't say this any better. Once you have kids, everything changes. The impact of getting ill is no longer how it affects you, if you've done enough with your time, but how it will affect them. It's like a dark cloud that follows, in the back of your mind every day. Ultimately, it helps you realise what really matters, and what doesn't.
I doubt you actually mean this is the case for everyone. Obviously there are a lot of parents that don't feel this way. I have a recent example where a few years ago my friends dad (friend is ~35,dad is ~75) wanted the son to give up a kidney even though he had other health concerns and most likely wouldn't last a few more years regardless. That doesn't sound like love as I wouldn't even ask that of a good friend.
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Bike accident (utterly self inflicted), 1000's of all-nighters, too little exercise (which I guess you can always point at, I bike a lot but that's not balanced exercise), diet, overstressed joints/muscles by doing too much physical work beyond my ability (usually when remodeling houses or constructing stuff). Coupled with a nice assortment of genetic heritage and some regular diseases (COVID, kidneys, gall bladder,…
I'm similar. You might try swimming if it is practical for you, it has made a world of difference for me. It is close to a perfectly balanced exercise, involving nearly all muscles, low impact, cardio and breath control, and above all it is fun (at least for me and a significant percentage of people).
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That's why you meditate on your death everyday
Bingo. Memento mori. https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori/ And other "bad things" with negative visualization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization
Anyone else feeling anxious over their own mortality after reading this?
When I was in my 30s and had two small children, my appendix burst. It turned into a fairly routine procedure to remove it and get me back on my feet; but I realized that if I had lived even 100 years ago it probably would have been fatal. Near death experiences can change your whole perspective. When I was young and single, I did all kinds of crazy things that could easily have ended me. Once I got married and had c…
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We also have a lot of data on ways to reduce cancer before it happens. Reduce obesity. Reduce pollution. Etc. Yet we really aren't doing an awful lot about those things. Imagine for example if we had an obesity tax - everyone obese must pay 30% of their earnings into a Medicare fund. Sure it would be unpopular, but obesity would very quickly be solved, and cancer rates would plummet.
I know we want to believe it was somehow a blame or fault of someone who develops cancer. The reality is I've seen unhealthy people never get cancer and healthy people, children even, who get cancer. No one is to blame for getting cancer.
A similar example is with early detection. The data show that at population scale a lot of early detection efforts cause more harm than good. The problem is that any arbitrary person might have their life saved by said early detection. It's impossible to know who those arbitrary people will be.