End-of-Life Dreams

My late grandfather one day was puzzled because he was convinced that there had been something about “a suitcase that’s got everything in it”. My wife and I exchanged glances. I told him, “You dreamed that”. He looked puzzled and repeated, “A suitcase that’s got everything in it”.

He died one week later.

By this logic pain management is also unnecessary, because the patients won't (generally) die of pain.

It is necessary because understanding the process (1) may improve the quality of (remaining) lives of the patients, and (2) may actually help prolong lives, similar to the placebo effect.

I am not even a nihilist, but sure, after nihilism will destroy the lives of people for 2,000+ years, I will agree that it's more absurd than any religion. So far, the great religions of the world, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, needed thousands of years to realize that slavery is not really a great idea, and some are not yet convinced, but are pressured by those dissecting atheists to repress their true nature: oppress, admonish, control.

And to think you can't appreciate the beauty of the world just because you understand it, it's simply mind-boggling. Given how much I appreciate a computer program about which I know every nook and cranny because I developed it from an empty text file, I would venture to say: only if you fully understand something you can start to appreciate its beauty, start to be responsible for its future.

(Also, the expression "it is always nothing" is full of poetic vim given how atoms are mostly empty space and how the universe itself is mostly empty space—unfathomable voids sprinkled with galactic filaments [1])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_filament#/media/File:Ne...

    Eden Rock

    By Charles Causley

    They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
    My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
    Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
    Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

    My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
    Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
    Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
    Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

    She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
    From an old H.P. Sauce bottle, a screw
    Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
    The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

    The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
    My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
    Over the drifted stream. My father spins
    A stone along the water. Leisurely,

    They beckon to me from the other bank.
    I hear them call, “See where the stream-path is!
    Crossing is not as hard as you might think."

    I had not thought that it would be like this.