Cars are tools.John wrote:The same argument could be made for any irreversible decision.FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > Suicide is the relief of suffering. Relief of suffering is a good
> thing, but we only get to do that once, and when it's done
> unnecessarily it forecloses future positive "suffering for
> betterment", which is what all suffering is.
> Life is the pursuit of "productive suffering". Suicide is the
> final end of that pursuit. Finding a hidey-hole is a temporary end
> to that pursuit. A temporary halt of positive work is preferable
> to a permanent halt.
So if your really old car is at death's door, they you can get rid of
it, which would be an irreversible decision, but doing so would
degrade the value of clunkers.
Or you could spend many thousands of dollars to repair and
rehabilitate the really old car, so that it could clunk along for
another year or two. It hardly seems worth wasting the money on an
old clunker like that, especially since it would only keep things
going for just a little longer. If it were a younger car, then
spending the money to repair it might mean that the car could continue
running for many years. But if it's a really old clunky car that
could only survive a little longer anyway, rattling and banging along
and getting 5 miles per gallon, then spending a lot of money would
just be a waste.
But all that assumes that all that money is available. If you've run
out of money and you don't have those thousands of dollars to repair
and rehabilitate the old clunker so that it can clunk and rattle
around a just little while longer, then you'd have no choice. The
decision would have been made for you by the fact that you've run out
of money. You'd have to make the irreversible decision to get rid of
the clunker.
People are makers and users of tools.
I'm not asking you to consider "fixing" yourself. People find places to be "interesting" while they "deteriorate", while tools simply rust, or otherwise oxidize.
Of course, we "persons" (people) also "oxidize", but that just implies that we've got a bit of "tool" built into us as well. And our "tool-ness" implies that there are some "tool users" that are using us. One of those tool-users is ourself, quite obviously. But might there be more tool-users out there for whom we are a tool?
I'm simply stating that you might consider continuing to be the interesting person that you've always been, regardless of your circumstances, as an exemplar of "whatever interesting-ness it is that you contribute to the world" because the world (humanity) can use all of that that it can get.
Some of my Catholic-ness seems to want to blurt out something,... Yeah, just as we persons aren't allowed to condemn people to hell (as they have to do that themselves), we're not allowed to say whether suicide is appropriate or not for another person, as we're not in the position to know what's going on inside of them.
But, we CAN point out that there is value created in suffering, and that permanent solutions foreclose on things that MAY be better served by temporary solutions (aka "kicking the can down the road" so as to see what might happen after a time), but decisions are the property of those who make them.
I absolutely love the conundrum of free will. We can do as we will based on how we believe the world works, and we can choose to include justifications/beliefs for transforming the world's "negatives" (such as suffering and discomfort and evil) into useful "things", or not.
While I have the "spare time" (somewhat comfortable periods in life) I choose to "pre-load" reasons/reasoning to continue living even in severe suffering, so that my belief that the world is a more interesting place (and more worthy for people to live and find hope in) if I postpone leaving it (dying) for as long as possible.
Just me being VERY egotistical, of course, but that's the basis of the "old ways" where honor, and renown, and acclaim by one's "people" (family/clan/nation/etc) were the things valued, and for which lives were lived out as heroically as possible.
And to me, everyone is a hero, because I choose to believe that everyone tries as hard as they are able to be their kind of hero.
..I just don't like seeing heroes go before I'm done admiring them. Selfish of me, yeah?
Aloha nui, kuʻu kāʻeʻaʻeʻa! <shaka nui!>