Precarious Life
Old folks, disabled folks, infirm folks, all have something in common.More than the average person, they are aware how precarious life is and how uncertain the future is.When one is young, the end is too far away and the future is tomorrow. In mid-life, a productive person is too busy to bother too deeply with the consequences of life. So, how does Objectivism deal with these very basic manifestations? I think I know, but I'm always open to learning.
Read more at: https://thequotes.com/quotes/298140
The problems you must deal with are not as such something to celebrate, but accept facts as they are and you can see why the Kira attitude, true to her life until the end, is the right approach.
Ayn Rand also said "those who fight for the future live in it today". That is true for any moment as long as you are living.
In his biography The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, Basil Mahon wrote, "Over the past 100 years we have learnt to use Maxwell's waves to send information over great and small distances in tiny fractions of a second. Today we can scarcely imagine a world without radio, television and radar. His brainchild has changed our lives profoundly and irrevocably."
To this list can be added cell phones, wireless internet and many other applications ranging from from power transmission to the ray screen protecting "the Valley" in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Oliver Heaviside, in the generation following Maxwell's early death at the age of 48, extended and mathematically reformulated Maxwell's theory and equations in the form we know and use them today. In his The Maxwellians, Bruce Hunt wrote:
"In one of the most interesting of his unpublished writings, Heaviside reflected on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. In its old religious sense, the idea had, he believed, been thoroughly discredited. But there was, he said, another 'and far nobler sense' in which the soul truly was immortal. In living our lives, each of us 'makes some impression on the world, good or bad, and then dies'; this impression goes on to affect future events for all time, so that 'a part of us lives after us, diffused through all humanity, more or less, and all Nature. This is the immortality of the soul,' Heaviside said. 'There are large and there are small souls,' he went on.
"'The immortal soul of John Ploughman of Buckinghamshire is a small affair, scarcely visible. That of a Shakespeare or a Newton is stupendous. Such men live the best parts of their lives after they shuffle off the mortal coil and fall into the grave. Maxwell was one of those men. His soul will live and grow for long to come, and, thousands of years hence, it will shine as one of the bright stars of the past, whose light takes ages to reach us, amongst the crowd of others, not the least bright.'"
The same can be said of Ayn Rand, with her achievements of a far greater scope: a philosophy for living on earth regardless of the degree of new technology.
But it was more than a legacy left to us -- her observation that "those who fight for the future live in it today" pertained to our own lives as long as we have them, not predicting her own immortal legacy. The rest is a world-wide echo of her sense of life and accomplishment that she lived fully, promising the same potential for us for as long as we seek values in life.
Since you are interested in and a big fan of Faraday and Maxwell you should read, if you haven't already, the Hunt book on the next generation of "Maxwellians" and how they extended the theory and accelerated the popular acceptance of Faraday and Maxwell. It is very interesting and inspiring.
What is frustrating is to have the added difficulty of a collective society that wants to exercise control and limits for the value of making others slaves or justifying stealing from them making recovery from mistakes more difficult. Failure isn't falling down, it is not getting up and trying to discover how to get the desired results or even to simply understand what is happening in the universe and discover; 'can we use that?'
I challenge classes at the elementary where I work with 'Mr. Chad' questions on many disciplines. The classes enjoy my teaching them outside of their normal curriculum and sometimes try to prove me wrong which I enjoy very much. One class asked me how old I am and they were surprised to find out I am 68. They said; "You don't seem that old at all!"
I replied; "I don't feel that old, I only feel.....67!"
What ever it is you like to do, do it in spite of the collectivists. Enjoy that you were alive and that you might have even influenced others to think more clearly about their interactions with each other.
Anyone over 60.
When one simply enjoys what they do best leaves everyone else better than they were before...another thing that happens naturally and is intrinsically human that doesn't come upon a pointed finger.
j_IR1776wg placed the salient quote from Ayn Rand. It is something to think about.
Someone once said that we start to die the moment we're born. Kinda puts an ending on it at the beginning, doesn't it?
passing day..
the reality of how life goes for us is not necessarily recognized when we are young, but that is just the way it is, human nature maybe.
but we can not escape reality so as the saying goes "we get old so fast and smart so late"!
This saying as well as "stop and smell the roses"
"You only live once"
To be conscious and hear these words of wisdom
One has to be aware of the message.
Lives change I mean really change in the blink of an eye, always with out advanced notice.
Best to you and yours!
Above my door to the garage I have a bumper sticker that says:" The best way to predict the future is to create it." Funny, though if you look at it two ways- one is we never see the future only
The here and now or -all we experience is the future unfolding before us like a 72 fleetwood brougham cruising across the states to unseen places.
Actually, I prefer the '69. But how about the cars of that era? I still mourn for my '69 Charger 440.
Had we remained bicameral in the sense of the nature of things, we would except it; but having greater senses, being ever conscious, it becomes the most difficult of times...we hold it in for the benefit of others...make no mistake, a conscious man (human) will search for some meaning to his life and try to reason with his demise. So few of us come to this time in our lives by choice or consequence.
I suppose, that's why it might be easier to just live to die instead of living to live and the end be damned.
Working at a Hospice Hospital...I see this everyday...it's sad and it's unnecessary...aside from our efforts to heal the family members...we could become a healing place for all...if we only were allowed to get away with it...it surely would not stand for long before government would step in.
Example, CT. is a state where we can administer cannabis or hemp oil, but in doses only for pain but not for healing and make no mistake, these canabinoids do heal...your body is loaded with canabinoids that would benefit profoundly...it's not about the THC.
Also, there is intravenous vitamin C and lately D as well. High doses of vitamin C is an excepted protocol in New Zealand. It's know to pull one out of the wool, so to speak.
But as you might observe, government and their crony connections do not really want to cure diseases...they just want to profit from the symptoms...after all, that's what allopathic medicine is all about...symptoms but not the causes.
If you want better focus and service from a doctor pay them monthly to keep you well and if you become ill stop the payments until they succeed in getting you better again, I think that might focus the doctor more on what he should be doing instead of trying to come up with the drug he wants you to buy.
I have used that protocol also, during a time of extremely high stress...it worked! I stayed in balance.
I thank the creator for old wives tales and grandma's fixes...where would we be without them.
I can only deal with my own experience. So far, I have learned to live and deal with physical pain. I took myself off opioids, went through a mild withdrawal and found I could cope with pain using OTC meds. The real pain is between the ears. The knowledge that because of age and disabilities, I can not only no longer do many things, but that I cannot even dream of doing the impossible things. If you are unable to take the first step, you'll never get to the tenth. It's depressing espially to a vivid imagination.
http://docweed.info/medical/cancer-8....
"...Here we observed a proliferative response of glioblastoma and lung cancer cells at concentrations of 100–300 nM THC, whereas
THC at micromolar concentrations induced cell death in agreement with previous observations with neuronal cell types and immune cells.
These findings indicate that the
biological responses to cannabinoids critically depend on drug concentration and cellular context. Taken together, these results have to
be taken into account when considering therapeutic applications of cannabinoids. The risk in the medical use of THC or cannabis for the
treatment of patients with established tumors is the further acceleration of tumor growth due to the proliferative potential of cannabinoids."
I am nearly back to having a normal heartbeat which had been with 40% PVCs with a pulse rate of 32 beats per minute. It was the choice of a drug to prolong the time between ventricle contractions or to a 2 to 4 hour procedure where probes are threaded into the heart until the malfunctioning AV node cells could be stimulated and then ablated by RF radiation. I chose the drug though both required a standby resuscitation team. The heart is beating much more regular now and the extra blood profusion gives me more energy. The allopathic medicine, which regulates sodium and potassium channel activity in the electrical system of the heart, seems to not have killed me.
I do regret one encounter with young x-ray tech who was living in a world where miracles were happening daily. I opened my big mouth to say that I believed everything was natural in nature. I regret that since I apparently ruined her day the way her happy, smiley disposition disappeared. It is not the job of an objective person to cause discomfort to others, even though she may have not have the same belief for others.
I do disagree with your placing most medicine practice in the allopathic category. That is a slap in the face to modern medicine and those who dedicate their lives to finding things out about the nature of disease and how to cure it.
I just thought of a good one. Humans are born to live their days on the Event Horizon of their lives.
Bonhoeffer once said Stupid is more dangerous than Evil...hence the modern phrase...you can't fix stupid...don't even try to argue...it's too dangerous.
BTW...thank you for nM/micromolar lesson...it made it easier to understand how to convey..."a Tinnie bit".
I'm not afraid of death for reasons I'm not allowed to discuss here.
I'm thinking of visitors to my dirt nap. So I have a pretty local cemetery picked out that's more into flowers instead of a dreary if not Gothic clutter of markers and monuments.
Maybe I'll also store rotten eggs for all those illegally parked cars.
When you look into the abyss the abyss looks back at you. - Nitche
When you are young you are setting and achieving goals in an effort to achieve for yourself and your family. Once enough time passes and you've met your goals (or failed to), the kids are pretty much on their way, and the relationship your in has become mundane you have time( perhaps desire) to think on larger matters (not focus solely on the present) and look into the abyss.
That's my take and, I think, I'm wading through a mid-life critical evaluation.