The recent death of the pope and the battle for control of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube provide a contrast in values and an opportunity to discuss just what it means to be alive. The activists arguing against removal of the feeding tube, it seems to me, have a very limited view of what life is. They managed to turn the debate into a "rancid" exchange of words by distorting reality. Makes one wonder of some of them weren't in fact in a vegetative state. My heart goes out to both sides of the family, although some reports indicate that money, again, may have been at the root of their original falling out. Speaking of suffering...
The pope, who had made a fetish of suffering, (link) seemed to be hanging on as long as he could (although the conspiracy wags might argue that he really had died when it was so announced by Italian television necessitating the fiction of his consciousness until the Vatican powers could make a bunch of appointments in an effort to consolidate their power.) Given his penchant for using suffering as a validation of his faith, one wonders what all those people were praying for, that he suffer more? Makes one wonder if he really wondered where he was off to next.
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell
"'Pray,' verb: To ask that the laws of the universe be temporarily annulled for a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
Ambrose Bierce
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