living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Sunday, January 05, 2003 Not worth living This is a conclusion reached by a scientific research with emperical data. The research conducted by Duke University, after "years of tests, experiments, and complex computer simulations", provides incontrovertible proof that life is actually worse than most living things can stand. I did not find the 1, 200-page research report yet, I read the story titled "Researhcers say" in the New Yorker (Dec. 9, 2002). The magazine obviously is too proud to put all their articles or at least abstracts or archive on the Internet, which might bring down their high class, I guess? So what make life such a big sorrow, and not even worth living? The first thing is death. Death's effects on life, as the scientists pointed out, are two: "First, death intrudes constantly and unpleasantly by putting , and far worse, life at risk at every stage, from infancy through advanced adulthood, degrading its quality and compromising happiness.... Secondly death also constitutes an overwhelmingly no-win experience in itself. Many life's wellknown stress producers-divorces, loss of employment, moving, even fighting traffic-still hold out hope of a better outcome in the future. After all, one may end up with a better spose, exciting new job, beautiful home, or fresh bottle from the drive-trhough liquore store. Death by contrast, invovles as much trouble as any conventional stress, if not more. Yet, at the end of the medical humiliations, physical suffering, money concerns , fear, and tedium of dying, one has no outcome to look forward to except being dead. This alone, the study found, is enough to give the entire life process a negative tinge." However even you are so lucky to live a long life, your body does not function properly after a certain point of time, say 70 years old: "A large majority of subjects int hat age range exhibited significan loss of foot speed, upper-body stretngty, reflecxes, hair, and altitude of vertical leap. Accompanying these impariments were other health glitches, sometimes in baffling number and variety. Such aquired traits carried the additional downside of making their possessors either "undesirable" or "very undesirable" to members of the opposite sex in the key eighteen-tothirty-five demographic. Researchers were able to offer no credible hope for the development of treatments to deal with these creeping inadequacies." In a nutshell, dying young makes life meaningless, living too long is neither something can be put up with. "Why we were brought into the world in the first place only to suffer and die is an area of research in which much remains to be done" oh brother, I wish I would get an answer before my life is ending. posted by lmeimei @11:56 PM| permanent link| | |
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