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Part of this argument, for me at least, isn't number based. I'm of the opinion that culturally we put far too much value on being alive and far too little on qu
by chronofar 7y ago
Part of this argument, for me at least, isn't number based. I'm of the opinion that culturally we put far too much value on being alive and far too little on quality of life. You can see it in our conversation (here most people just want to talk about death numbers), our laws (ie euthanasia is illegal), and our news cycles.
Everyone dies. All of humanity does not exist for most of the age of the universe, to say nothing of individuals. That's a trite thing to say but it is no less true. Not everyone gets to live a good life, even fewer in situations like this.
Our DNA wants to stay alive, the existential dread is understandable, but culturally I think we'd be a lot healthier if we put more value in quality of lives than the preservation of them. Now balancing this is not easy and I'm not saying in our current situation we should just lift all measures, but if framed that way the conversation starts to take on a different tone than just looking at potential death rates as the overall guiding function.