[ExI] "death gives meaning to life"

[Anne Corwin]

The "join our camp!" thing is the sort of mentality that generally causes me to run away screaming from groups of people, regardless of whether or not I happen to agree with some of the things they're saying or not.  Call it a personal quirk if you will, but IMO, treating the "um, no, death isn't cool and in fact actually sucks" viewpoint as anything other than totally obvious is silly and unnecessary.  

Nobody who is not experiencing horrible unrelenting physical or mental pain wants death -- there's no need for the establishment of "camps" to convince them of this.  IMO, it's much more telling to look at how people behave over the long term than at what they say.  Do they sit there wishing their beloved grandparents dead?  Of course not -- and in fact, they'd probably help pay for Grandpa's heart surgery if he needed the assistance and they had the means to assist.  Do they insist that, were they to contract cancer, they'd just let it kill them without even attempting to fight back?  No, of course not (provided they aren't Christian Scientists or the like).  

In other words, people who are already alive generally want to stay that way, and frankly would almost certainly jump at the chance to take advantage of health and life-prolonging treatments if they were available.  If any "advocacy" is to be done in response to the "death gives meaning to life" sentiment, one possibly productive route (and the one I personally favor) would be for individuals (as themselves, not necessarily as representatives of some "camp" or "club") to publicly speak and write about what they think is GOOD about life, what they enjoy doing, what about their existence strikes them as so wonderful that they honestly can't see why they'd want it to cease.

- Anne