Death and Useless Humans
Sep. 24th, 2002 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserWarning: This will probably be the most serious (and personal) post I ever make. (Assuming I go through with this and post it, anyway.) Feel free not to read it.
As I mentioned yesterday, my grandmother (mother's mother) had a stroke. A big one. And a couple of seizures, too. She must be about 85 years old, which can't be helping this at all. Things are pretty bad. I'm no doctor, and I know little about strokes, but I'm thinking such an old woman can't be looking at a very good resolution of all this.
The doctor said she made improvements yesterday (less than 24 hours after it happened). What kind of improvements? Eye contact. That doesn't really seem like much to me...
The timing of this is a little odd. Yesterday I decided to start sending my grandmother money on a monthly basis. There are a couple of reasons for this, including that most of my family (other than mother and sister) aren't well off at all (close to poor? Money is tight, at least). I have more money than I need, so that seemed like the right thing to do.
The second reason for wanting to send her money is the second half of this post's title. I am, in the grander sense, a useless human. I have no kids (and intend not to) and all I do is use up resources on the earth. After I die what will happen? Will there be some impact I leave? Nope. My genes will end with me. I do tech support, something anyone can be trained to do. I run a MUSH, one of thousands of games out there and one which would hardly be remembered a year after it closed. The only thing of importance I have is money, so I try to use that to do some good.
I try to support artists I like, I try to give to free websites which I enjoy, I try to help my family along, I try to give to "the poor" (assorted charities). Does that make me any less useless? I don't think so, but maybe it makes some people feel better in the short-term.
That's about all I can do.
As I mentioned yesterday, my grandmother (mother's mother) had a stroke. A big one. And a couple of seizures, too. She must be about 85 years old, which can't be helping this at all. Things are pretty bad. I'm no doctor, and I know little about strokes, but I'm thinking such an old woman can't be looking at a very good resolution of all this.
The doctor said she made improvements yesterday (less than 24 hours after it happened). What kind of improvements? Eye contact. That doesn't really seem like much to me...
The timing of this is a little odd. Yesterday I decided to start sending my grandmother money on a monthly basis. There are a couple of reasons for this, including that most of my family (other than mother and sister) aren't well off at all (close to poor? Money is tight, at least). I have more money than I need, so that seemed like the right thing to do.
The second reason for wanting to send her money is the second half of this post's title. I am, in the grander sense, a useless human. I have no kids (and intend not to) and all I do is use up resources on the earth. After I die what will happen? Will there be some impact I leave? Nope. My genes will end with me. I do tech support, something anyone can be trained to do. I run a MUSH, one of thousands of games out there and one which would hardly be remembered a year after it closed. The only thing of importance I have is money, so I try to use that to do some good.
I try to support artists I like, I try to give to free websites which I enjoy, I try to help my family along, I try to give to "the poor" (assorted charities). Does that make me any less useless? I don't think so, but maybe it makes some people feel better in the short-term.
That's about all I can do.
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Not having kids isn't useless
Date: 2002-09-24 11:17 am (UTC)So, not having kids (and, to a lesser extent, having only one kid) is a very good thing for future generations. People just don't die enough anymore, globally speaking, particularly in childhood. It's going to get worse before it gets better, and we'll fondly remember when it was just L.A. that had that kind of traffic when we were young.
I also think that it's a thing of lasting value to have a positive impact on other people's lives. My life has value if people remember me and think, "My life was better because of knowing him." Conversely, it is a tragedy if people look back and say, "I wish I hadn't known him." That's the benchmark I choose for measuring value.
The vast majority of people are not famous and make no substantial personal change to the world, so that's setting yourself up for failure from the start.
Donating to charities and artists and the like is good - it feeds into my principle rather directly, as you're making these people's lives better!