Question of the day

Why do humans try so hard to live longer, when they do not even know how to live in the first place?

This was the question that kept bugging me after watching that documentary on xeno transplantation and animal experimentation during general paper lecture. Other than the gore and blood and what not (which wasnt very scary actually because I have seen the ps2 games that my brother plays), I was most disgusted by the fact that the humans seem to think that it is ok to sacrifice thousands of animals so that they can find some break through. It is okay for a 27 year old man to live and not very important to think about the piglet you are going to extract its heart from to attach it to the neck of a baboon so that you can demostrate how the body will reject foreign tissue to horrified audience. It is okay to play around with genetics, extracting eggs from pigs then injecting them with human DNA so that you can get the one piglet who will carry the cells you want and slaughter 19 other piglets because they are of no use. It's okay, as long as there is hope that your experiments might somehow work and then you can be the LIFE SAVER of the HUMAN race. Animals are just there for you to use, they are "in abundance and their organs can be harvested very easily". Yeah. The fact that a human will die every seven minutes is more important than debating with animal rights activists on whether it is alright to kill thousands of animals in search for THE CURE.

I think the reason why humans are so afraid to die it is because they are afraid of the unknown. The concept of death, I will admit, is quite frightening to everyone. No one exactly know what will happen after you took your last breath, and so it is better to try your best to get your heart beating for as long as possible. Yet while you are well and alive, you do not know what to do with your life. You choose to go with the flow most of the time, largely because you have not much choice anyway,and you do not know what to do in the first place. It's kind of ironical isnt it. Humans try every ways and means to prolong their life by going on healthy diets, and exercising regularly(most do not actually), while scientists spent a large part of their lives researching and experimenting on things that will allow humans to live longer. However, how effective will all these measures be in the first place? Well, they might perhaps prolong your life by maybe a few years at the most and nothing else. And even so, WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE EXTRA TIME?

Perhaps we are all thinking the wrong way. We are seeing things in a very narrow and undoubtly selfish perspective. It is more important that I live for as long as possible, than to ponder on what I can do with my gift of life. Well, you can always argue that the extra time will allow you to have more time to think of what you want to do with your life, but my question is a simple one. CAN YOU? Are you willing to put aside all your achievements, everything you are holding on to just for a few moment? Are you willing to sacrifice your life for the sake of others, gaining nothing for yourself in the end? Are you willing to fail and lose it all? Do you even know what you really want in the first place?

I really do not think most people can. So far the only example I can think of is perhaps Mother Theresa. Yeah. Everyone else just tries to hold on to all they have for as long as possible, including their lives. Which is all very stupid because it's like holding a bucket filled with water with holes at the base.

Humans are just selfish. Admit it. We are motivated by greed and the fear of pain. To satisfy our desires, to avoid pain, we are willing to do anything. But it does not sound right that we have to sacrifice members of the same specie to achieve this, so we turn to other living things. Gah. And these living things in question happen to be poor defenceless organisms who just want to survive.

All these ramblings remind me of a question someone asked me years ago. Imagine that one of your loved one is dying and you are at his or her bedside. There is a red button. If you press that button , your loved one will be saved, but somewhere in the world, another person dies. What will you do?

I'm not surprise when nine out of ten people will say that they will press the button. (I happen to be the odd weirdo in case you are wondering) Heh. This is life I guess, better they than me.