Shortly after my post about whether assisted suicide is truly being offered as a free choice came out, I was sent a video that appeared to be part of a campaign for Simons, a Quebec-based clothing retailer.
The Internet has such enormous power in creating dysfunctional and damaging social contagions. So the beauty of this short film is compelling in positive and negative ways. I'm bipolar and, like many mentally ill people, I struggle with suicidal ideation. Though this film doesn't kick up that stuff for me, I can certainly see how it could affect others.
I don't think it is appropriate at all for a corporation to publicize someone's assisted suicide. I don't trust Simmons motives for fianancing the ad are at all altruistic and as more and more of these public-private partnerships between governments and the business sector come to light as it has with collusion between govt and big tech this ad campaign begins to smack more of an advertising campaign to beautify a controversial government policy of questionable ethics than a heartfelt memorial to a young woman's life. Governments and extra-governmental organizations such as the WEF are trying to find ways to reduce the cost of the 'surplus population' and what easier way to reduce the burden on the tax base than to make assisted suicide not only legal but also a fashionable escape for struggling people from an increasingly cold and disconnected world. To me it smacks a more sublte and insidious version of the way the Euthanasia of Thomas Smith was turned into a propaganda event in Man in the High Castle.
I don't know. It's not where I'm at with death. But it doesn't really matter if I think it's beautiful or not, that's not the point—it's a personal choice.
As is being public or private about your death. When you are at the end you make your own rules. And one of them might be working with a corporation to speak about beauty.
We're all of course living on the edge of oblivion, but being, in all probability, substantially closer to the end than to the beginning seems to give both an edge to that awareness and something of a philosophical equanimity. And one, more or less common feature of that position seems to be a desire to be remembered.
Has both its amusing and maybe more questionable aspects. Relative to the former, I'm reminded of a quip by Woody Allen who said he didn't want to be "immortalized" by his works, but by living forever. Age-old dream.
Relative to the latter, reminds me of a passage from a book -- part of which I'd read at my mother's "Celebration of Life" -- written by Nellie McClung -- a fairly prolific Canadian author, a suffragette, and one of Canada's "Famous Five" -- titled "The stream runs fast":
"It is strange about Time. One day I was no more conscious of it than I was of the air I breathed. There was plenty of time, days and days, running in and out, thousands of them. Then all at once some place there jangled a warning bell.
Writing is not like any other kind of work. There is a fervor in it that overcomes fatigue or even pain. It is a fire in the blood, a shot in the arm. It holds us when life begins to ravel, just as all the earth gathers itself into the brief brightness of Indian Summer before the stillness of winter falls. I wonder if it is the desire to be remembered. Miss [Edna St. Vincent] Millay spoke for all of us when she wrote:
Stranger pause and look
From the dust of ages,
Lift this little book
Turn its battered pages
Read me, do not let me die;
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!"
[pg. x]
Maybe part and parcel of that video of Jennyfer Hatch ...
Thank you for sharing this. I think this is something I may have overlooked...the desire to be remembered, perhaps beyond the circle of just friends/family. Maybe that's what the video meant for her, beyond just spreading that message. Maybe it was more so her, "I was here."
But I think it speaks to a more ubiquitous and fundamental, maybe even a redeeming aspect of humans and humanity. Reminds me of the closing stanza of Neil Diamond's "Done Too Soon":
The Internet has such enormous power in creating dysfunctional and damaging social contagions. So the beauty of this short film is compelling in positive and negative ways. I'm bipolar and, like many mentally ill people, I struggle with suicidal ideation. Though this film doesn't kick up that stuff for me, I can certainly see how it could affect others.
I don't think it is appropriate at all for a corporation to publicize someone's assisted suicide. I don't trust Simmons motives for fianancing the ad are at all altruistic and as more and more of these public-private partnerships between governments and the business sector come to light as it has with collusion between govt and big tech this ad campaign begins to smack more of an advertising campaign to beautify a controversial government policy of questionable ethics than a heartfelt memorial to a young woman's life. Governments and extra-governmental organizations such as the WEF are trying to find ways to reduce the cost of the 'surplus population' and what easier way to reduce the burden on the tax base than to make assisted suicide not only legal but also a fashionable escape for struggling people from an increasingly cold and disconnected world. To me it smacks a more sublte and insidious version of the way the Euthanasia of Thomas Smith was turned into a propaganda event in Man in the High Castle.
So you don’t think death can be beautiful?
I don't know. It's not where I'm at with death. But it doesn't really matter if I think it's beautiful or not, that's not the point—it's a personal choice.
As is being public or private about your death. When you are at the end you make your own rules. And one of them might be working with a corporation to speak about beauty.
We're all of course living on the edge of oblivion, but being, in all probability, substantially closer to the end than to the beginning seems to give both an edge to that awareness and something of a philosophical equanimity. And one, more or less common feature of that position seems to be a desire to be remembered.
Has both its amusing and maybe more questionable aspects. Relative to the former, I'm reminded of a quip by Woody Allen who said he didn't want to be "immortalized" by his works, but by living forever. Age-old dream.
Relative to the latter, reminds me of a passage from a book -- part of which I'd read at my mother's "Celebration of Life" -- written by Nellie McClung -- a fairly prolific Canadian author, a suffragette, and one of Canada's "Famous Five" -- titled "The stream runs fast":
"It is strange about Time. One day I was no more conscious of it than I was of the air I breathed. There was plenty of time, days and days, running in and out, thousands of them. Then all at once some place there jangled a warning bell.
Writing is not like any other kind of work. There is a fervor in it that overcomes fatigue or even pain. It is a fire in the blood, a shot in the arm. It holds us when life begins to ravel, just as all the earth gathers itself into the brief brightness of Indian Summer before the stillness of winter falls. I wonder if it is the desire to be remembered. Miss [Edna St. Vincent] Millay spoke for all of us when she wrote:
Stranger pause and look
From the dust of ages,
Lift this little book
Turn its battered pages
Read me, do not let me die;
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!"
[pg. x]
Maybe part and parcel of that video of Jennyfer Hatch ...
Thank you for sharing this. I think this is something I may have overlooked...the desire to be remembered, perhaps beyond the circle of just friends/family. Maybe that's what the video meant for her, beyond just spreading that message. Maybe it was more so her, "I was here."
Thanks for the memories. 🙂
But I think that "I was here" of yours kind of nails it. Maybe just a distillation, in part, of maybe more amusing examples like "Kilroy was here":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here
But I think it speaks to a more ubiquitous and fundamental, maybe even a redeeming aspect of humans and humanity. Reminds me of the closing stanza of Neil Diamond's "Done Too Soon":
"And each one there
Has one thing shared
They have sweated beneath the same sun
Looked up in wonder at the same moon
And wept when it was all done
For bein' done too soon
For bein' done too soon.
For bein' done"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d6Rv9kVsdU