Back in 93 I spent 3 months in hospital. It was… beyond bad.
But it had one great advantage. I lost my fear of death.
I don’t know what happens after death (though as someone whose done ludicrous amounts of spiritual work I have strong suspicions) but even if it’s “that’s it, it’s over” I don’t fear it because I know that bad shit, beyond most people’s imaginations, can happen while you’re alive. Death can becomes one’s best friend.
Westerners fear death greatly. They say stupid things like it being your job to make the other person die for their country.
Sure. Obviously killing them and not dying is preferable in most cases.
But being willing to die for your beliefs, whatever they are, is also incredibly powerful. You’d think so-called Christian countries would understand the power of martyrdom.
Shi’a society is remarkably based around this. Iman Hussein refused to acknowledge the Umayyad caliph Yazid I, whom they considered corrupt. He went into battle knowing he would lose and indeed he did. He did the right thing even though it cost him his life.
And what that has lead to, in the modern era, is organizations like the Iranian government and Hezbollah. Sure, they’d rather not die, but they know there are worse things than death, like living on your knees or crawling on your belly. Martyrdom is celebrated. It helps, of course, that they believe there’s a heaven waiting, but so do many religions whose followers are far less willing to die for their beliefs. (Most Christians aren’t any more.)
You see Iranian leaders say things like death is preferable to living in an unjust world. Almost every single senior leader of Iran from before the war was killed in the first part of the war. I believe only two survived.
And it didn’t make a difference, except that it strengthened hard-liners who wanted to fight.
Western leaders are, as a group, cowards. This wasn’t always the case: in WWII elites fought or sent their children to war. Many of the died. In WWI the cream of Britain’s elite youngsters died in the trenches, often leading suicidal charges.
But our modern leaders like Trump are cowards. They never fought in war and they don’t send their kids to war. They aren’t willing to die.
Further they lead societies where they are hurting the majority of the population. Western leaders think they are special because the people who work for them fundamentally don’t want to. There is no sense of mission, despite all the MBA bullshit trying to create purpose and meaning in corporations.
Everyone knows that the only thing Western leaders believe in is making the rich (themselves, usually) richer. So to get a western organization to work requires extreme incentives: greed for the rulership class, the whip of hunger and homelessness for the peons.
Western leaders thus consider themselves special, because they need to force people to do what they want and without their constant threats and incentives their organizations would fall apart. No one works for a bank or private equity because they believe in anything other than getting rich, or at the lower level, they believe in not winding up homeless.
So Western leaders are, in fact, important: they’re leading their societies in directions that are bad for most people, and that takes an immense amount of cunning and work.
Further there isn’t a deep bench. Because no one believes in the mission who isn’t near the top. Why would they? It doesn’t benefit them, and there’s nothing uplifting about “mint more billionaires”.
This is not to say that all Iranians are true believers or support the government. But the people in the military and government, do believe in the “mission”. They are the metaphorical children of Iman Hussein. They do not fear death.
Hezbollah is the same, but more so: if you’re a Hezbollah member, odds are you believe strongly and you know that Israel only left Lebanon last time because you forced them to.
And if you get killed, someone else replaces you who believes. There’s a deep bench, right from the top to the soldiers and bureaucrats (and remember, Hezbollah runs clinics, picks up garbage and even provides pensions. It’s a government within Lebanon.)
Western leaders can’t wrap their heads around this. They’d do anything to save their own lives and they don’t understand people who would rather die than give up their beliefs. They don’t understand the people who then replace the dead and continue the fight.
If Iranian leaders feared death, the war would be over. They would have cut the sort of deal Delcy Rodriguez did in Venezeula “yes master, I’ll do whatever you say if you leave me at the top of a society I no longer run. Just don’t kill or kidnap me, please.”
Greedy coward.
That won’t happen in Iran. There’s no one in the leadership with enough support to pull it off, if there’s anyone at all who would consider it.
Sometimes to serve your cause, to remain true to your beliefs, you have to be willing to die. Americans knew that once. The West knew it once. Christians knew it once.
Today? The leadership of the West are substantially all cowards.
The truth is that if you will do anything to avoid dying, you’re a slave to anyone who can credibly threaten you with death.
Iranians and Hezbollah members refuse to be slaves.
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spud
Ian:
They would have cut the sort of deal Delcy Rodriguez did in Venezeula “yes master, I’ll do whatever you say if you leave me at the top of a society I no longer run. Just don’t kill or kidnap me, please.”
Greedy coward.
TOWERING WORDS! i was just telling my wife today, what a sell out price of shit she is. if the 500 years plus western free trade empire implodes before she leaves office, she might want to look for a escape villa in the antarctic. other wise a garage door and some piano wire might be in her future.
Feral Finster
Delcy Rodriguez will do just fine. A nice mansion in Miami and Panamanian bank accounts lavishly stocked. She’s not stupid.
As Ian alluded – Stupid people charge into battle. Smart people let others put themselves in danger, while they stay a safe distance away.
The problem is that humans who see everything as a zero sum no holds barred winner take all game can’t build, at least nothing lasting. That’s the way of the parasite.
Ian Welsh
Certainly,
I wrote an article some years ago on the fact that betrayal is often rational. Only irrational people create strong and good societies.
mago
Easy to talk brave, but when the knife’s at your throat and shit fills your panties you’re going to cry stop no matter how tough you think you are. Few laugh in the face of death and defend their principles to the end.
I have lots more to say about this topic, but that’s a first shot across the bow.
Ian Welsh
Well Mago, you aren’t an Iranian leader. Because they’ve been credibly threatened and laughed it off.
Torture. Sure, scares me. Almost anyone can be broken.
A quick death. Nah.
mago
Quite so, Ian, nor am I Delcy Rodriquez, nor do I know what and who influences her. One reads opinions and accounts, some informed, but most just speculation as pertains across the board with complex and rapidly changing contemporary world events. The obscurations and obfuscations are both deliberate and organic, not to mention oceanic.
Some say Delcy is stringing it along while biding time and looking at the big picture. Let the players play their game and build up the oil industry then take it over 25 years down the line. Unlikely. That’s just an echo of one flavor of speculation that’s circulating. I doubt that even the inner circles know what’s happening. There’s a whole shit load of reaction everywhere.
The hard core Iranian leaders may scoff at death, god knows they’ve seen enough of it. But it’s also true that they’ve been sold out by other leadership factions. This shit’s as old as the world. Deceit and betrayal are as common as dirt and man. That a principled few stand up to it and defy death is laudable, but come on, most will compromise to save their skins.
I can’t speak to Darcy compared to her Iranian counterparts, nor can anyone else here. It’s easy to judge and condemn with contempt and scorn, but walk a mile in the others shoes, then put a fire to it.
Ian Welsh
No. Saying “don’t condemn cowardice and betrayal until you’ve been under the gun” is ridiculous.
And while I haven’t been in cooperate or die, I’ve certainly been in a position where if I sold out I’d be a lot better off. Vastly better off. Not only around 2008 but recently. You think I haven’t been offered money I desperately need to be pro-Israel? Think again.
Even in Canada that money would buy better healthcare and I have two types of cancer, one of which is spreading. Selling out might save my life, it would certainly make whatever remains a lot more comfortable.
As for Delcy, I have given her plenty of rope and watched her actions and my judgment stands.
If you’ll do anything to live, you’re a slave. If you’ll sell out people who trust you for money or power, you’re so far beneath contempt I wouldn’t piss on you to put out a fire.
Purple Library Guy
I’m definitely in the “feeling contempt for Delcy Rodriguez” camp. One thing that crystallized it for me is, she handed over Alex Saab to the Americans. After all he’d done to help Venezuela weather the sanctions, and after all he’d been through when the Americans kidnapped him, and after Maduro had worked hard to get him back and finally traded some American terrorists for him. That’s treacherous and contemptible.
Soredemos
Iran is winning (and will win) not because of some cultural notion of willingness to die for a cause but because they’ve deliberately built a robust command and control system that doesn’t depend on certain key people being protected and surviving.
I understand the impulse to look at all the Iranian true believers not cowering in bunkers and admiring that they genuinely believe in something (and Trump and his crew are very, very easy to hate as gross and a pathetic in basically every sense. No argument from me).
But at the end of the day bravery and fanaticism are just core facts. They aren’t virtues. Anyone can be willing to die for any cause. And it seems like ypu can fidn any caise on any street corner. Doesn’t make a cause noble just because someone is committed to it. The true believer SS member charging a Soviet machine gun nest was as brave as anyone in history. The Imperial Japanese military indoctrinated people to serve something greater than themselves. But the little dweeb in his palace wasn’t any more worthy than the long dead medieval theocrat (no, you don’t understand! OUR medieval king was the right guy in the first place!).
Sorry, but disliking the West doesn’t make me a fan of death cult fanatics either. Iran should win because it isn’t the aggressor and just wants to be left alone, and has done vastly less damage in the world than its enemies, but I’m not going to overlyidealize them either.
Also, and I’m sure I won’t articulate this well, but there seems to me to be a certain hypocrisy, or at least conceptual gap, in all death cults. They profess a willingness, even eagerness, to die for some cause. But the cause only has meaning in the context of the material (real) world. Iranians are fighting for Iran, and their brand of Islam. But if all Iranians were to die for the cause tomorrow, the cause ends.
Ian Welsh
Of course organization has to reflect culture to work. An organization which does not reflect culture will not work, the people in charge will sell out.
The concept needed here is “morally neutral virtues”. Being brave is a virtue, but it is a morally neutral virtue: it makes a good man better and an evil man worse. A good man who is a coward is not a good man when it counts most.
Martyrdom exists because it works. That Westerners can’t understand this any more, again, indicates that they have nothing in common with early Christians and are totally incapable of understanding people who actually believe in a religion or ideology or cause.
The Iranians understand this very well, it’s why they spend so much time on religious indoctrination of troops, especially in the IRGC. Note also that many of the most senior politicians are men who fought in the Iran/Iraq war, an infamously bloody affair with shattering casualties.
Oakchair
“Someday you will die. Until you know that you are useless”
“It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything”
“Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic.”
“The things you own end up owning you.”
“Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.”
“Advertising has us working jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need.”
Only the culture that Ian describes would make the movie Fight Club about fighting and rules about not talking.
Soredemos
Martyrdom exists because leadership finds it an exceptionally useful thing to indoctrinate people into. It is, in fact, ugly. A culture that fetishes death for the cause as an ideal (and both Shia and Sunni do this), not merely an unfortunate possible outcome, but as something to be lauded, has problems. Western countries do versions of this as well, actually, with posthumous medals and promotions and heroic death narratives.
And if you’re trying to contrast this with the ‘cowardly west’, which is supposedly uniquely scared of death: all human societies are afraid of death. All spiritual and religious practice is ultimately cope in the face of an inevitable end. Different attempted solutions to a universal problem.
Martyrdom wouldn’t need so much cultural propaganda to enable it if people weren’t afraid of the end by default. It wouldn’t have to be praised as a form of ultimate sacrifice if people didn’t view death as a big deal.
As an aside about early Christians, none of them were martyred for being Christian. Roman’s didn’t care what anyone believed. They were killed, sporadically and inconsistently at the regional level, for stubbornly refusing to partake in civic rituals. In Roman eyes they were shitty citizens.
spud
Feral Finster:
not so sure this will end with the west in tact. and america may take the biggest hit from this. going to Miami with a panama bank account, well there might not be a comfy home there.
this time is different, i know, it might well be the same, but i have a feeling, the 500 years of attempted oppression of the world for the western oligarchs, looked like they struck pay dirt in 1993, and after many many generations, will just not give up when they were so close, and go for the gusto.
they are not going to evacuate Saigon this time, they are going to nuke it.
so how far and fast will the west collapse trying in vain to suppress the world again, hard to say. but lenin gave us a clue. once the inevitable s##t hits the fan, will there be anywhere safe for the oligarchs, their boot licking retinue, and the sell outs?
Ian Welsh
If it was just about scummy leadership wanting other people to be martyrs, the leadership of Iran wouldn’t itself be willing to become martyrs.
Most westerners have become so cynical they can’t understand anything but fools, cowards and scumbags.
Bill H
When I was about age 50 or so I fell out of a sailboat and, not being able to swim, drowned. I had no heartbeat and was not breathing when they pulled me out of the water. CPR and a defibrillator got both heart and breathing going again, so they called the event a “near death experience.” They had to restart my heart three more times in the emergency room. “near death.” Ha.
I recalled, after I woke up, looking down at the people working on me and felt they were wasting time. I was feeling the most complete peace I had ever known. When I woke up I felt sadness that I had woken up, that that sense of peace was gone.
It was some days later that I realized that the main long term effect I carried away from that “near death” experience was that I had lost my fear of death. Gone. Covid a couple of strokes and a heart attack have taken me close, but that fear has never returned.
Jan Wiklund
The article is probably a good description, but it is useless as an explanation. It suffers from the American sin of moralism – as if everything depended on the personal morality of those in positions of authority in society, as if things would improve if they were replaced by other people.
For as long as I can remember, I have held the view that a colonel – presumably of noble birth – in 1900 was more of a socialist than today’s European socialist parties or their American counterparts in various NGOs. This is because he held the view that ‘we’re all in this together’ – even though he regarded his own leadership of this ‘together’ as a given – whilst today’s elites care only about their ‘networks’; see Nel Bonilla, https://worldlinesletter.substack.com/p/incompetent-or-imperial-rethinking.
And why is that? Presumably because the upper class in 1900 was dominated by industrialists who could directly see the work the lower class did for them, and therefore understood that the lower class was a necessary prerequisite for their own existence. Whereas today’s upper class is dominated by rentiers who believe that money multiplies of its own accord on the stock market or by rising values of land, platforms and government contracts.
Consequently, today’s upper class can be individualists without a shred of social responsibility, and probably also some sort of postmodernists who believe that reality does not exist, only the ‘discourse’ about it. And they manage that discourse so well within the network.
Feral Finster
@ Ian:
“If it was just about scummy leadership wanting other people to be martyrs, the leadership of Iran wouldn’t itself be willing to become martyrs.
Most westerners have become so cynical they can’t understand anything but fools, cowards and scumbags.”
That’s sort of my point. Cynicism may be smart, but it has its limits as to what it can do.
mago
First, I’m sorry to hear about your health conditions and hope there can be some stability and improvement.
To the topic at hand, I’m not defending cowardice. I was thinking of a well reasoned analysis of the situation by Johnathan Cook, but it’s been a while and I forget the source. He laid out some of the complexities and nuances of the Delcy story. Prior to that I also held her in contempt, but I cut some slack after reading Cook’s piece. However, her handling over Alex Saab is definitely a step too far. I forgot about that.
Bill H’s near death experience is most interesting. I’ve nearly died three times in my life, and I’m old enough now that the finality is close enough. Anyway, I ponder death frequently, but not morbidly. It’s just a fact. I feel no fear now, but who knows what it will be when the crucial moment arrives. I hope to pass consciously and calmly.
Feral Finster
@Mago:.
“Some say Delcy is stringing it along while biding time and looking at the big picture. ”
Humans are masters of rationalization and wishful thinking. That is one of the ways they are so easily manipulated.
bruce wilder
I have a “fear of heights” which pop-psychology sometimes explains generically as a distrust one’s own impulsiveness or something similar. If I am out far enough on the ocean on a small boat, I am gripped with fear of some event putting me into the water very far from shore. If I ascend a skyscraper for the view, I cannot help imagining going over the edge, even if there are substantial barriers. I have been on roller coasters; the first ride or three are utterly miserable for me — a continuous panic attack. Eventually — after three terrified rides or so — I seem to habituate to the elevated adrenaline and can enjoy something of the high and clear-headedness. I admire a certain type of risk-taker, especially one who embraces fine physical, intentional control on the edge of chaos — Niki Lauda as portrayed in film, perhaps.
My interest in history and politics has led me to be curious about leadership competence in large enterprises and polities. Which curiosity motivates my reading of this blog, I suppose. I don’t think I have answers, but I enjoy thinking. I will offer a couple of ideas.
Bravery is an expression of narcissism. Narcissism has a bad rep in online discourse at the moment, appropriated as it is, for insults and listicles promising to help identify sociopathic boyfriends/girlfriends before it is too late. A healthy narcissism, though, can give an individual some psychological resistance to the objective realism of existential despair. An unhealthy narcissism might endow courage, too. I don’t think Trump is a coward. We’ve seen him react to a near-miss assassination attempt with defiance. (And, yes, there is good reason to wonder about what Power motivated that attempt and how Trump himself views it, since he never comments.) Trump appears to me to fit DSM hypomania, which is definitely not “healthy narcissism” — more like immiserating neuroticism with a big dose of delusion. As a leader, he acts out a social dominance orientation, which is not at all healthy for the body politic he leads. Duh.
Political societies are complex and somewhat chaotic. We can observe the struggles polities undergo, to understand themselves and produce order and advance leadership and, if we are honest in our assessments, the collective effort tends to be pretty pathetic much of the time, when it doesn’t descend into the horrific. Wisdom of crowds, my ass. People get carried along, the cynical skeptics trailing the fanatical true believers or the weepy idealists undermining the authoritarian engineers. Narrative ideas seem to matter, but it is hard to say what practical functions they serve. Many (most?) people seem to believe contradictory things, doubt extensively and take little responsibility in or for the consequences of their cooperation.
The thing is, leading an extensive polity is not much like Niki Lauda precisely steering a Formula One car through a long race in control of a machine the engineering of which he understands in detail, with mastery of realistic fear for his own person and in strategic competition with other people. There can be possibly instructive points of analogy, but ultimately, the scope for intentional control by one leader grows ambiguous and the emergent understanding and intentions of the many — how many? — come forward.
When I survey contemporary geopolitics, I apprehend a march toward World War III in the short-term and ecological collapse in the long. I can not imagine how the species might organize to avoid the consequences of fossil fuel use, but WW3 it seems to me is eminently avoidable in principle using existing institutional precedent. We need a controlled dismantling of American and European hegemony, with an exorcism to be performed on its demon child.
I am not really optimistic about WW3. “Fear of death”? — I don’t think the prospect of war is entirely real to Trump and his advisors, or many keyboard warrior influencers with Ukrainian or Israeli flags on their profiles. They might be cowards if they were realistic, but fools only wear armor for fashion shows. I loosely follow some alternative media voices, but I have no idea how far the algorithm spreads their critiques. Even among the people I commonly listen to, I don’t much trust their concessions to a Narrative adopted for cheerleading convenience.
My sense is that most people with power or access to power are hidden from me. The structures of American and European political power are pretty thoroughly insulated, imho, from public opinion. There is some risk to their grip on power from the loss of legitimacy that follows on the public exposure of increasing gross incompetence, but that risk remains distressingly small, and centralized control of propaganda has increased significantly without many taking serious notice or rebelling.
I know very little, really, about the internal political dynamics of various centers of “emergent multipolarity”. It is concerning that Trump feels so little reason to restrain himself with regard to Cuba or Venezuela. It is a measure of how little support those regimes can access inside or outside the Americas and not so long ago, they were able to find some, which limited the U.S. options. (I have visited Cuba and it was not a happy country when I was there.)
I know some Iranians and a tiny bit about Iran. My guess is that the violence — including the attempt to decapitate the leadership of the “revolutionary” half of the regime — has served to consolidate a national sense of purpose internally, binding leadership to followership. War and death are very real for Iran’s leadership, maybe in a healthier way than for their immediate predecessors. Still, leaves them with a geopolitical puzzle: how to confront an agreement-incapable hegemon whose leaders do not fear war and death, because war and death are virtual, abstractions?
I am in the “Trump is a symptom” camp I suppose. I am seriously concerned about escalation in the War in Ukraine, which is increasingly not staying in Ukraine. People who lack a healthy fear of death and destruction are provoking Russia.
Soredemos
@Ian Welsh
No, I’m not actually saying leadership isn’t willing to die and it’s all cynical exploitation of the rubes. I’m saying it becomes self-perpertuating propaganda and an unthinking social reflex.
GrimJim
Iranian leadership now laughs in the face of Death not because of some martyrdom complex, but because we have given them no choice.
The US could not be trusted to keep to the terms of an agreement BEFORE Trump, but you could usually expect a year or three before they reneged.
Now, with Trump, you cannot trust the US for even a hot minute.
We no longer have a “Comply or Die” policy, it is “Comply AND Die!”
We assassinated the Supreme Leader and most of his government even as they were in negotiations with the US!
They were complying. They were negotiating. AND WE ASSASSINATED THEM FOR IT.
So, the new Iranian leadership figures… Comply and Die or not Comply and still Die anyway?
We now give them no choice. They were not even given the Venezuelan Option.
They either go down in history as the greatest traitors to the Iranian people and state and STILL DIE, or they fight and STILL DIE but gain renown as martyrs for their people and state… and also remain honest to themselves.
Dan Kelly
Ian, you’re a westerner.
And an individual being in dire straights in a western hospital for three months – as horrible as that is – it is not the same as an indiviudal of a given culture or society that is under bombardment for generations.
I don’t think these are accurate analogies in the least.
Also, the only way to have absolutely no fear of death is to be dead.
Ian Welsh
No, it’s not the same. I couldn’t move most of the time, I spent days screaming over and over again in agony, since I was in more pain than the morphine or demerol could handle. At a later date I used dry heave every few hours. No food in my stomach. I was down as low as 80lbs at one point. These are only the high (low) points, there was plenty of other awful.
It was the equivalent of being tortured. The only reason I stayed alive, because it would have been easy to let myself die (and I read my file later, the doctors didn’t think I’d make it) was thinking of how it would effect my mother if I died.
After I left there was a period of about 8 months where I’d wake up every morning with my muscles so seized up moving was agony. Sitting down was dangerous, very hard to get up. I used to eat meals standing up. At one point the seizures were so bad the fire department had to break down the door so paramedics could get to me because I literally couldn’t get out of bed. (Fortunately I lived in a rooming house and someone heard me yelling.)
There are things worse than being scared of bombs. Visit a burn ward if you don’t believe me. Many of them beg for death, especially before the new opioids. Heroin isn’t enough to deal with the pain. That’s why Fentanyl was created.
And it’s not the only way to not be scared of death. See up for someone who had a NDE. There are other ways, too.
There are many many things in life far worse than death.
I’m glad, for your sake, that you don’t appear to know that. My wish for you is that you never learn.
Feral Finster
@Bruce Wilder:
“I am seriously concerned about escalation in the War in Ukraine, which is increasingly not staying in Ukraine. People who lack a healthy fear of death and destruction are provoking Russia.”
Why should the rulers care? They’ll be snug in their bunkers.
As for the peons, oh well, la di.da, can’t be helped!
Ever seen “Don’t Look Up!”? Apparently the weak, dithering and indecisive Russian leadership have not.
Dan Kelly
‘Visit a burn ward if you don’t believe me. Many of them beg for death, especially before the new opioids. Heroin isn’t enough to deal with the pain. That’s why Fentanyl was created.
And it’s not the only way to not be scared of death. See up for someone who had a NDE. There are other ways, too.
There are many many things in life far worse than death.
I’m glad, for your sake, that you don’t appear to know that. My wish for you is that you never learn.’
I think there is a gross misunderstanding-misccomunication here.
I hope that’s the case.
‘Visit a burn ward if you don’t believe me.’
Be careful Ian.
I have both worked and volunteered in these settings.
I almost died and have been in great physical pain but I will leave it there because I won’t allow this to become a silly competition over who has experienced more pain in life.
‘I’m glad, for your sake, that you don’t appear to know that. My wish for you is that you never learn.’
So, you made an assumption about me that is incorrect and now you are have wishes for me.
Very well.
I am sorry but I simply cannot stand this level of obtuseness and it is particularly off-putting coming from someone as bright and sensitive as yourself.
To reiterate: Someone telling you they have absolutely no fear of death whatsoever is both an idiot and an already dead soul.
A person’s fear of death may become lessened but the fear is always there.
If it weren’t, you would have killed yourself.
I am glad you didn’t.
I would imagine you have known many who have.
I do.
‘Visit a burn ward….many of them beg for death.’
Some do.
But even in that hell-state they don’t really want to die. If you could come in with a magic wand and take the pain away and make things at least somewhat ‘normal’ again they would gladly sign up for that.
And those who do recover to all the varying degrees have a ‘new lease on life’ and they don’t go the around proclaiming that because of their personal travails they have absolutely no fear of death.
The extremes are those who are paralyzed by fear and do next to nothing because of it versus those who ‘have no fear’ and act ‘bold’ to a fault…somehow forgetting human vulnerability in the process.
I’m reminded here of Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn’s lyric:
‘Stand up tall, pretend you’re strong in the hopes that you can be.’
The ‘no fear’ extreme is akin to male teenager stuff or something.
It’s stupid and insensitive in its own right.
—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmzp4uPbOYo&list=RDcmzp4uPbOYo
Ian Welsh
Since you’re denying my own self-report of my psychology, you shouldn’t be talking about respect. You’re assuming you know my mind better than I do, because you’re convinced it’s impossible to not fear death.
Not fearing death doesn’t mean you then want to commit suicide. But if things get bad enough I will definitely take assisted suicide.
No more on this.
Dan Kelly
‘But even in that hell-state they don’t really want to die.’
I mean, they do but they don’t.
Do you understand what I mean when I say this?
I can’t imagine you do not if you have been here.