TNG - Half a Life

[Freeverse]

So, I get where Chuck is coming from with the euthanasia thing... Clearly, this isn't about someone who's in pain wanting to end his life.


But like... It is obviously, nakedly, directly, literally about a society that believes that they're preventing suffering through this process. Now, this is something I've never liked about this episode. I don't think it's done particularly well. In fact, I find it laughable that it's supposed to be open to interpretation, so that the viewer can make up their own mind, when it is so very clearly, demonstrably, wrong on all counts. It's like having a society where every second child is ritually sacrificed to appease a spider-god, but we're not going to tell you if that's wrong or right because sure it's baby murder, but we made the mommy sad that her child won't get to meet Lloth in the afterlife.

uh, but anyway... the point is it's not a metaphor. There's no layers of meaning to unpack. It's directly on the surface. You don't have to look at it as being equivalent to the real world debate about death with dignity, but to say that you can't see why someone else would make that comparison is just kinda odd.

[drewder]

Seems to me someone on the writing staff heard about Eskimos putting old people on ice drifts and decided to make an episode about it. As much as the star trek folk like to pat themselves on the back for their cultural progressivism remember these are the folks who gave us Chakotay as some sort of icon for Native Americans. Their progressivism tends to be skin deep as it were.

[drewder]

If you want to be mad at boomers for something then be mad about the lockdown. It's not the young people trying to support their families who are benefiting from the lockdowns It's the boomers who tend to be in the vulnerable population. Why not just lock only them down? Because then they'd disappear and lose their power as younger folks take their place. So they're using their power to create a world of fear so that they can cling to their power and position.

[clearspira]

If you want to be mad at boomers for something then be mad about the lockdown. It's not the young people trying to support their families who are benefiting from the lockdowns It's the boomers who tend to be in the vulnerable population. Why not just lock only them down? Because then they'd disappear and lose their power as younger folks take their place. So they're using their power to create a world of fear so that they can cling to their power and position.

Keywords: tend to be.

There have been thousands of young people who have died from Covid and that includes toddlers and babies. And just to be clear here, you are advocating locking down one segment of the population whilst everyone else goes off and - by the implication of your statement - steals their jobs. As i said to CrypticMirror and I say to you: would you willingly accept that if it happened to you?

[Mindworm]

If you want to be mad at boomers for something then be mad about the lockdown. It's not the young people trying to support their families who are benefiting from the lockdowns It's the boomers who tend to be in the vulnerable population. Why not just lock only them down? Because then they'd disappear and lose their power as younger folks take their place. So they're using their power to create a world of fear so that they can cling to their power and position.

No the lockdown is necessary for all. Without it everybody would be having worse health outcomes and there would be much higher death rates in all age cohorts.

Just because it doesn't kill you it doesn't follow that you're not affected by it. And Covid can make young healthy athletes very ill with serious heart and lung complications for the rest of their lives.

[Madner Kami]

If you want to be mad at boomers for something then be mad about the lockdown. It's not the young people trying to support their families who are benefiting from the lockdowns It's the boomers who tend to be in the vulnerable population. Why not just lock only them down? Because then they'd disappear and lose their power as younger folks take their place. So they're using their power to create a world of fear so that they can cling to their power and position.

No the lockdown is necessary for all. Without it everybody would be having worse health outcomes and there would be much higher death rates in all age cohorts.

Just because it doesn't kill you it doesn't follow that you're not affected by it. And Covid can make young healthy athletes very ill with serious heart and lung complications for the rest of their lives.

Oh not just that. There are studies which show that recovered CoViD-patience have...

...reduced mental capacities.

...to deal with a permanent fatigue.

...have reduced fertility rates

CoViD is fucking terrifying and everyone who tries to talk it down or creates some sort of silly conspiracy-theory, should be pointed and laughed at for at least 8 hours a day for a period of no less than two years, as well as getting a kick in the arse each minute for no less than 1 hour a day for the same length of time.

[RobbyB1982]

Covid can cause permanent lung, heart and brain damage and messes with joints. Some people that get it still suffer the major negative effects months later. Yes a lot of people just tough it out in two weeks and its done, but a LOT of cases have longer term issues. It can cripple former athletes to the point they have to re-learn how to walk.

There's more to covid than just the death rate, which at around 3% is pretty damn high for an airborne virus. (plus a high hospitalization rate) But even it was 100% survival rate, the other side effects are horrifying and potentially life altering for *decades* , and we won't even know what all the long term effects are for years. We have no idea what's going to happen to children that seem to be harmlessly affected now.

So yeah. There's a lot more to covid than JUST the high death toll. Wishing to parse it out for herd immunity and just "let the old people die" so you can keep having parties is insane and immoral.

[DoctorWTF]

Hey you're being a bit selective there, you are forgetting the Mark of Gideon, where Gideon was overpopulated so they capture Kirk so he can give them a supply of virus to give to volunteers to kill people and make room. It ends with Kirk letting his love interest of the week return to the planet to be a supplier of viral death.

And before that, he suggests they try out this fancy 22nd century technology they have called "birth control". Their response? "The creation of life is sacred to us." Letting people have sex without making babies would be immoral, so they'll just kill people instead. I wonder if that was meant to be a metaphor for anything...

But like... It is obviously, nakedly, directly, literally about a society that believes that they're preventing suffering through this process. Now, this is something I've never liked about this episode. I don't think it's done particularly well. In fact, I find it laughable that it's supposed to be open to interpretation, so that the viewer can make up their own mind, when it is so very clearly, demonstrably, wrong on all counts. It's like having a society where every second child is ritually sacrificed to appease a spider-god, but we're not going to tell you if that's wrong or right because sure it's baby murder, but we made the mommy sad that her child won't get to meet Lloth in the afterlife.

uh, but anyway... the point is it's not a metaphor. There's no layers of meaning to unpack. It's directly on the surface. You don't have to look at it as being equivalent to the real world debate about death with dignity, but to say that you can't see why someone else would make that comparison is just kinda odd.

And speaking of traditions outliving their usefulness: One would expect that with the technology available to them, 60 would be the new 35.

[AllanO]

In fact, I find it laughable that it's supposed to be open to interpretation, so that the viewer can make up their own mind, when it is so very clearly, demonstrably, wrong on all counts. It's like having a society where every second child is ritually sacrificed to appease a spider-god, but we're not going to tell you if that's wrong or right because sure it's baby murder, but we made the mommy sad that her child won't get to meet Lloth in the afterlife.

The way I read it is we are supposed to think that the society goes too far, so we think that Lwaxana's outrage is justified. If it were too justifiable a practice (like if the guy had a painful chronic disease that was debilitating and getting worse) then too many people would react "Nurse Chappel let Major Winchester die in peace! Stop with your sermonizing!"

The issue is that because of the simplistic extremism of the practice, is the turn around convincing? Where the scientist decides defying tradition is not worth the personal cost to him and his loved ones etc. and Lwaxana decides to go to the ceremony to say goodbye. As I recall the scientist is still saying the practice is unjustified, but he is unwilling for himself and his family to pay the personal cost of defying the tradition.

So I don't think it really hits the sweet spot of "the practice is unjustifiable but I get why they went along with it", but I don't think there is one sweet spot for all people everyone would have a different spot anyway. I accept that TV writing tends to work in crude broad strokes, so as a TV dilemma I find it entertaining and engaging, even if as a real life dilemma I would find it deeply stupid. As I remarked earlier in this thread this kind of take an argument too its extreme and build a narrative around it is not exactly new to Star Trek (I've mentioned "Taste of Armageddon" as one example "Mark of Gideon" I brought up elsewhere is another), so I find it par for the course.

And before that, he suggests they try out this fancy 22nd century technology they have called "birth control". Their response? "The creation of life is sacred to us." Letting people have sex without making babies would be immoral, so they'll just kill people instead. I wonder if that was meant to be a metaphor for anything...

Reading around to remind me of the details of Mark of Gideon I often found comments about how badly constructed the plot is. I think it failed to even construct a convincing simplistic TV dilemma. Although the episode also suffered from having to motivate things like, they were not using any new sets so almost all the action on "Gideon" takes place on a "replica" of the Enterprise (ie on regular Enterprise sets), how and why the Gideons do this is very poorly motivated and so on.

[clearspira]

Mark of Gideon is an interesting concept and perhaps would have worked well... just not on TOS. Those extras shambling around in the background wearing those awful outfits inspires laughter rather than the tragedy that such a hell would actually be. And I also find it hard to believe that Kirk's meningitis would infect the Gideon people at all given how they are so immortal they can live on a planet where all of the food, water and resources would logically have run out long before they ever reached that stage.