https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t196.php
I am a bit amused that Lwaxana as a guest character arguably actually got an enjoyable episode focused on her depths before Deanna (a main cast member) did.
TNG - Half a Life
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ChrisTheLovableJerk
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Re: TNG - Half a Life
My condolences for your grandma, Chuck. One of my grandmothers passed away earlier this year, though mainly due to issues with a stroke she suffered last year and not from covid. It's never easy, especially now where we can't even have a big, proper funeral like our loved ones deserve. And it's wonderful to know she was proud of what you're doing and your show.
Re: TNG - Half a Life
I usually consider this the best Lwaxana episode. She's just an aging woman who is getting lonely as she is getting up there in years, and we see her reflect that best in this episode.
As for the planet below.
Traditions like this usually start off because of some reason, which then lasts after the tradition has had any reason to exist. It makes me wonder what their reason was. Some plague, calamity or something to get rid of their elderly. Or, more cynically, did they not want to take care of their elderly through any sort of social services, and decided, well, just kill them. We'll make it beautiful, but we'll kill them.
That's assuming it's not religious, and they declared long ago that God hates old people.
As for the planet below.
Traditions like this usually start off because of some reason, which then lasts after the tradition has had any reason to exist. It makes me wonder what their reason was. Some plague, calamity or something to get rid of their elderly. Or, more cynically, did they not want to take care of their elderly through any sort of social services, and decided, well, just kill them. We'll make it beautiful, but we'll kill them.
That's assuming it's not religious, and they declared long ago that God hates old people.
Last edited by FaxModem1 on Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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clearspira
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Re: TNG - Half a Life
I really cannot say how history will look back on Coronavirus lockdowns. We had to try something - Trump and Boris Johnson proved that doing nothing until your hospitals are full was not a solution - and yet the supreme damage to our mental health, to the arts, culture, industry, tourism, to education; these things will take years to repair if at all. Cinemas for example will probably never be the same again.
It all comes back to the same problem. No option we had for the bulk of 2020 to avoid lockdown did not sound like it had come out of an eugenics textbook: kill the old and the sick so that the young and healthy may flourish. And I don't think we'll have the answer by the next pandemic either although hopefully by then we'll have better methods of curing viruses.
It all comes back to the same problem. No option we had for the bulk of 2020 to avoid lockdown did not sound like it had come out of an eugenics textbook: kill the old and the sick so that the young and healthy may flourish. And I don't think we'll have the answer by the next pandemic either although hopefully by then we'll have better methods of curing viruses.
We used to argue whether Star Trek or Star Wars was better. Now we argue which one is worse.
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Nightbeat74
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Re: TNG - Half a Life
hay chuck sorry to hear about your grandma,my grandma on my mom's died back in 2016 of 3 kinds of cancer and grandpa ed of a broken heart 18 months later.
Re: TNG - Half a Life
It was good to see Lwaxana Troi being portrayed as a rational, caring kind of person. She starts out being appalled by what is happening here and she is right in that a lot of what is going on with this planets society is wrong to her. She is not really being intolerant but just showing compassion for another elderly person.
Her portrayal here is much more mature than former examples.
Her portrayal here is much more mature than former examples.
Re: TNG - Half a Life
Lost my mother-in-law one day and one hour before my wife's birthday. You have my condolences. She spent her last years in a nursing home but her son visited her often. The worse thing about it is that had developed Dementia and it was very sad seeing her slip away mentally.
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RobbyB1982
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Re: TNG - Half a Life
Other countries locked down, *really* locked down for two months, and universally wore masks, and cleared out all their cases, 100%.clearspira wrote: ↑Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:25 pmNo option we had for the bulk of 2020 to avoid lockdown did not sound like it had come out of an eugenics textbook: kill the old and the sick so that the young and healthy may flourish. And I don't think we'll have the answer by the next pandemic either although hopefully by then we'll have better methods of curing viruses.
We could have licked it in a single month if everyone just ACTUALLY done what they were supposed to. Don't make "wear a damn mask" a political issue. But its too late to fix that mentality now.
Re: TNG - Half a Life
On Twitter I misread Chuck as announcing he had posted a review of "Half-Life" and I thought it was odd for him to do a video game review on Saturday.
Anyway heavy stuff and I think a fitting tribute to Chuck's grandmother and dilemmas we are all facing right now.
I am surprised that Chuck finds it hard to understand why people view this episode as being about euthanasia (or medically assisted suicide or whatever closely allied practice you want to mean by that). The justification/narrative given for how the tradition got started is that old people were ending up suffering a chronic illness before death. Such chronic (and usually terminal) illness is a common justification for assisting suicide (and even mercy killing), so that is the explicit link (old age is a predisposing cause of such conditions) right in the text of the show between the being 60 years old and the sorts of reasons that are usually invoked to justify the need for medically assisted dying and related forms of euthanasia.
Here is my interpretation of the sort of frame the writers were working in. In cases of suicide in the face of illness in life the reasons one person chooses suicide and declares their life "not worth living" can seem (to others) subjective to the point that they are arbitrary, two people with the same illness progressed to the same point with the same number of friends and family members etc. one will choose to live another day the other will choose suicide and the authorities will help them do it. So the opponent of such measures will say "Look you're just deciding who lives and who dies on the basis of a completely arbitrary criterion, this "quality of life" thing does not mean anything, you might as well just declare that anyone aged 60+ no longer has "quality of life"." So the writers of the episode chose to take that kind of thinking and run with it, take one trend of argument in the debate to its logically extreme.
It is not so much a case of allegory but of taking one part of the argument to the limit, like in say the OG Star Trek "A Taste of Armageddon" taking the idea of rules of war too a ludicrous extreme. The presentation ignores and even erases all nuance or complexity too an issue but to me it still explores the issue to a degree. The interesting question is what kind of factors or nuance do you need to add back in to think sensibly about the issue that process may suggest useful ways to think about the issue. Although no doubt this sort of argument is just too facile to give much insight into the issue.
In this case adding back a little nuance the thing that strikes me is that it is unclear that the planet here is really practicing ritual suicide. This rule sounds so stark that it sounds suspiciously like all the people don't voluntarily kill themselves. Even if there is not explicit coercion (violence etc.) the social pressure compromises consent.
Adding yet more nuance yes who will decide to avail themselves of a medically assisted suicide will be arbitrary based on who voluntarily decides to do it, that is just part and parcel of it being voluntary given the subjective and capricious way human beings come to voluntary decisions.
There are still public policy rules that depend on objective criterion, the system still decides who gets enabled in their suicide and who is discouraged from committing suicide. It may be that the criterion (what constitutes "irremediable suffering") is not completely free of arbitrary elements (one authority would decide one tricky case one way a different expert would call it the other), but this is a far cry from the decision being completely arbitrary, most (if not all) judgements admit some slight arbitrary wiggle room without being in any danger of becoming completely arbitrary for that.
Different people with different perspectives on the debate would no doubt consider different things that the episodes scenario ignores the relevant bit for how we understand the debate. Or it may just be too simplistic...
Anyway heavy stuff and I think a fitting tribute to Chuck's grandmother and dilemmas we are all facing right now.
I am surprised that Chuck finds it hard to understand why people view this episode as being about euthanasia (or medically assisted suicide or whatever closely allied practice you want to mean by that). The justification/narrative given for how the tradition got started is that old people were ending up suffering a chronic illness before death. Such chronic (and usually terminal) illness is a common justification for assisting suicide (and even mercy killing), so that is the explicit link (old age is a predisposing cause of such conditions) right in the text of the show between the being 60 years old and the sorts of reasons that are usually invoked to justify the need for medically assisted dying and related forms of euthanasia.
Here is my interpretation of the sort of frame the writers were working in. In cases of suicide in the face of illness in life the reasons one person chooses suicide and declares their life "not worth living" can seem (to others) subjective to the point that they are arbitrary, two people with the same illness progressed to the same point with the same number of friends and family members etc. one will choose to live another day the other will choose suicide and the authorities will help them do it. So the opponent of such measures will say "Look you're just deciding who lives and who dies on the basis of a completely arbitrary criterion, this "quality of life" thing does not mean anything, you might as well just declare that anyone aged 60+ no longer has "quality of life"." So the writers of the episode chose to take that kind of thinking and run with it, take one trend of argument in the debate to its logically extreme.
It is not so much a case of allegory but of taking one part of the argument to the limit, like in say the OG Star Trek "A Taste of Armageddon" taking the idea of rules of war too a ludicrous extreme. The presentation ignores and even erases all nuance or complexity too an issue but to me it still explores the issue to a degree. The interesting question is what kind of factors or nuance do you need to add back in to think sensibly about the issue that process may suggest useful ways to think about the issue. Although no doubt this sort of argument is just too facile to give much insight into the issue.
In this case adding back a little nuance the thing that strikes me is that it is unclear that the planet here is really practicing ritual suicide. This rule sounds so stark that it sounds suspiciously like all the people don't voluntarily kill themselves. Even if there is not explicit coercion (violence etc.) the social pressure compromises consent.
Adding yet more nuance yes who will decide to avail themselves of a medically assisted suicide will be arbitrary based on who voluntarily decides to do it, that is just part and parcel of it being voluntary given the subjective and capricious way human beings come to voluntary decisions.
There are still public policy rules that depend on objective criterion, the system still decides who gets enabled in their suicide and who is discouraged from committing suicide. It may be that the criterion (what constitutes "irremediable suffering") is not completely free of arbitrary elements (one authority would decide one tricky case one way a different expert would call it the other), but this is a far cry from the decision being completely arbitrary, most (if not all) judgements admit some slight arbitrary wiggle room without being in any danger of becoming completely arbitrary for that.
Different people with different perspectives on the debate would no doubt consider different things that the episodes scenario ignores the relevant bit for how we understand the debate. Or it may just be too simplistic...
Yours Truly,
Allan Olley
"It is with philosophy as with religion : men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own." John Stuart Mill
Allan Olley
"It is with philosophy as with religion : men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own." John Stuart Mill
Re: TNG - Half a Life
I can see how it would play as a euthanasia allegory, so long as you consider old age to be a terminal illness. It is a condition that will eventually kill you, after all, and leave you weaker and with more aches and pains as it progresses. We just don't normally think of it in those terms since (a) everyone has it, rather than just certain select people, and (b) it happens so incredibly gradually.
