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Not many people want to die. Society, as a whole, tends to have this great overbearing need to live as long as possible. And if this means keeping someone alive as long as possible, regardless of the amount of resources, then so be it. This is normal and understandable since life is essential to living, but it isn’t logical. Society allows people to live longer in their elderly stages of deterioration. This topic is notable because older people are living longer; thus causing the younger side of society to suffer with the lack of resources.
Resources are limited; therefore once they are used they are gone. Doctors will spend a lot of time trying to treat or cure many diseases that mainly occur in elderly people. This will limit the amount of time, people, and resources spent of diseases that will help younger people, who still have a long life ahead of them. This is where it gets controversial: how can anyone just “LET” someone die whether they are old or young? The answer is to treat it like any other issue and way out the pros and cons. Pros: elderly man/woman lives a few more months. Cons: resources are depleted; therefore they cannot be used to save someone like a child.
History proves that Japan had a rapid increase in their life expectancy rate after World War II. Japan increased by a mean of 13.7 years. Males went up 13.5 years (from 50.1 to 63.6 years) and Females went up 13.8 years (from 54.0 to 67.8 years) between 1947 and 1955 (Sugiura). In one perspective this can be seen as great. Everyone wants to live longer. But in another perspective it is a negative attribution to society. With more people living longer comes the need to feed, and provide for them. Eventually the society will not be able to sustain them all and poverty will become the way of life. Life is meant to end; it is inevitable regardless of our desires. Prolonging the inevitable only brings pain and suffering to all.
TMT, or Terror Management Theory, explains the need and ability to keep people alive regardless of its negative effects on resources. TMT is the need of self-esteem and faith in a cultural worldview to protect our psychological structures from anxiety that results from the awareness that death is inevitable in order to promote self-preservation (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Those three men researched an extension of TMT called the dual-processed theory. This consists of proximal and distal distinct defense systems that deal with conscious and unconscious aspects of the problem of death. The proximal system defends against conscious thoughts and “entails of either active suppression of such thoughts or cognitive distortions that push the problem of death into the distant future in a seemingly rational manner.” The distal system defends against unconscious thoughts of death, “but defend against death by enabling the individual to construe himself or herself as a valuable participant in a meaningful universe,” (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Viewing the deaths of loved ones is something that is humanly difficult. It causes reality of the inevitability of death to set in. These thoughts bring about anxiety and fear, which is something that as human beings we are “programmed” to avoid.
The longer we try to erase the line between life and death, the longer we waste precious, valuable resources on something that is inevitable. The need to keep anxieties silenced, faith alive and death off of our minds is becoming a greater burden than what is best for our future. We take resources for granted and before we know it we wont have that luxury. It has been estimated that people use more Medicare in their final years of life, about 27% of Medicare’s $327 billion annual budget, than in any other time (Appleby). This data means that we are wasting valuable money (resources) on the elderly who will inevitable die do to age. Instead we could be using that money (resources) to cure cancer, eliminate children diseases, and create hope for people who can live a full life like the old man/woman had.
In conclusion, our medical wars come down to the fact that we need life, but we need resources more. Older people have had a long life. Young people deserve it too. We need to spend our resources wisely so that they last. Saving deteriorating people for a few more months at the expense of millions just isn’t worth it when we can redirect that money and create something to help a 9 year old walk and live a life. We can save a life-a long life- if we redirect most of our resources away from old people and toward younger people eager to live a life.
Work Cited
Appleby, Julie. “Debate surrounds end-of-life heath care costs.” USA Today. 10 Oct.
2006. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2006-10-18-end-of-life-costs_x.htm>
Pyszczynski, Tom; Jeff Greenberg; Sheldon Solomon. “A Dual-Process Model of
Defense Against Conscious and Unconscious Death-Related Thoughts An Extension of Terror Management Theory.” New York Psychological Review. Vol. 106, No. 4, 835-845. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Pyszczynski%20T%20Dual%20process%20model.%20Psych%20Rev%201999.pdf
Sugiura, Yasuo; Ju, Young-Su; yasuoka, Junko; Jimba, Masamine. “Rapid Increase in
Japanese Life Expectancy After World War II.” 17 Sept. 2007. Web. 6 Oct. 2009.
<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/takemi/files/RP245.pdf>
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