How to Grow Old

How to Grow Old Bertrand Russell In spite of the title,this article will really be on how not to grow old,which,at my time of life,is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young,I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather,it is true,was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven,but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare,namely,having his head cut off.A great-grandmother of mine,who was a friend of Gibbon,lived to the age of ninety-two,and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother,after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriage,as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College,and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad.She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. â€Å"Good gracious,† she exclaimed, â€Å" I have seventy-two grandchild, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence! † â€Å"Madre snaturale,† he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two,I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep,so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old.This,I think,is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective,you will have no reason to think about the merely sta tistical fact of the number of years you have already lived,still less of the probable brevity of your future. As regards health, I have nothing useful to say since I have little experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like,and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health,though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories,in regrets for the good old days,or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future,and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy;one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are,and one’s mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten,and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives,and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young,you are likely to become a burden to them,unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them,but one’s interest should be contemplative and,If possible,philanthropic,but not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves,but human beings,owing to the length of infancy,find this difficult.I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive. It is no use t elling grown-up children not to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren.In that case you must realize that while you can still render them material service, such as making them all allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company. Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer.But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it — so at least it seems to me — is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls.Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible has been done . (from Portraits from Memory and Other Essays)

Five Days At Memorial

The book approached the ethical dilemmas faced by those physicians and staff involved n the key roles of the rescue effort at Memorial Medical Center, one of the many medical facilities that were devastated by this category 5 hurricane. The physicians who remained to care for the patients were put in the difficult position of deciding who was most appropriate for rescue, and what to do with those left behind. Staff members, nurses in particular, were put in the position of whether or not to obey seemingly unjustified orders.The catastrophe was worsened by the backlash from the patients' families, the community, and the nation regarding their decisions, including arrests and wrongful death lawsuits. This paper will focus on just this; was the aftermath of the disaster warranted? Should the physicians and nurses who put their lives at risk to care for these patients have been put through so much consternation? Had they not stayed, it is quite likely that many more deaths would have occ urred.Was there anyone to blame? And most importantly; what could be done to keep this situation from happening again? Sheer Fink's descriptions of the disaster that took place at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Strain ravished New Orleans, shed light on some of the ethical dilemmas experienced by the physicians and nurses who stayed at he hospital to care for the patients in the wake of the storm. The unfortunate circumstances were beyond anyone's imagination.Because natural disasters and their aftermath cannot be predicted, those left in charge had no way of knowing how to respond to the situations that they were faced with. Being forced to care for patients without clean water, electricity, sanitation, and food, puts healthcare workers in an entirely different environment. Moreover, the pressure that comes with the unfortunate responsibility of deciding which patients should be rescued and which should not, is more than any person should ever have to experience.Upon the a dministrative decision to evacuate â€Å"critical† patients last, the healthcare providers who were willing to risk their own lives by staying in the hospital were faced with the unfortunate responsibility to decide which patients should receive treatment, and which ones should be left to suffer until more resources became available. Ethically speaking, Dry. Pop and her staff should have divided resources equally to provide the most number of people with the best possible care.Rationally speaking, however, they had to make the decision to allocate the limited resources to those patients who had the best chance of surviving the disaster tit the greatest potential quality of life, rather than distributing them equally and risking the livelihoods of every patient left stranded at MAC. Due to the extreme circumstances of the situation, the decision was made to administer â€Å"lethal doses† of morphine to four black patients on the seventh floor, each of who had chosen to be designated as Do Not Resuscitate (DNA) patients.The controversial events that took place on the seventh floor of Memorial Medical Center (MAC) in the midst of such chaos serves to illustrate the inconsistencies inherent within the context of rational and ethical decision- aging during disaster situations. Some argue that Dry. Pop chose to play the role of â€Å"God† in that moment of confusion and chaos, using involuntary euthanasia to preemptively end the lives of four patients who were not necessarily going to die.Viewed in this way, her actions can be seen as murder; however, when viewed as an act of rational compassion, the administration of lethal doses of morphine can be seen as providing palliative care and â€Å"comfort to the end. † Whether or not this was the best possible course of action, the decision made by Dry. Pop was one that few people have ever been faced with making.Aside from illuminating the lack of precedence and procedural guidelines for acti on during times of disaster and mass- casualty, the controversy also sheds light on the failures of all levels of government to provide assistance, shelter, and care for people living in poverty who are unable to evacuate from their homes in the midst of impending destruction and chaos. Review of Literature To understand the ethical principles at odds, a review of the literature included on this situation is necessary for the reader to more fully comprehend the competing interpretations of Dry.Pop's decision to bring an ND to those four lives comfortably, rather than respecting their autonomy and leaving them to slowly deteriorate and presumably die on their own terms. Paternalism According to Dry. Gerald E. Drink, DO, professor of moral, political, and legal philosophy at the University of California, Davis, paternalism is defined as, â€Å"the interference of a state or individual with another person, against their will, and defended or motivated by a claim that the person interf ered with will be better off or protected from harm. We can see how the decision of Dry. Pop fits within this conceptual framework by interpreting her actions as a way o provide those four patients with a comfortable end to their lives, with the assumption that they were better off drifting peacefully into eternal sleep than being left and subjected to a slow and potentially painful death. Understanding her actions as an example of paternalism does not necessarily justify her assumption of the role of â€Å"God,† but it does explain why she believed she was acting in accordance with ethical principles.Though arguably at odds with the ethical principal of malefaction, her actions must be judged within the context of the disaster at hand. Because resources ere limited, and because the primary provider for those patients on the seventh floor had seemingly left them for dead, she was faced with making a decision that would ultimately impact every single patient in the hospital.Wh en understood from this perspective, her neglect for patient autonomy and informed consent is superseded by the ethical principle Of paternalism, in the sense that it was her utilitarian duty to provide the most possible care for the most number of people and to reduce the overall suffering endured by patient population. By eliminating the potential suffering of four patients with elatedly low qualities of life, Dry. Pop was able to ensure that the resources available would be used in the most efficient way for the providence of care for those patients who had better chances of survival and higher qualities of life.Decision-making can be a daunting task in any situation, but the decision that Dry. Pop was forced to make was undoubtedly harder than any of us have ever been faced with. It is easy to condemn her as a racist murderer, but it is just as easy to praise her as a hero as well. Regardless, we can rightfully assume that the decisions she made in the midst of such chaos and co nfusion ere the farthest things from being easy for her. She was put in a situation that none of us could possibly imagine, and she acted according to her moral and rational instincts with the best interests of the whole in mind.Paternalism has been subordinated to the principle of self-determination within the medical community over the past century; however, without consistent protocols and enough resources during disaster situations, the principle of paternalism justifies the act of preemptively ending four low- quality lives in the interest of allocating limited resources to the rest of the tenets that had more life left to live and were more likely to survive the ordeal.Leadership in this situation carries with it the burden of choosing who will live and who will die, which is not an easy thing for anyone to do. Dry. Pour in the absence of outside support and guidance, took it upon herself to make that decision so that nobody else had to. Informed Consent This section is dedica ted to defining the ethical principle of informed consent, and discussing why Dry. Pop failed to adhere to this principle when she admit sisters morphine to those four DNA patients on the seventh floor of MAC.The right to informed consent was included in the right to bodily integrity and patient consent by the federal court system in 1 972, with the reasoning that without informed consent, no meaningful and intelligent consent can be given. By only telling those patients that she was treating their pain, she actively disregarded the law. Limiting the scope to just those four people, Dry. Pop was most certainly in the wrong. She knew she was breaking the law, as evidenced by her vocal assumption of total responsibility.Though she was aware of the implications of such actions, her disregard was fueled y her ethical responsibility to ensure the care of the remaining patients in need of treatment. When one expands the scope to include every person present that day, it becomes apparent t hat her failure to adhere to the law of informed consent was an act of civil disobedience. Due to the context of the situation, she was forced to break the law in order to provide the most care for the most number of people.Disasters happen, people die, and tough decisions must be made; this is precisely what happened with Dry. Pop and the patients Of MAC in the wake of Hurricane Strain. Discussion In discussing the situation that Dry. Pop and the patients at MAC were facing in the aftermath of Hurricane Strain, various issues are brought to light. First off, the situation was an unprecedented one, and as such, left those in leadership positions with the task of forming the best possible course of action under disastrous circumstances.This in itself points to the need for consistent protocols and better training for disaster preparedness. Another issue illuminated by Dry. Pop's decision is the failure of all levels of government to ensure the livelihoods of people in poverty with no way to evacuate during incidents of natural disasters. Finally, by analyzing the various ethical principles at odds with each other, we can understand that certain situations force actors to promote certain ethical principles above the rest.Further, we can see how people view the concept of death and end-of- life care in a variety of ways, which allows us to understand how the administration of lethal doses of morphine to four unwitting patients, for the good of the whole, was interpreted by some as murderous, yet by others as heroic. Upon reading the provided literature, I have come to the conclusion that Dry. Pop's actions are justified by the context in which they were made. In cases of disaster and mass-casualty, reality becomes temporarily altered and survival of the group takes precedence over the survival of individuals.Surely Dry. Pop would not have decided to end those four lives if she did not believe that it would benefit the rest of the patients, as well as reduce the a mount of suffering that the DNA patients would ultimately endure. Had their provider risked his life like Pop to care for the seventh floor, or had better training and protocols been in place, or had the government been more prepared and deadly available to provide shelter and care for the poverty-stricken population of New Orleans, those four patients may have survived the disaster.To place the blame of this unfortunate incident on the shoulders of a single individual is to disregard the failures of government and the medical community at large that rendered the hospital incapable of ensuring everyone's survival in the wake of Hurricane Strain. The controversy that arose should serve as a catalyst for increased preparedness and more consistent ethical and procedural guidelines in cases of natural disaster and mass-casualty. Moreover, it should not be used as a way to seek justice for those four lives by biblically indicting Dry.Pop and her nurses. They did what they thought was bes t in an unprecedented situation, and were able to minimize the suffering endured while maximizing the overall benefit for the remaining patients. Summary and Recommendations The administration of lethal doses of morphine by Dry. Pop to those four patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Strain was an unfortunate result of a disastrous situation. With little or no precedence to provide guidance to those in charge of the hospital, Dry. Pop was forced to make a controversial decision.Ultimately, she was able to reduce suffering and increase overall benefit for those seeking care. Unfortunately, it came at the cost of ending four lives. As appalling as this was for their families, the patients themselves were able to drift peacefully into eternity and escape the imminent suffering and difficulties of end-of-life existence that they would have themes been forced to endure. Understanding that they would die soon anyways, we can assume that those four people had come to terms with death.Inst ead of allowing them to fight the inevitable while deteriorating and suffering further, he morphine that coursed through their veins in the final moments of life acted as an â€Å"Angel of Death,† liberating them from the imminent suffering caused by the blatant disregard of their doctor. It is impossible to tell whether or not this peaceful death was preferable to the alternative, but one can at least understand how Pop felt upon deciding to take this course of action.Given the circumstances, she and her nurses did what was best for everyone, even if it did mean emotional suffering for the families of those four patients who were involuntarily euthanized. No one person can be blamed for what happened that day. It comes down to a failure of leadership and lack of foresight by the medical community and government alike. Though I believe Dry. Pop's actions were aligned with the best interests of all involved parties, there are recommendations I would make to ensure controversia l situations like this do not happen in the future. For one, Dry.Pop could have tried to obtain informed consent from the patients and their families before administering palliative care. This could have saved her from legal implications, but it may have also forced her to allow the deteriorating patients to consume the limited resources as they anointed to approach death. The other recommendation I would make is that the leaders should have asked for volunteers to stay behind and allow the DNA patients to be transported elsewhere. Surely there would have been four people willing to give up their spots for the survival of those four DNA patients from the seventh floor.Introduce the story behind the book and the decision making behind the evacuation process that led to such controversy after the rescue. The patients at Memorial Medical Center (MAC) were not given much choice in their fate, unlike the individuals that make the choice to die with dignity ND take their life into their o wn hands. Of the individuals who's deaths were hastened through lethal injection at MAC, someone in their life, whether it be they or their family members, had made a decision for them to have a do not resuscitate (DNA) order on their chart.Although a DNA order was in effect, the decision for dying with dignity had not officially been made by these individuals. They did not choose to end their own life and take their fate into their own hands. The decision was made for them. The physicians, who were in charge of the care of each individual that underwent lethal injection, took n oath to do no harm. The decisions they were faced with in the circumstances that followed hurricane Strain were by no means easy ones.On one hand, harm was caused by lethally injecting the patients; on the other hand leaving these dependent individuals to fend for themselves in the aftermath of a catastrophe would have caused, very potential, pain and suffering. One might say ethical euthanasia took place in these cases; others will disagree. Only those who faced the storm head on will ever truly know the full capacity of the decisions that were made. Review of Literature paternalism Paternalism†¦.. Theories are b Define and discuss the use of paternalism in the decision making process at the end of the evacuation process.Informed Consent Define and discuss the lack of informed consent as the DNA patients were given morphine to hasten their impeding deaths Discussion Detailed discussion surrounding the events leading up to the decision to use morphine and other sedatives to hasten the deaths of the DNA patients that were not going to be evacuated and instead be left behind to die a potentially horrendous death. Summary and Recommendations Summary and Recommendation Should have used informed consent with all cases where the patient and/or Emily members were available to discuss.

Explore how chapter 56 in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ fits into the overall scheme of the text Essay

What social comments do you think Jane Austen is making in this chapter? Pride and Prejudice was written by Jane Austen in 1813. The novel describes and exaggerates the life in which in Austen lived. The title Pride and Prejudice refers to the ways in which Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy first view each other. The story involves the lives of many different classes and how they interact with each other; it is also informing us of the way certain types of people were treated in those days. Near the end of the novel, Lady Catherine de Burgh comes to visit Elizabeth to try and persuade her not to marry Darcy. I will explore this chapter to find out what social comments Austen tries to make throughout the novel about the world she lived in. Chapter 56 is a summary of the whole novel. Lady Catherine has come to see Elizabeth to make her withdraw her acceptance of marriage to her nephew, Mr. Darcy. Lizzy is shocked by these accusations, as she has heard nothing of the sort, so wonders where Lady Catherine heard the rumours. She is the type of person who thinks that everybody’s business is her own because she is of the higher class. It has been planned since Darcy and Lady Catherine’s daughter were born that they were to be wed and now she hears of Darcy proposing to another lady has outraged her. That is why she has come to visit Elizabeth to stop her marrying Darcy. From the moment lady Catherine arrived she was very rude and not welcoming. She says things such as, ‘you have a very small park here,’ and ‘this must be a most inconvenient sitting room.’ As soon as she entered the Bennet’s home she made no effort on being civil or polite to their family. If Elizabeth were to behave in this manner when she was at Rosing’s it wouldn’t have been tolerated in the slightest. The only reason Lady Catherine gets away with it is because she is a lady and very rich and of the higher class. Anyone who was below her would put up with her behaviour because it was not his or her place in those days to accuse her of being impolite. Jane Austen grew up in this world where the rich people were almost the celebrities of the day. In our world famous people have the money, the expensive cars and clothes and a celebrity status, where the public would stop and look at them and always aspire to be like them. In Austen’s time it was very much the same but the lower classes and even middle were always looking up to the higher classes and admiring them. This is why people with the money could be as rude and stuck up to people as they wanted because in the end they were the ones with the power and the money to do what they wanted. Lady Catherine’s reason for visiting Elizabeth was not what the family had thought. Elizabeth expected a letter from Charlotte yet no letter was given. Instead Lady Catherine remarked upon a, ‘prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn.’ Again she is not really being as polite as she could have been about the garden. From this point Elizabeth realised that she wanted to be alone. She had realised that Catherine was again being very rude and stuck up and so made no effort to talk to her. Lady Catherine begins with, ‘ your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come.’ Elizabeth doesn’t have any idea what she is talking about. Lady Catherine talks about her conscience, which is showing that Lizzy is to feel guilty about whatever she has been accused of. She tells Lizzy that rumours have reached her that her and Mr. Darcy were to be engaged and says ‘though I know it must be a scandalous falsehood,’ Lady Catherine cannot comprehend this idea, to think that a middle class person such as Miss Bennet, who has no real connections, would even consider accepting an offer of this sort. Lady Catherine does not hold back on her true feelings about the subject and as Elizabeth has been brought up in the proper manner she has to respect her. Elizabeth soon becomes tired of her picking at everything that is wrong with her and her family and is not rude but stands up for herself. She asks Lady Catherine if the only reason they should not wed is because she wants him to marry her daughter, then what is there to stop her? She replies with ‘ honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it.’ This is the long list that she has against Lizzy. The social points she is trying to make is that in those days if a family were to have such a disgrace as Lydia’s elopement then no man should be interested in them, rich men such as Bingley and Darcy should marry same class or higher and that there were some very snooty people who would disagree with the association of certain families! They don’t have a lot of land so are not as wealthy and high class.families like this always tried to marry higher up. Need to put in that Bennett’s don’t have a lot of land or money so lady Catherine looks down. Not too sure how to say this fits in with the rest of the book or how the chapter does? Bit stuck but will be done properly when handed in; in neat it’s a promise

Sexual Abuse as a Deviant Behavior Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Sexual Abuse as a Deviant Behavior - Term Paper Example Stronger laws should be in place for Sex Offenders because many women do not report sexual abuse afraid of revenge and further cruelty. Punishment as deterrence also raises sets of important questions to consider in arguing for punishment as restitution. It means that the state should be a positive factor in the area of criminal law. The state should not passively await criminal activity before it deals with those involved and its consequences (Groth 29).   It should take some action to anticipate and preclude criminal activity before it manifests itself clearly (Serran et al 87). Those of critics who support restitution believe very strongly and will argue that the proper foci of the criminal law are the victims and others directly affected by the criminal act as well as the good of society in a practical (i.e., economic or institutional sense), rather than a moral sense. Consequently, critics are convinced that punishment should become operative as an award of damages to victims, other injured parties, and society in the person of its political institutions (Serran et al 51). To convince most people that deterrence is a way of increasing the total social good through punishment (rather than merely reducing the total social evil) since it benefits victims, injured parties, and political institutions, as well as the criminal, the penal system, and the courts. Consequently, restitution is the most economical and ethical way in which the state can take positive action to secure human welfare (i.e., the benefits of social living) and avoid its opposite (Groth 65; Ward 41).             Stricter laws should be imposed on sex offenders because the authorities cannot control their lives and actions after the release. Oklahoma state Rep. Lucky Lamons â€Å"says it forces many offenders to live in rural areas where they are difficult for authorities to monitor... Also, he says, it does not differentiate between real predators and the type of men he recalls arresting for urinating in public, a sex offense in Oklahoma† (Koch 2007).