Elderly people, some well kown some not.

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In China “New priorities have been set, but all of the emphasis is on economic development,” Mr. He said. “The traditional values of our villages have been devastated. One half of the population is changing very fast, and the other is clinging to its values. Under the circumstances, life becomes tougher and tougher for the elderly.” And if the elderly are Asperger? And, after all, there are Apergers in China as everywhere. Moreover is the situation of the elderly not the same or probably worse in the West? I think of the last 11 years of Nietzsche, who went mad and spent the remaining of his life in horrendous condition. And of the great Russian writer Salamov, who after 15 years of reclusion in the gulags was freed only to be abandoned by his wife and his daughter. He lived some time with a cat, which he loved and was his only companion. He spent the last three years of his life in a ghastly asylum lying in his faeces, convinced that he was again in the Gulag. | read if you can the “Kolyma tales”, one of the greatest achievements of Russian literature| We know about them because they have been famous, but how many poor and helpless old people end their life this way?

Far too many...

It's the side of life on Earth we all try and not think about. Really, we shouldn't be this ignorant, but sometimes it can be too much to bear. I mean, I don't wake up in the morning and think 'God, 500 kids in Africa just starved to death while I slept last night.'

No, no. I am not myself in this frame of mind. I might sound cynical and stonehearted but I am not advocating any kind of generic philanthropy. I must add that if you have to revolt against any kind of cruelty and suffering you should add the abominable treatment of animals in meat farming. This is abominable not so much because of the cruelty inflicted to animals but for the degrading of all people who have to do the job. It’s a problem anybody avoids, it’s removed and hidden. Nearly anyone of us who paid a visit to a slaughterhouse is reluctant to eat meat for some time at least.
But this is not the problem here. The problem here is that we should somehow make up our mind about this: do we belong to a community where there should be dignity and acceptance of everyone living, infant or old, or should we throw useless people off a cliff? Sick people, handicapped people, mad people, ailing people? Our culture of avoiding euthanasia is not coming out of love and connection, of the idea that anybody, however a intolerable weight for those formally in charge (relatives or administrative agencies) might have value for the community, but for the general trend to remove the existence of death from our consciousness. This is the real reason behind our reluctance to discard useless people in the waste. It is the result of the thinness of the social bond. Is, as sociologist would say, a structural malady of or society. Not much can be done about that, but there should be at least awareness of where and how we are living.