can we really save lives?

Just a quick note, as i get back finally to blogging.

In conjunction with the Alito "campaigns" and the various cancer charities et al, i have noticed the consistent use of something i find deeply errant; that is the premise upon which the pro-life and the pro-pharma/ health system forces are based: "Save a Life". As a lifeguard who argued that calling the association of lifeguards lifesaving was philosophically absurd, i still find myself appalled at this notion that we humans have the capacity to save lives. We may have the capacity to save species through avoiding behaviors that produce and increase extinctions of them (which of course we never seem to be able to act upon) but there is as yet no possible way in which humans can keep a living human from dying. We can only prolong life by our actions. We can extend it some time with lesser or greater degrees of suffering for one and/or many, but we cannot in any sense of the word keep a human being alive indefinitely. Saving a life means keeping it from ending, and that we cannot do. We all die, we all must die, we all will die and not one bit of technology or pharmacology or intentional spiritual prayer will keep that from happening. Death is fundamental to life. Without death we would not understand the relationship we have with time and the space in which we find our dependence upon interrelated constructs and species and matter.

It is important that we begin to share this message with people. When pro-lifers argue that we cannot kill fetuses because it is taking a life, that is philosophically wrong. Life kills life, life is death postponed. They might be more successful if they argued that ending a life now fails to prolong its possible successes and failures. Cancer fighting advocates need to remind people that we aren't saving the lives of people who develop cancer, merely prolonging the time before their inevitable death. Alleviation of suffering maybe, but not the alleviation of death. We need to teach our children that the only true knowledge that they can rely upon about the world and their relationship to it is that they will die, that that relationship will cease. Then life can be more fully lived. Lifeguards don't save people from dying, they merely act in ways to change the pattern of the life moving inextricably towards death.