Just
two posts this month on the issues I’m passionate over: literature and
euthanasia.
Long
piece that critiques our modern literature, noting how same has been captured
by the progressive ethic and turned away from the world – philosophy, politics,
economics – to create, in a lineage from Proust to the Bloomsbury Set, a
stultified literature of our interiors. Examines consequences of this for
readership and culture. Also the beginnings of a suspicion that progressivism dominates contemporary aesthetics.
If
you love literature then you’ll hate this post. But you also won’t see
another critique like it. Our passive, state-funded, state-affirming literature that has
expunged individualism, and therefore the wellspring of creativity, is well on the
way to being a dead literature.
I’m gutted that Labour has pulled Maryan Street’s
dying with dignity legislation from the ballot. Managing our deaths should flow seamlessly from our life-long
self-management of day to day health issues: there are no moral issues other
than the basic right to own our bodies and manage our health outcomes. Yet the
state denies us this. Majority rule and the gutlessness of our politicians combine
to ensure many Kiwis continue to die in conditions which are abhorrent to them.
This post is a ‘fluff’
piece shorn off Twitter. More important that you read why there is such urgency for euthanasia legislation to be debated given the current New Zealand Chief
Coroner’s actions to prosecute doctors who are over prescribing pain medication
to the terminally ill.
Happy Christmas and New Year.
If you are a regular
reader, thanks for reading my jottings for another year. If I don’t get to my
keyboard through the festive period, then I’ll be back in the New Year.
Have a great Christmas and
New Year; don’t let the wowsers bite.
Happy Xmas. :-)
ReplyDeleteMerry Xmas you too Richard.
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