ispy
besides, i'm not judging him. i just don't like being bullied into "living life to the fullest". It's like some kind of secular evangelism. Am I going to go to hell now?
I acted as primary care giver for an elderly relative with alzheimer's, broken hip, and a few other problems as well as losing my father to brain cancer. Of course I care, but I just think that everyone focusing on Dr. Pausch's issue while ignoring everyone else's is ... bad.
Besides, I'm sorry, but if you think that life is some how a beautiful thing or that there is some sort of divine purpose to it all, see if you feel the same way when you have to watch a person you've known and loved your whole life shit themselves or scream at people who aren't there to show their spouse who died twenty years ago.
Nature's a bitch, god's an asshole, then you turn into worm food.
Fortunately, though people don't know it, we are free to make our own way, and don't have to be held up to anyone's dogma about how to live life. Or buy their books.
I think this is a similar phenomena that occurs when people will give money to Cripple Cat on the internet but not the real life injured animal. Or person for that matter.
People sometimes think nihilism is a bad thing but I think it's actually very liberating. IT's up to me to decide what "life to the fullest" is. I'm not even sure that phrase has any real meaning, though. Besides, I think what "makes us live" is cellular respiration.
How else should I judge him? His viral video? All of this media coverage, appearances, etc was to sell his book. I'm sure that's now he thought of it but the corporation that published his book sure did. His suffering is a gold mine for them ... which bothers me immensely and no one else seems to see this.
He gives off this whole vibe of some crazy new-agey street preacher. THe way people lap it up and buy his books is disturbing.
All of the quotes attributed to him seem specious reasoning at best. "Beat the Reaper by living well?" I think "death" wins, always. "Brick walls" are just there. They don't have a purpose. Pontifications about the meaning of life? It looks like it doesn't really have one. Sort of like 'god', you can just make up what ever you want. What's his proof for any of what he's telling me?
Do we listen to this man because we feel sorry for him? because we're afraid of dying as well? The whole concept just seems like so much saccherine from a dying man. In 20 years no one will remember this book or him.
I remember seeing him on the Oprah show and starts spouting about how he's in oh-so-great shape. Then he starts doing push-ups to demonstrate. The whole display was pathetic and delusional. I'm thinking, "Dude, your dying! You're not in good health!"
The whole lecture just seems like a bunch of jibbersh from, unfortunately, a walking-dead man.