http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/08/28/how-do-you-want-to-die-berry/ A web site by Joshua Sowin that addresses culture, books, technology, ecology, religion, and other topics. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:20:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/08/28/how-do-you-want-to-die-berry/comment-page-1/#comment-46110 Eric Brown Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:56:47 +0000 http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/08/28/how-do-you-want-to-die-berry/#comment-46110 Nice quote. I like very much the insight that how we would want to die defines a life, too. It's commonplace for people nowadays to define their lives around health insurance and hypothetical medical expenses. I know a young, healthy guy that inherited a very nice farm, and he said he would love to farm full-time, but he couldn't afford the health insurance. I would rather let how I live dictate how I die than to let my death dictate how I lives. In any case, I think Berry is right on that we should consider the two as intimately connected questions. Nice quote. I like very much the insight that how we would want to die defines a life, too. It’s commonplace for people nowadays to define their lives around health insurance and hypothetical medical expenses. I know a young, healthy guy that inherited a very nice farm, and he said he would love to farm full-time, but he couldn’t afford the health insurance. I would rather let how I live dictate how I die than to let my death dictate how I lives. In any case, I think Berry is right on that we should consider the two as intimately connected questions.

]]> http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/08/28/how-do-you-want-to-die-berry/comment-page-1/#comment-45626 GeorgeT Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:00:48 +0000 http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/08/28/how-do-you-want-to-die-berry/#comment-45626 Deaths occur often in Wendell Berry's fiction. Where for many people death is separate from life, for him the question "How should we die?" is part of the question "How should we live?". In a life well lived, death is not to be feared. The outstanding treatment is in his brilliant long story "Fidelity": when the health of the old outdoorsman Burley Coulter begins to falter, his family seeks medical help, only to find, before they have realized what is happening, that he is in a distant hospital, kept alive by machines and tubes; his son decides to get him out of there and back to the farm, but to do so he will have to defy the authorities and work by stealth... Deaths occur often in Wendell Berry’s fiction. Where for many people death is separate from life, for him the question “How should we die?” is part of the question “How should we live?”. In a life well lived, death is not to be feared. The outstanding treatment is in his brilliant long story “Fidelity”: when the health of the old outdoorsman Burley Coulter begins to falter, his family seeks medical help, only to find, before they have realized what is happening, that he is in a distant hospital, kept alive by machines and tubes; his son decides to get him out of there and back to the farm, but to do so he will have to defy the authorities and work by stealth…

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