o death where art thou?

The President's Council on Bioethics has just released its report on the criteria the medical profession uses in determining when death has occurred. A synopsis of the report with commentary is here.

Here is a concluding statement taken from the report (pages 60-61, my bold):

"All organisms have a needy mode of being. Unlike inanimate objects,
which continue to exist through inertia and without effort, every
organism persists only thanks to its own exertions. To preserve
themselves, organisms must—and can and do—engage in commerce
with the surrounding world. Their constant need for oxygenated air
and nutrients is matched by their ability to satisfy that need, by engaging in certain activities, reaching out into the surrounding
environment to secure the required sustenance. This is the definitive work of the organism as an organism. It is what an organism “does” and what distinguishes every organism from non-living things.* And it is what distinguishes a living organism from the dead body that it becomes when it dies.

The work of the organism, expressed in its commerce with the surrounding world, depends on three fundamental capacities:
1. Openness to the world, that is, receptivity to stimuli
and signals from the surrounding environment.
2. The ability to act upon the world to obtain selectively
what it needs.
3. The basic felt need that drives the organism to act as it
must, to obtain what it needs and what its openness reveals
to be available."

Though the Council is focused on the body lying in the hospital bed, I cannot help but look at those "three fundamental capacities" in the light of the ambulatory aging (which we all are). If we accept the Council's criteria as indicants of an individual's move toward death, each of us moves toward death as we disengage from the world around us.

The three capacities read like a chain reaction -- we become less open to the world, therefore we become less able to act upon the world, and that inability diminishes our felt need to act (why act if it is useless).

Now the tendency may be here to jump to understanding the actions of one's aging relatives and friends, but my point is concerned with you, yes you, darling, and me. How open are we to the world around us? How able are we to act upon this world? How strong is our felt need to engage with the world? The more closed (this text messaging stuff is for the birds), the less able (what is a twitter anyway), the less our felt need (and why do I need to twit), the closer we are moving toward death.

Excuse me, I've got to go sit
in my big old comfy chair
and let all this go.