scigirl

I actually think about this issue a lot, since I want to be a geriatrician. Many of my patients will believe in an afterlife. I think it's important for me to be aware of not only their beliefs, but also the repercussions of those beliefs (are they afraid of going to Hell? In which case, I will refer them to a priest or something).

If a patient asks me? I think the answer (if this question does have an answer) is "I don't know." Even if I was a Christian, I have no idea if Patient X is making it to the 'good' afterlife!! All I can do is try to minimize their suffering, make sure the family gets a chance to say good-bye, and simply be there for them.

Belief in an afterlife or not, death is a very tough situation for us all.

I think that is quite a bit different than what John Edwards is doing. In this case, you simply withheld information from her, so that her last few moments on earth were pleasing. I have no problem with that. And your motivations were clear.

But what John Edwards is (perhaps) doing is pretending to talk to dead people to comfort the living. This is not a "sin of omission," this is (perhaps) blatant deception for a profit! In my mind, your grandmother situation, and Edwards', are not even in the same category. So, don't feel bad about what you did.

My answer is D, a little bit of everything. Keep in mind that the grieving process is going to invoke several stages of actions from family members. What I would do and say to someone who lost a loved one yesterday is quite a bit different from my actions a year after the death. In the short term, I could see where promoting a deception may be an option. For example--a parent of an MIA marine in Afganistan. Play along with their hopes that their son survived (even though the chance is very slim). But after a while, when all hope is lost, lying to those parents is going to prolong their grief, and not allow them to go through the acceptance stages of grieving.

Bookman,

No offense, but well, get a life.
Making breakfast is hardly a good analogy to the issues that Rainbow Walking originally brought up. But hey, I make silly Law and Order analogies all the time, so I suppose I shouldn't critize you. (And if your wife's happiness depends on what you cook her for breakfast--well, she's got problems. )

My example about my boyfriend was meant to illustrate that deception is a short-term, not a long-term fix. This does not mean that I see no value in certain deceptions. For instance, do I tell my boyfriend how I feel when he has friends over, or on the day he lost his job? No. Will I give more optimism than I feel when giving diagnoses to my patients? Sure.

Keep in mind I am coming at this from a medical perspective. I will have to tell people some really shitty stuff someday. "You have cancer and you are going to die." Stuff like that. Am I an immoral person for this? Would it be better for me to lie to my patients?

I sincerely want to believe that the answer to both questions is NO. Honesty is better. First of all, understanding the disease is the first step to curing and treating it (telling a person they don't have cancer when they do does not make the cancer and the side effects of that cancer go away). Second, if a person knows they only have 5 years left, perhaps they will live their life differently. At the very least, they will prepare their family for the death, and make out a will and such.

I agree with 99%--especially for the big things (like breakfast )

scigirl

Bookman

Scigirl, I appreciate your reply. It clarified that we are actually in agreement on the whole issue:

Being able to communicate hard truths is important to any good relationship. The truth, even when painful is almost always the way to go. Despite that, deceptions about relatively trivial things can be ok -- moral, to use RainbowWalkings parlance.

I wasn't trying to create an equivalence between breakfast and life and death issues; however, someone who asserts an objective morality where all lies are equal is doing just that.

Oh, and by the way, I have a life.

Bookman

scigirl

Heh, thanks for the reply. Good points.

Umm. . . "Posts: 1097"

Are you so sure about that?

scigirl

DRFseven

Actually, I was commenting on the commonly held to be true maxim that it is always better to tell the truth. I agree with you that usually it seems to be, but not always. What many people do is carelessly step all over others' feelings in order to maintain their silly "clean record" of never telling an untruth, which is only "good" for the record-maintainer. Please don't think I'm equating your stated opinion with that; I'm commenting on what I've noticed in society at large. I have one very pious relative who does this constantly and I would love to tell her what I think of the motivation for her "honesty."

OkayYou

Being that we are in the neandertal of what we understand about human origin, consider that if there was no religion, there would still be hucksters saying that they talked to people from the other side. However, sometimes I consider the possibility whether nature's law allows an afterlife.

Assumming there was one, I'm not willing to support a 'president of heaven' and actually believe that this is fact. Proof that any afterlife is governed by some 'being' requires you to go double-deep into blind faith. I have to say, I'm puzzled how people can so easily accept this.

To the subject of white lies, I think the posters before me have addressed this wonderfully! It's a matter of comparison and perspective.

-OkayYou

echidna

The question simply needs to be "does my opinion / information make a useful difference which is productive to the listener ?"

"Unfortunately your results show you have cancer."
The patient usually needs to know this to either seek appropriate treatment or even to plan the rest of their life.

"That new haircut reeks."
Are you simply seeking to simply hurt the person, or are you usefully pointing out that the hairdresser wrote "idiot" in the back of their head ?

"Dearest husband, I really can’t stand your Black Sabbath CD’s."
Is the relationship one where the sharing of a difference is an important part of the understanding between 2 partners, and there is the understanding to agree to disagree ? Or is it just to deride and insult hubby’s fabulous Black Sabbath collection ?

"There is no evidence for an Afterlife."
Given none of us really know, I’d question how useful this is for a 90 yearold Baptist to hear, whereas conversationally to a 20 yearold agnostic it may be of interest.

"I just chatted with your dead wife & she loves you forever."
Grieving is an important and difficult part of life, and something which most of us learn to cope with. In most cases I don’t see that misleading someone to bypass their grief is constructive, and can promote a mindset to live in the past instead of moving on, as has already been pointed out.
There are many more honest things which can be said. "They would want your life to go on", "it’s life’s greatest mystery and somehow we must trust in the universe", and so forth.
The only times when a person is so traumatised by the loss that they cannot cope, the last person I’d recommend would be an mass-audience afterlife charlatan. While grief counselling may be constructively undertaken by a huge range of occupations (including the New Age), it’s a delicate area which should be trodden sensitively, not trampled anonymously by showmen.