Edit: Thanks to all the folks taking the time to read through this and correct my thinking. I’m seeing how I wound myself up into a kinda toxic headspace and appreciate the hand out of it.
Context: I spent way too much time on Reddit this week getting into dustups with people blaming Dearborn, Michigan for everything that’s wrong in the world. Turns out I’m too much of a pugilist to agitate correctly and I’m stuck unable to metabolize my disappointment that the libs are refusing to learn anything. I’ll get through it. Anyway, one of the discussions centered around users giving up their organ donor status because they don’t want their organs going to Trump voters.
My initial reaction was that it was spiteful and petty as fuck to rescind your organ donor status over an election not going your way*, and if I’d had more patience and less moral outrage I probably could’ve come up with some sort of clever observation that folks who were okay with waiting until after an election for meaningful action to be taken on a genocide were clearly okay with instrumentalizing the lives of others to achieve an outcome, so maybe they were throwing stones from inside a glass house. But, as I chewed on that argument a little more, I started to wonder. I didn’t really reflect a whole lot on checking the organ donor box; as a materialist I’m assuming I’m not going to need my organs if I meet an untimely demise and it makes sense to let someone else have them if they can do some good; ethics committees exist to make sure they’ll be put to good use. But , at the same time, an ethics committee signed off on a heart for Dick Cheney, a man so famously heartless he couldn’t even be bothered to properly thank the family of the kid whose heart he received. If I could add a clause to my organ donor registry excluding Dick Cheney from my organ donation, I would, even if the odds of him continuing to power his unholy grasp on life with my kidneys are astronomically low. If there’s anyone in this world who’s less entitled to even the organs he grew himself, it’s him.
And over the last year I’ve developed a pretty deep pessimism about Americans in general. I stupidly thought we’d learned as a country from the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and those of us who hadn’t become irremediable chuds could be more thoughtful in the wake of October 7th, but nope, even the progressives bayed for more blood. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in the wake of the election, it’s that the people who care are an unwelcome minority.
I know it’s not everyone and that I’ve probably done myself no favors with the amount of time I’ve spent online since COVID started, but I feel like I’m trapped in a death cult and it seems perverse to allow my body to continue it even after I’ve died. I’m considering withdrawing my organ donor registration and willing my body to science instead.
tl;dr: you can’t have my lungs unless you can recite The Internationale
*Side note: one thing I’ve discovered is that libs who are loudly proclaiming that they’re done helping anyone who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris is to express the hope that they don’t find themselves in need of help only to find it similarly conditioned. They all assume they’re going to be fine and the one in position to lend support and to imply the possibility of the inverse can lead to some really, really angry reactions.
I’m considering withdrawing my organ donor registration and willing my body to science instead.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Please reconsider. Donating your body “to science” actually means donating your corpse to capitalists.
I have reconsidered! The discussion on here was great and a comrade sent a pretty depressing article about how bodies donated to science are treated, so I’m not going to make any changes.
Communism is fundamentally about human dignity. We are so used to negating capitalism that we can forget that communism is also a definite, positive conception of the future.
Needing an organ transplant is a vulnerable, scary, and undignified position to find yourself. I don’t care who needs my liver when I’m gone. They are 99.999% not responsible for capitalism even if they are a random Trump supporter, and their suffering will not bring about communism. As a human being I am happy to reduce unnecessary suffering.
Comrades should embody the humanity that they want to see in the world, and let go of petty angers that do not substantially advance the cause.
A great reminder. Thank you.
Yep. Working in emergency I’ve seen three important things:
-
What can technically qualify as “surviving” the sort of injury that would make me a candidate for organ donation. I don’t want to be a prisoner in my body and our MAID laws require that you can physically lift a cup of poison and drink it. Every part of that process seems unimaginably painful if I’m even capable of processing pain.
-
How bleak nursing homes are. If I survive that injury, the only place I can afford is one where a CNA makes near-minimum wage to handle 20+ patients with complex needs.
-
How hopeless being on the transplant list is. Organ failure seems absolutely torturous. With lung failure they come into emergency drowning on room air. With heart failure their legs swell until it’s like they have gout. Dialysis and liver failure are horror shows. Those people are forced to play a pain lottery to survive. If I go to my grave with my organs like a pharaoh I’m just killing X number of people arbitrarily as the last thing I ever do.
Working in emergency
-
Sure my organs could go to a bad person. But they could also go to a good person. I’m not going to run the risk of the latter dying just because the former might benefit.
Rich/evil fuckheads get priority treatment anyway because we live in hell, so donating my own just increases the pool of donations and therefore the odds that there will be something available for normal folks.
Like if Cheney got my heart, then that means someone else’s heart is not going to him, and can instead go to someone who isn’t a monster. And maybe the latent spite in my heart can kill Cheney.
yea
i dont really care what happens to my body when i die cos like. im dead im not using it lmao. also, my body is only “mine” so long as i inhabit it, if I don’t inhabit it anymore other people should get to use it
i think the hypothetical “but what if a really bad person gets my organs D:” is cancelled out by the equally as likely “but what if a really cool person gets my organs :D”
Not reading all that but yes, opted in specifically, though organ donation is opt-out in the Netherlands. (You’re automatically registered when you turn 18, and have to log in to your governemtn acc and opt out if you don’t want to)
To condense my thoughts on the matter, I’m wondering about what it means to be an organ donor in a society that seems radically (and perhaps increasingly) out of step with your personal values. Is it enough to know we’re providing a benefit to a few individuals or should we consider what it means to have your tissues continuing on in the world after your death?
This feels like you’re approaching all of this from a weirdly moralist and antimaterialist perspective. Zoom out for a second. You realize fascists will receive socialized medicine, too, right? When we create a better world, men who battered their wives and grew old in society that applauded them for it will die dignified deaths in socialist society. War criminals who got PTSD from shooting mothers around their children will receive psychiatric care.
That’s just the nature of social change. The atrocities of our epoch are just Tuesday for our grandparents. The profoundly sick, alienating, and dysfunctional society we wish to improve is made up from sick, alienated, and dysfunctional people. That’s who we’re counting on to realize they have to join us in revolutionary struggle, sadly. It’s justifiable that you feel that helping fascists in any way is repugnant. But the sad reality is, any social change we wanna achieve isn’t gonna happen because 1% of people that are perfect socialists vanguardists just will it into happening; we need a mass movement full of those same people. You gotta be ready to see them getting your help. That’s just how it is.
Yeah, I guess I’m just struggling with the hypocrisy of a society that respects the sanctity of our choices when asking us how we want to dispose of our remains but makes broad exceptions for that sanctity when it comes to the other or the marginalized and to see broad social support for those exceptions in things like the indifference to Palestinian suffering and the defeat of the initiative to outlaw prison slavery in California. Being encouraged to remember the goal of doing the most good with what we have and that we can’t make the changes we need on a foundation of misanthropy has helped.
I’m registered but I don’t know which of my organs will even be salvageable tbh.
I feel like organ transplants are (and I know this isn’t 100% true, there are like, compatibility issues), kind of fungible.
Like if there are 1500 people waiting for X organ, and I donate mine, changing the number of people who get one from 1000 to 1001, then literally my organ saved whichever person got it, but without it they were getting the next available one anyways. At some point someone deserving would miss out if we all just decided not to donate and I don’t think that’s worth it.
Sorry if that’s not really clear, had an exhausting day (not bad, just tiring, took my kids to the non-doxxable family activity location, one of them is an infant) and I’m not exactly a philosopher on the best day.
I guess if I’m able to just guarantee that Cheney doesn’t get a heart at all that’s my preferred choice, but I feel like it’s more like “Cheney gets my heart and Susie gets Mark’s heart, and if I don’t donate Cheney gets Mark’s heart and Susie keeps waiting for another one and maybe dies waiting.”
Yeah I’m a donor. You’re not going to beat the death cult by joining the death cult
I’m so powerfully good that, if they took my organs, they’d become good as a result of putting a piece of myself into their body. 👍
Yes, even though the concept sorta squicks me out and it’s entirely possible that my organs could go to somebody I’d hate. Being an organ donor is a net positive for the world, and whichever organs are salvageable won’t be coming out of me until after I’m dead, so even if my organs go to somebody I’d hate, it’s not like I’ll ever have to be around that person. Also, it’s my opinion that virtually nobody is truly irredeemable as long as they’re still alive. If my organs go to a CHUD, I’ve given them some more time to change their ways.
Hell yeah. I hope somebody gets some mileage out of these organs
and willing my body to science instead.
Damn Americans really are #1 at “here’s the dark side of that thing you thought was a good idea”
To approach your question: No, I don’t think you have to worry about your organs saving Dick Cheney. Rich people almost definitely have other ways to get organs and have some sort of priority, so you’re way more likely to save some poor person than you are to save some rich person who would have died otherwise. Rich people will always find a way for organs
