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.
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.
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.
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.
Hell yeah. I hope somebody gets some mileage out of these organs
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.
