What is a representative state, exactly, and why should that be treated as categorically normative? My consciousness has changed over time as I've matured. I would never wish to regress to the ignorance and stupidity of youth. I see the world differently and more accurately than I did before, and I am more rational and measured. The illusions that youth so easily absorbs lay less of a claim on me (some people persist in this juvenile state for life, it seems).
I understand the concern that in a state of distress, people can make decisions that aren't rational, but people also make irrational decisions when not in distress. Comfortable people are often attached to comfort, preventing them from pursuing what is good until some proportionate threat or discomfort dislodged them from that state. Procrastination is a way of avoiding distress or discomfort, but deadlines can work marvelously to focus an undisciplined person that would otherwise drift and dawdle. Most of us have experienced this effect.
In similar fashion, the awareness of imminent death can focus the mind. Those on death row, perhaps knowing more or less the day of their deaths, are put in a position that make wishful thinking, distraction, and postponement less easy. This is why it is said that if the death penalty doesn't move someone toward remorse, then it is unlikely anything will. These are either the mentally ill or people hardened in their evil.
So I would say: you cannot speak absolutely about the death bed. People enter death in different states of mind, different states of knowledge, that can vary their responses to death. It cannot categorically be said that what is said on one's death bed is true or untrue, or sound or unsound. It depends. But it is also true that death is the ultimate threat, and that remembering that it can strike at any time and without warning can remind us of the preciousness of the little time we have in this life, and in doing so keep us from dissolving into myriad aimless and senseless distractions and diversions that so tragically squander this unrecoverable, perishable privilege.
What is a representative state, exactly, and why should that be treated as categorically normative? My consciousness has changed over time as I've matured. I would never wish to regress to the ignorance and stupidity of youth. I see the world differently and more accurately than I did before, and I am more rational and measured. The illusions that youth so easily absorbs lay less of a claim on me (some people persist in this juvenile state for life, it seems).
I understand the concern that in a state of distress, people can make decisions that aren't rational, but people also make irrational decisions when not in distress. Comfortable people are often attached to comfort, preventing them from pursuing what is good until some proportionate threat or discomfort dislodged them from that state. Procrastination is a way of avoiding distress or discomfort, but deadlines can work marvelously to focus an undisciplined person that would otherwise drift and dawdle. Most of us have experienced this effect.
In similar fashion, the awareness of imminent death can focus the mind. Those on death row, perhaps knowing more or less the day of their deaths, are put in a position that make wishful thinking, distraction, and postponement less easy. This is why it is said that if the death penalty doesn't move someone toward remorse, then it is unlikely anything will. These are either the mentally ill or people hardened in their evil.
So I would say: you cannot speak absolutely about the death bed. People enter death in different states of mind, different states of knowledge, that can vary their responses to death. It cannot categorically be said that what is said on one's death bed is true or untrue, or sound or unsound. It depends. But it is also true that death is the ultimate threat, and that remembering that it can strike at any time and without warning can remind us of the preciousness of the little time we have in this life, and in doing so keep us from dissolving into myriad aimless and senseless distractions and diversions that so tragically squander this unrecoverable, perishable privilege.