In the book If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Mia's life is altered incredibly when she is in a devastating car crash which kills her little brother and her parents. Mia is stuck in a realm between life and death in which she can choose to either live or die. Her boyfriend, Adam, her best friend Kim, and all of her relatives desperately want her to live. This book made me think about the value of a single human life and love as well. Adam and Kim and all of Mia's relatives claim to love Mia, but what is love? Is love something that is even real? And why does it matter so much that Mia stays and lives? Mia is one out of billions of people on this Earth. Why does she matter compared to any other human being? Why do people matter in general, anyway?
The dictionary defines love as, "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend." The things that make us have affection for things lie in the world of science. When we get pleasure out of things and chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin are released in the brain, we as humans process that as a feeling of liking towards whatever the thing may be. If this happens enough times with the same exact thing, we claim to love it. This thing could include a person. And when it comes to humans, we all unconsciously desire love, unless a mental condition like sociopathy prevents us from doing so. We all are blindedly searching for it whether we know it or not. This is because most people believe that with love, comes happiness. But these two things are so similar. They're both surges of chemicals through the human brain, and they both are nearly impossible to find. When Adam wants Mia to stay, he's doing it because apparently, he loves her. But how do we even know what love is? How do we know when we are in love?
If I Stay also made me think about the value of a human life. When Mia is critically injured and could possibly die, all of her relatives and the important people in her life want her to live so badly. Why does it matter if Mia lives? Mia was created equally along with the rest of all the humans on Earth. Why should she be valued over another person? Sentimentality is something that cripples everyone from seeing ethically. When people start to value people over other people, it isn't moral because all humans, value-wise, are the same. Happiness and love can actually make someone think incorrectly. Once people believe they have happiness and/or, they become so scared of losing it. This can be extremely bad when people are in ethical dilemmas. For example, when we read that article from The Ethicist in class about the woman who had the sister with Down Syndrome and Parkinson's disorder, the woman was considering putting a feeding tube in, because she wanted to keep her sister alive so badly because she loved her. But what if the person is happier dead?
All in all, the book If I Stay made me think about the value of human life and love. While mostly all humans desire to be in love, love can blind us and make us ignorant and selfish. It's okay to be in love, but when love affects your ethics and morals, something has to change.
Wow. This was a really blog post, and you were really philosophical about your book. You moved from your book to the whole world and asked philosophy questions about the whole world. You also connected it to the book. I also really liked that you used the dictionary to define love. Great job!!!!
ReplyDeleteFrannie Fran Fran, this is a really well written blog post! I think it's also really great how you connect to the real world and actually compared things. I also think that valuing another person's life over another's is a very important issue in our world, and I think it's great how you tell your opinion about it.
ReplyDeleteLOVE,
Noa Castro :P