{"id":236438,"date":"2023-06-05T12:01:41","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T11:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=236438"},"modified":"2023-06-03T09:58:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T08:58:39","slug":"against-involuntary-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/06\/against-involuntary-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Against Involuntary Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

29 May 2023 – <\/em>I recently celebrated my 85th<\/sup> birthday, an event that clearly lands me in \u201cthe valley of the shadow of death,\u201d as King David or his scribe so neatly put it.\u00a0 Friends of mine are falling ill and dying at a rate rapid enough to justify Philip Roth\u2019s grim reference to \u201cthe holocaust of my generation.\u201d\u00a0 For a self-donated birthday present I gave myself permission to talk publicly about the more general implications of this situation in a way that some people may consider irritating or tasteless.<\/p>\n

You may have noticed that death \u2013 especially one\u2019s own relatively imminent demise \u2013 is not considered a suitable topic for polite discussion.\u00a0 It\u2019s not exactly taboo, since there is a certain way of talking about it that is not only accepted but encouraged.\u00a0 Call this the discourse of acceptance.\u00a0 If I say, \u201cCertainly, I\u2019m going to die, but that\u2019s ok because . . .\u201d (fill in the blank: \u201cI\u2019ve had a full life,\u201d \u201cwe all have to go eventually,\u201d \u201cit\u2019s God\u2019s plan,\u201d whatever), that sort of speech is permissible even at the dinner table.<\/p>\n

What is not<\/em> considered OK is the discourse of non-acceptance exemplified by the title of this essay.\u00a0 Many readers will think the title absurd.\u00a0 \u201cAgainst Involuntary Death\u201d?\u00a0 Why not \u201cAgainst the Involuntary Sunrise,\u201d or \u201cAgainst Involuntary Breathing\u201d?\u00a0 Most people consider dying to be natural and inevitable \u2013 an event even more universal and certain than taxes.\u00a0 We may be able to tinker with this reality by adopting medical or social improvements that increase the average life span by a few years, they contend, but there\u2019s really nothing much one can do about the Big Sleep. \u201cThe days of our years are threescore years and ten,\u201d says the Psalmist. \u201cAnd if by reason of strength they be fourscore years\/ Yet is their pride travail and vanity\/ For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who accept this inevitability are said to be realists; those untroubled by it are called brave or serene.\u00a0 \u201cGod grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . . \u201d\u00a0 But life expectancies are nothing if not changeable!\u00a0 It is not our natural fate to die at 77 (the current average life expectancy in the U.S.A.) or at 73 (the current global life expectancy) any more than it was the fate of a medieval peasant to die at 45 or 50. The relevant question isn\u2019t whether involuntary death is inevitable at some point, but how long a life is long enough.<\/p>\n

Based on current medical information, scientists estimate that the maximum human lifespan is about 150 years.[i]<\/a>\u00a0 Over time, this figure could be extended, perhaps even indefinitely, by medical advances,[ii]<\/a> but even now there is no reason other than current social and political priorities<\/em> to accept an average lifespan of less than a century, if not a decade or two longer.<\/p>\n

Absolute Immortality is not the issue here.\u00a0 (I will have more to say in a bit about beliefs in eternal life).\u00a0 What we might call \u201crelative immortality\u201d is.<\/p>\n

Relative immortality means that most of us can live much longer lives not in pain, or as old people suffering some terminal illness, but as mature adults enjoying an extended healthy<\/em> life expectancy.\u00a0 What the World Health Organization calls HALE means, in effect, extending one\u2019s middle age rather than one\u2019s senescence. The medical potential to do this already exists, but to realize it in the realm of social policy will clearly take work: political action by ordinary people demanding longer life as a human right, and imaginative social programming by public servants determined to satisfy that demand.<\/p>\n

I would imagine \u2013 wouldn\u2019t you? \u2013 that the availability of methods to increase our healthy lifespans by decades would generate a large-scale movement aimed at realizing this goal. It\u2019s natural, is it not, to want to live a relatively healthy and happy life for as long as possible?\u00a0 Since self-preservation, like liberty, is a basic human need, the possibility of living significantly longer lives than we do now should be as politically explosive as, say, the Enlightenment discovery that common people long considered too stupid or irrational to rule themselves had the potential to create democratic states. One can imagine huge demonstrations by old people and their young allies replete with slogans like \u201cDEATH IS OVERRATED,\u201d \u201cLIFE BEGINS AT 100,\u201d and \u201cRELATIVE IMMORTALITY NOW!\u201d\u00a0 A movement of this sort, appealing to people of varied political persuasions, has the potential to reorder the priorities and alter the flavor of politics, but \u2013 mysteriously \u2013 most people, including the aged, seem more inclined to defend the demographic status quo than to challenge it.<\/p>\n

We will analyze this conservatism in a moment.\u00a0 First, though, let\u2019s talk about why living longer is a good idea.<\/p>\n

Death and Basic Human Needs<\/strong><\/p>\n

It goes almost without saying that our most powerful instinct is the desire to survive \u2013 a product of not only of biology but also of well-developed cognition and emotion.\u00a0 Some people will say that death is just the other side of life \u2013 can\u2019t have one without the other \u2013 but this seems to me both abstract and complacent.\u00a0 Let\u2019s talk turkey about this rather than striking Zen poses.\u00a0 If you love people or are curious about them, you don\u2019t want to leave them.\u00a0 You want to continue caring for them, being cared about in return, being present in their lives, and watching them grow.\u00a0 Our needs for human connection are fundamental.\u00a0 If anything, they become stronger and more demanding as we age, not less important.<\/p>\n

Or consider another imperative human need: the need for meaning.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to die if you\u2019re interested in the world and want to know what happens next.\u00a0 Human curiosity is as powerful a reason for extending life as any other reason.\u00a0 What new experiences will I have?\u00a0 What new people will I meet?\u00a0 Life is enjoyable because it continues to be novel \u2013 not merely repetitive.\u00a0 What can be more exciting and satisfying than watching things change and being part of the change?<\/p>\n

In fact, if one has any desire to make sense of the world \u2013 and almost everyone does \u2013 this means living longer.\u00a0 People never reach the point of saying, \u201cNow I know it all.\u201d Death aborts the search for answers to interesting questions.\u00a0 It ends the quest for understandings that make sense of the world\u2019s rumble and jumble.\u00a0 Not only that, it also forces us to abandon the fight to realize the personal and social values that give our lives meaning.<\/p>\n

To put this more generally, death puts an end to our creativity.\u00a0 Creativity, after all, is not some special gift reserved for an elite.\u00a0 It\u2019s another basic human need.\u00a0 Whether planning a trip, weeding a garden, or working out some family problem, we do something every day to make the world a little different than it was the day before.\u00a0 Death stops us from developing and exercising this everyday creativity.<\/p>\n

Which basic needs does involuntary death not<\/em> deny?\u00a0 We spend decades developing and maintaining a sense of identity \u2013 but one\u2019s personal identity ends with the end of life.\u00a0 We virtually never stop seeking pleasure, but death puts an end to the quest for sensual, intellectual, and spiritual joys.\u00a0 In fact, it puts an end to our story \u2013 not with some satisfying concluding chapter, but the way a book ends when someone throws it into a fire.<\/p>\n

A Brief Note on the Afterlife<\/strong><\/p>\n

In saying this, I assume that there is no heavenly or hellish life after death.\u00a0 You may disagree, of course, but IMHO, the most interesting thing about dreams of immortality is that they testify to the high price \u2013 the supreme price in some ways \u2013 that we place on life<\/em>.\u00a0 Why have humans imagined for millennia that life in some form continues?\u00a0 Because we want love, surprise, creativity, understanding, the pursuit of value, and sheer pleasure to continue!\u00a0 Involuntary death dissatisfies every profound want and every pressing need that make us human.\u00a0 Existentialist philosophers are quite right to call it \u201cabsurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not only secular philosophers who feel this way; the Abrahamic religions also recognize that death is an evil rather than a feature of God\u2019s good Creation.\u00a0 After all, Adam and Eve were not created to die.\u00a0 When expelled from the Garden for their misdeeds, their punishment consisted of the three great evils: toil, pain, and death.\u00a0 Religious thinkers consider all these penalties temporary and reversible, since God has promised to liberate humanity (indeed, the whole cosmos) from oppression, sickness, and mortality.\u00a0 Even In the fallen society that we inhabit, social and medical innovators have learned to challenge the inevitability of toil and pain.\u00a0 As a result, two of the three great punishments have already been mitigated to some extent.\u00a0 So why do modernists of various sorts spend so much time and energy justifying the third?<\/p>\n

Lethal Conservatism: WTF?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I said, most people consider death at our current average life expectancy natural and inevitable.\u00a0 Modern society is so sold on this, in fact, that news of the possibility of greatly increasing our healthy lifespans hardly ever appears on news media channels or journals \u2013 not even in the social media, where all sorts of subversive ideas are allegedly given free rein.\u00a0 Furthermore, when people assert that something is natural and inevitable, this is almost the same thing as saying that it is good.\u00a0 Dying in your seventies or eighties \u2013 or if you\u2019re unusually fit or lucky, in your nineties \u2013 accords with what many religious folks would call Natural Law or God\u2019s will, and what many secularists consider ecological necessity.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s right with death?\u00a0 Even if one thinks that dying is inevitable at some point, what can possibly justify shortening<\/em> life by failing to mobilize society\u2019s resources to keep everyone alive for as long as possible?<\/p>\n

One obvious answer is that if people are ill and in pain, death ends their suffering.\u00a0 This is surely part of the reason why the poet John Keats, afflicted by a then incurable tuberculosis, wrote that he was \u201chalf in love with easeful Death . . .\u201d\u00a0 Choosing to die is easier today than it was in Keats\u2019s time \u2013 a good thing, many people would agree, since this means expanding the realm of human agency and reducing the sway of necessity.\u00a0 But \u2013 to repeat the question \u2013 why impose a death sentence on those in reasonably good health?<\/p>\n

An ecologically oriented friend offers this response: she says that dying is a good thing for our species because it gets rid of some people to make room for others. According to a line of argument laid down three centuries ago by Thomas Malthus, the already crowded earth will become unlivable if too many of us live on it for too long a time.\u00a0 Modern Malthusians add that the advent of global warming and other climatological disasters makes the need to limit population even more pressing.<\/p>\n

But hold on!\u00a0 Birth control is one thing, but do we really want to maintain or increase the death rate for purposes of population control? \u00a0This smells a good deal like what used to be called eugenics \u2013 a discredited form of population engineering to \u201cimprove the race.\u201d\u00a0 In any event, Malthus was wrong on two crucial counts: the human population did not grow as rapidly as he thought, and food production did not increase as slowly as he expected.\u00a0 The gloomy economist had no idea what human inventiveness could accomplish in agriculture or any other area of production \u2013 a pessimism adopted by modern Malthusians who deny our ability to combat climate change by transforming the way we do business and politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cA small minority of wealthy people\u00a0produce the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>,\u201d says one expert, summarizing a large pile of evidence.\u00a0 \u201cTheir consumption habits have a much greater impact than overall population numbers.\u201d[iii]<\/a>\u00a0 But some Green advocates would rather pin the despoliation of the planet on overbreeding than on profiteering.\u00a0 Interesting, isn\u2019t it, how so many who consider death natural and inevitable feel the same way about capitalist profit seeking?\u00a0 Their common attitude is political defeatism, at least when it comes to changing existing systems.\u00a0 According to them, you can\u2019t fight the Grim Reaper \u2013 or Wall Street!<\/p>\n

One scientist answers the ecological argument for maintaining current life expectancies like this:<\/p>\n

One argument against extending human life beyond the norm is that it would lead to overpopulation, requiring more resources, while creating more waste, carbon emissions and pollution on a planet we\u2019ve already stressed to breaking point. That\u2019s not usually what happens when people start living longer, though. Instead, birth rates tend to drop as people have fewer children and have them later in life. We know this because it\u2019s already been happening for several decades as healthcare has improved.[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n

True!\u00a0 But the same writer goes on to argue that \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t be greedy,\u201d because increasing life expectancies in the richer nations would increase the already great disparity in lifespans between rich and poor people. [v]<\/a><\/p>\n

This point is certainly worth thinking about.\u00a0 The average life expectancy in Africa is 64 years \u2013 54 in the poorest African nations \u2013 while the Japanese enjoy an average lifespan of 83 years.\u00a0 In the United States, the well to do outlive the poor by an average of about twelve years.\u00a0 Clearly, if we are talking about extending life further, this benefit should be available to everyone<\/em>, not just the top dogs in the high-income nations.<\/p>\n

But who says that those whose lives are already privileged should monopolize the advantages of modern medicine?\u00a0 A number of bioethicists apparently assume that it would be unrealistic to make the entitlement to a longer life universal. This reveals, once again, the profound conservativism of many self-declared liberals.\u00a0 The only reason to limit an extended lifespan to a lucky few is the unwillingness of some \u201cexperts\u201d (also members of the global elite) to consider the economic and political changes needed to extend the same benefit to the many.<\/p>\n

The same implicit conservatism seems to me to underly much of the opposition to a major extension of lifespans in the rich nations.\u00a0 To do this on a large scale even in the U.S., Europe, or Japan would require a major shift in resources from defense and other non-welfare expenditures to life-enhancing programs and would require economic planning.\u00a0 Relative immortality, that is, might require some sort of socialism!\u00a0 Horrors!\u00a0 Or, as the right-wingers used to say, \u201cBetter dead than Red.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death and Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the philosophy of modernism could be summarized in one phrase, it would be something like Sigmund Freud\u2019s motto, \u201cWhere there was id, there shall be ego.\u201d Or, more generally, \u201cWhere there were mysterious, uncontrollable forces that dictated our thoughts and actions, there shall be causes that we understand and control.\u201d\u00a0 Or, more simply still, \u201cWhere there was blind determination, there shall be conscious choice.\u201d Involuntary death, of course, is the ultimate blind determination.\u00a0 For modernists, a campaign to eliminate it \u2013 or at least delay it significantly \u2013 seems as just and as reasonable as a campaign to eliminate hunger or disease.<\/p>\n

But no.\u00a0 The fascinating and (to me) infuriating fact is that the issue of a significant increase in life expectancies has been placed beyond politics not by religious fundamentalists, but by those styling themselves progressives.\u00a0\u00a0 A basic drive of the modernist program (whether secular or religious) is to abandon the idea of immortality secured by supernatural means.\u00a0 \u201cNo hell below us,\u201d as John Lennon sings, \u201cAbove us only sky.\u201d\u00a0 Without a radical vision that replaces heavenly immortality with what I\u2019ve called relative immortality, this leaves us with nature as we know it, including incurable diseases and death in our seventies or eighties from \u201cnatural causes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major extensions of the average lifespan may be technically possible, I hear left-leaning folks argue, but it\u2019s unrealistic to expect a radical change in the foreseeable future.\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 The answer, I am afraid, is that the progressives aren\u2019t all that progressive to begin with.\u00a0 Whether left- or right-leaning, those who propose a seriously \u201cpro-life\u201d agenda will need to reevaluate and reorder current priorities, such as the need for U.S. global supremacy and the size of the military budget, the ability of a profit-driven market to satisfy our basic needs, and the allegedly evil consequences of social and economic planning.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe that we can greatly extend the average life span and maintain the current status quo.\u00a0 But, confronted by radical right- wing movements like MAGA in the U.S. and elsewhere, many progressives have become defenders of traditional norms.<\/p>\n

Here is an antidote to this neo-traditionalism: historically, what makes progressivism progressive is the idea of shared abundance<\/em>.\u00a0 Understanding the forces that maintain scarcity and limit the range of feasible choices empowers us to produce goods and services of all kinds (material, spiritual, artistic) that greatly extend that range.\u00a0 As a result, we get to make decisions for ourselves that were previously made for us by our \u201csuperiors\u201d or by circumstances.\u00a0 Many conservatives also believe that abundance is a key to reducing the power of necessity and expanding the realm of free choice.\u00a0 Moreover, increasing the size of the pie makes many social conflicts that formerly seemed intractable capable of peaceful resolution, at least if the goodies are equitably shared.<\/p>\n

Shared abundance is a key to freedom and to peace.\u00a0 If so, this surely this includes an abundance of life.\u00a0 Common sense tells us that the scarcity of life generates a ruthless struggle to survive among otherwise sociable humans.\u00a0 In competitive societies like the U.S., this translates into a struggle for economic advantage; the richest American men live 15 years longer than the poorest men, and the richest women live ten years longer than the poorest women.[vi]<\/a> \u00a0But we can imagine a future in which one\u2019s chance to live a long life does not depend on one\u2019s market value \u2013 a world in which life spans are extended to the extent that continuing to survive or not becomes a matter of choice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After living well beyond a century, those who have done everything that they want to do, or whose health has deteriorated despite techno-medical advances, may well say \u201cEnough is enough\u201d and make the choice to die.\u00a0 Others not afflicted by suffering or by fatal boredom may want to remain alive to see what happens next to the world they love.\u00a0 For the present, however, we continue to live under the dictatorship of the Reaper.\u00a0 Odd, isn\u2019t it, how those who can\u2019t stop talking about their love of liberty think it is sensible, even virtuous, to justify this gross imposition on their freedom \u2013 to apologize for and even to glorify their oppressor as a god.\u00a0 This bowing before Death makes me wish that everyone would dial up Ingmar Bergman\u2019s 1958 film masterpiece, \u201cThe Seventh Seal,\u201d and watch the hero (a knight, of course) defy the Dark Lord\u2019s orders and gain time \u2013 and dignity \u2013 by challenging him to a game of chess.<\/p>\n

Coda: Going Gentle \u2013 and Not so Gentle — into That Good Night<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s time, isn\u2019t it, for us to stop making death at an unnecessarily early age seem a regrettable but unavoidable spanking from Mother Nature.\u00a0 We do not need a lethal dose of ultra-tough love to keep us from despoiling the planet.\u00a0 And, please, can\u2019t we finally stop philosophizing mindlessly about mortality being a corollary of life?\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t have life without death\u201d is something that lords and priests used to tell peasants and workers whose life expectancy was between 30 and 50 years.\u00a0 Then, as now, it was a con intended to get people to consider death a part <\/em>of life instead of its negation <\/em>and to accept their current life expectancy as natural and inevitable.<\/p>\n

Living a lot longer has always been a radical yet practical idea.\u00a0 You can\u2019t always get what you want, as the song says, but you may \u2013 after a while \u2013 get what you need.\u00a0 We need to go on loving the people we want to love, laughing at the things that make us laugh, working to right the wrongs that we know need righting.\u00a0 We need to live longer.\u00a0 So, if political leaders want a program for change capable of generating passionate support, they should propose lengthening the lives of their constituents by some reasonable figure \u2013 say 30 years.\u00a0 Most people should live to be 110, not 70 or 80, with many living a good deal longer than that.\u00a0 Their descendants will no doubt use that figure as a springboard for further advances in healthy life expectancy.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

In the meantime, all of us now alive are going to die whether we want to or not, and that, as they say, is what it is.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t accept death\u2019s inevitability for ourselves and try to come to terms with it, we will be angry and miserable \u2013 \u201cdiehards\u201d in every sense \u2013 as well as untethered to reality.\u00a0 But, if we do accept it for our descendants and for people yet unborn, we will be defenders of the current status quo, complicit in one form or another of death-worship.<\/p>\n

In this connection I often think about the poet Dylan Thomas\u2019s famous advice to his dying father:<\/p>\n

Do not go gentle into that good night,<\/em>
\nOld age should burn and rave at close of day;<\/em>
\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I admire the sentiment, but now fairly deep into old age, I think that I will rage on behalf of future others, but not for my present self.\u00a0 Faced with an implacable destiny, I\u2019d like to make myself as comfortable as possible, emotionally as well as physically, and go down swinging rather than swearing.\u00a0 For my own peace of mind and my family\u2019s, I will consent to the inevitable with as much grace as I can muster.<\/p>\n

But this sort of consent is individual and temporary, a matter of accommodation to the present unjust situation, not to its perpetual maintenance.\u00a0 Needless scarcity and its corollary, unnecessary suffering, are always unjust, even if one has to live with them while praying for their abolition.\u00a0 In the long run, the attitude that seems most admirable to me is that of the Swedish knight\u2019s squire, Jons, in \u201cThe Seventh Seal.\u201d\u00a0 While the knight, finally in Death\u2019s power, prays desperately for God\u2019s mercy, his squire, equally doomed, speaks to his dark clad conqueror directly.\u00a0 \u201cI will be quiet,\u201d he declares, \u201cbut under protest.\u201d [vii]<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[i]<\/strong><\/a> See, for example, Alex Fox, \u201cStudy suggests 150 years may be the human lifespan\u2019s upper limit,\u201d Smithsonian Magazine<\/em>, June 7, 2021.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> See, e.g., \u201cNew molecule may prevent age-related diseases and increase life expectancy and wellness, study suggests,\u201d Science News, <\/em>August 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Princeton environmental engineer Anu Ramaswami, quoted in Sarah Kaplan, \u201cIt\u2019s Wrong to Blame Overpopulation for Climate Change.\u201d Washington Post<\/em>, 5\/25\/21, accessed at https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/climate-solutions\/2021\/05\/25\/slowing-population-growth-environment\/<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Hayley Bennett, in BBC Science Focus Magazine<\/em>, 11\/5\/21, https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/the-human-body\/extend-human-lifespan\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> The same case is made at greater length, with academic flourishes, in \u201cWho Wants to Live Forever: Three Arguments Against Extending the Human Lifespan,\u201d by Martien Pijnenburg and Carlo Leget. J Med Ethics.<\/a>\u00a02007 Oct; 33(10): 585\u2013587. https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2652797\/<\/p>\n

[vi]<\/a> See Equality of Opportunity Project, http:\/\/www.equality-of-opportunity.org\/health\/#:~:text=The%20richest%20American%20men%20live,are%20growing%20rapidly%20over%20time.<\/p>\n

<\/a>_________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a><\/u> and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University\u2019s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is <\/em>Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 May 2023 – I recently celebrated my 85th birthday, an event that clearly lands me in \u201cthe valley of the shadow of death,\u201d as King David so neatly put it.\u00a0For a self-donated birthday present I gave myself permission to talk publicly about the more general implications of this situation in a way that some people may consider irritating or tasteless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":161915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2347,1169,1496],"class_list":["post-236438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-autobiography","tag-death","tag-humanism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236440,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236438\/revisions\/236440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}