Re: Voucher

I have an ever-growing file on my (dis)abilities, MRIs showing lesions in my brain and other assorted neurologically-themed documents. That will have to do.

If you believe my school report cards I was a well-behaved child at the top of my class and usually the teacher's pet.

My karate sensei a few decades back just retired from the police service as Deputy Chief. He could speak well of me, and of my children who also trained at his dojo and played with his kids when we were neighbours.

Re: Voucher

I suppose some will speak kindly of me and others will be indifferent - Isn''t that usually the way it is? I am not perfect. I haven't shaken the earth with my accomplishments and have made mistakes, but I hope I will have left something positive behind when I have gone and those who have known me well may remember me with fondness. I don't think it is important to me to have a testimonal or someone to vouch for what sort of life I have had or what I have achieved and whether I was an OK person.

Re: Voucher

No one is likely to know another 100%, and whilst they maybe prepared to vouch for them, it doesn't guarantee that the person vouched for is reputable.

Re: Voucher

O.K so lets suppose someone wakes up somewhere totally alien to them, the locals fortunately speak English so communication is possible. The person has no knowledge of this alien place, and the locals have never heard of old "Blighty", all you have is a memory of the people you knew, and the locals have to accept what you say because there is no way of verification, how long could you hold on to the memories as a record of factual events, without others to verify them as fact?.

Re: Voucher

If they are my memories I suppose I could hold onto them as long as I had the powers of recall (which, hopefully would be until I died). They would be my memories and my interpretation of things as I understood them to be when I was somewhere else, so I wouldn't need anyone to verify them. The new locals wouldn't have to accept what I said initially and I wouldn't expect them to. It would be up to both parties to get to know each other. Then maybe if we come to trust each other we would give some credence to what each other is saying and asking us to accept. They would form opinions and make judgements about me just as I would about them. If there is mutual trust and respect why would verification from outsiders be important?

Edited to add:
I would also have to trust these new people - I would need them and I could get into all sorts of mess without their help. Also even if I had someone along with me to vouch for me, why would any stranger trust what the person vouching for me says. Just a thought.

Re: Voucher

Maybe it takes more than one person to establish a fact, it must be difficult to state a case for one's terminal persona without the tesitmony of fellow, long term close (related maybe) folks who have no axe to grind.

Re: Voucher

This has the makings of a good novel or perhaps a movie script.

Re: Voucher

Would more than one person establish a fact and how meaningful would that fact be to anyone else. I think it is all relative and why would anyone need to establish a case for one's persona in a completely new environment. I would think that will be tested and evidenced by what someone does in the new environment. I would say that what is going on in the present and how someone behaves and acts then is the most important evidence. We all have things in our past that we would rather leave behind in the past. Don't we all make up our own minds about each other from our own experiences with a person and time usually tells. For example, if I said I had credentials in carpentry and could build just about anything anyone wanted, surely the best thing I could do would be to prove it by doing it. (Put up or shut up sort of thing). Bits of paper and references are only as good as the person or establishment who gives them to you and they are opinions, not necessarily facts. In another world they could be quite useless. For me the proof is in the action of people in the here and now, not in any opinion anyone else may have about me.
Another way of thinking about it is - say I was an old, frail man and I found myself in another strange land where nobody knew me or anything of my past. I would be judged as an old man and I would not be able to do the things or be the same as I was as a young man when people evaluated me and I was in my prime. So any credentials or vouching system would be of little value. What and who I was would be established on how people viewed and valued me in the present, not the past.

Re: Voucher

Note to all potential autobiographers, don't put pen to paper, unless you have had a bad prognosis, and have less than a week to live, only then will we have a true picture of who you are, it matters not of who you were.

An elderly gentleman (108 years old I think) was on the news recently, because of his age, and is recently deceased. He was once a preacher, and said during the interview that, throughout his long life, he asked of himself three questions, who am I, what am I, and where am I going, I guess these questions have now been answered.

Re: Voucher

There's much I think should simply go to the grave with me. If I have warning before the end, my last message will be to ask anyone who thinks of me once I've gone to do an act of kindness for someone in need and ask nothing in return.