Before I set up the hypothetical, I would like to establish what this discussion is **not **intended to be. Initially I styled the thread as a specific question for pacifists, and though I decided that was too narrow a focus for a healthy discussion, it’s still the thoughts of pacifists I am most interested in. But I don’t mean this to be a gotcha thread; I’m not trying to provoke an answer one way or the other. I don’t know how pacifists would react in this situation. If I did, I wouldn’t ask the question, as rhetorical questions are for preachers and Czechoslovakians.
Okay, here’s the sitch. You and the person you love most – spouse, best friend, eldest child, whatever – win an all-expenses-paid, two-week-long trip to a luxurious resort on a tropical isle; you can take the trip at any time of your choosing… Sadly, you choose the wrong time. Four days after you arrive, there’s an earthquake which devastates the resort. All communication with the outside world is cut off. The island has no airstrip, and the soonest y’all can expect help is in three days.
During the earthquake, your loved one is badly injured. The resort’s doctor (whose competence and motives you have no reason to doubt) is available to diagnose the injuries, but otherwise can’t help much, as her clinic was destroyed in the quake; she has neither surgical equipment, sedatives, or painkillers. The doctor says your loved one’s wounds are terminal; they’ll be dead in about two hours, and those two hours will be increasingly and agonizingly painful. Already your loved one is in such distress that they’re completely incoherent.
Nearby is one of of the island’s police officers, already dead. You can easily obtain his gun. Assuming that the doctor refuses to do so, are you willing to shoot your loved one in the head to end their suffering quickly? Failing that, would you smother them with a pillow? Do nothing? Whatever your answer, why do you choose as you do? Would your answer be different if the injured person were not beloved by you? If you’re a pacifist, does your philosophical opposition to the use of violence affect your reasoning?
Don’t wait for the poll; there won’t be one. It’s reasoning I’m interested in here as much as the final answer.
I have a similar experience in real life… I’ve sworn a personal, private oath, not to take the life of living creatures. (Since you have to draw the line somewhere, I will not kill vertebrates, nor molluscs nor crustaceans.)
One day, I saw a little bird that had fallen from its nest. Dying. Horribly. Still alive, with ants going in and out of it.
I did the necessary thing.
So, yes: even our deepest moral values may come up against extraordinary circumstances, forcing us to compromise.
In your scenario, there is a middle ground: a “sleeper hold” where you cause the sufferer to lose consciousness, without them actually dying.
If (for purposes of argument) that is not possible…then…yeah, I guess that a “mercy killing” would be the right thing to do.
I find it difficult to believe that a person so gravely injured that his death is certain within hours could be put into a sleeper hold without killing him. It seems to me that your plan is virtually certain to be the same as shooting the injured person in the head, only less efficient (read: likely to take longer and cause him or her more pain in the process.)
Why? In what way does your beloved benefit from dying in agony? In what way do you benefit from allowing it?
Also, you specify “human” life, so I assume you are willing to euthanize non-human animals – pet dogs, cats, & so forth. If that is the case, why are you willing to act to end the suffering of such creatures, but not humans?
Maybe this is selfish, but I’m not sure I could fully grasp the situation and be prepared to shoot my loved one inside a few hours. If it went on for days, maybe.
Didn’t we have a discussion substantially like this a few months ago, IIRC? (Although I don’t recall if it was addressed specifically to pacifists.)
The discussion I recall was similar, but set in a rural area with cabins snowbound in a storm, reads impassible (or maybe the power was out and not possible to call for help), and a mortally injured person was a neighbor rather than an SO. Anybody remember that thread?
Okay, I think this is the thread I was thinking of:
started by HeyHomie on 5/24/2012.
The hypothetical is just a bit different there: Isolated in a snowstorm, someone finds a neighbor gruesomely injured and dying; mercy kills same; is tried for murder. You are a juror. How do you find?
Well, as I said, once you stipulate this for purposes of the discussion, then, yeah, I’d do what needs to be done.
This is a very valid point. It isn’t selfish at all; it might very well take time for you (or me, or anyone) to grasp the enormity of the loved one’s pain. We might waste time looking for some kind of treatment. As above, I might delude myself into thinking I could ease them gently into sleep…and make things worse.
We’d be worrying about making the wrong decision. We’d worry about acting too swiftly. What if we just do the deed…and a helicopter full of paramedics lands nearby?
(This was a plot point, handled ineptly, in one of the Star Trek movies. Dr. McCoy euthanizes his own father…and then learns he shouldn’t have, as medical discoveries had come up with treatments for the man’s painful illness. Oops!)
Even if the act was unquestionably necessary, it might simply take time for us to work ourselves up to performing it. Some people might not be able to do it, out of a kind of physical antipathy. All that blood, all that mess…
We aren’t all built to do such things. You know the guy who amputated his own arm, when he was trapped beneath a boulder? Could you have done it? I’m pretty damned sure I could not have.
1> Euthanasia is not violence. Something done to ease suffering is not an act of harm.
2> I’m not one of those who thinks quantity of life is more important than quality.
So, there is no inherent contradiction between pacifism and a mercy killing.
That said, my SO and I were just having very similar conversations… we’ve just started watching “The Walking Dead.” We both posed the question of whether we’d shoot the other if they got bit/turned. Our ultimate conclusion: both of us are so screwed when the zombie apocalypse comes.
More seriously, if this hypothetical doctor happened to have an OD of morphine handy, that would be a lot easier for me to wrap my head around than screwing up the courage to shoot them in the head. Easing them off to (permanent) sleep is one thing, blowing their brains out entirely another. Plus I’d worry that I’d screw it up somehow and cause them more suffering instead of ending it. Rationally understanding the necessity of a mercy killing does not necessarily cancel out the “but I’m murdering him!” emotional response. (Just like shooting your zombie loved one.)
I hope this isn’t fighting the hypothetical, but carrying out the mercy killing would only be something I could see myself doing if I believed, 100%, in the infallibility of the doctor. And I don’t believe that. In real life you don’t KNOW that your loved one is going to die in two hours, and you don’t KNOW that the rescue choppers can’t get there in under 3 days. So that would be a no from me.
I’m a personal pacifist (never hit anyone, never would, but I don’t think ending war is a realistic goal). I am also pro-euthanasia.
I couldn’t do this to a stranger no matter what, because knowing the dying person is a key component in the action I’d choose. I know I’ve wanted to die from pain before, like when I had my kidney stone, but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t. Without knowing the dying person personally, I just couldn’t do it.
I think I could do it for a loved one, but only if they were begging me to kill them. If it was a family member, I’d live a lifetime of regret and need lots of therapy for PTSD. If it was my significant other, I’d probably turn the gun on myself afterward.
If they were truly begging me to shoot them I’d be tempted (for want of a better word). But I honestly don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
I’d have it in the back of my mind that a doctor might somehow miraculously turn up just after I’d pulled the trigger. A certain film adaptation of a Stephen King story springs to mind.
Not to sound like an ITG (Internet Tough Guy), but if the situation was reversed I’d rather go through two hours of agony than have my significant other go through a lifetime of regret over shooting me. I’d want them to hold my hand and express their love for me over and over, even if I was in too much pain to really hear what they were saying.
If it was more than two hours I might feel differently, but I can’t say whether I’d draw the line at ten hours or six months…
No, I’d stay by their side and comfort them as best I can.
Because while I’m a firm believer in euthanasia, it has to be freely requested, and your OP rules that out by having my loved one be already incoherent (presumably before expressing any thoughts on the matter).
Be aware that this has prompted me to discuss this with my wife soon, and depending on her answer, my answer may change (but only in her case.)
No
No, pretty sure I’d answer the same even if I were willing to use violence in other cases. The issue is one of consent, so it doesn’t really hit the same areas of contention other things like killing in self defence does. By which I mean that I’d be willing to mercy-kill someone if they asked me to.
Oh, my love - I’d never want him to suffer. But seriously, what kind of nerves of steel do you think I would have, that I could shoot my SO, in cold blood, with a gun? I’d be terrified I’d not kill him and somehow make him suffer more.
I could do it with a needle, if I had access to such a thing. But shoot him? Unless he’s coherent and begging me to do so (which your OP says he is not) I could not do it. I would sit with him and try to offer what comfort I could until he died.
Well, that’s the conflict, Mika–the fact that the person dying is the person you love most. Though there’s also the issue of post-euthanasia prosecution to consider once Fox News gets hold of the story and starts fucking around for yuks.
I’m pretty certain I could not do it, certainly not within a few hours. I’d do anything I possibly could to relieve her pain - even if it just meant squeezing my hand - but I would not be able to kill her, I don’t think.
I don’t know what “sleeper hold” you folks are talking about - the one I know shuts off blood supply to the brain (police used it before the Tazer came along). The person is not killed, and will regain consciousness shortly after the hold is released.
There is a similar grasp which breaks the neck, the same way a hangman’s noose does.
But trying to maintain the sleeper hold for hours is not practical - it requires great exertion by both arms.
I would have no trouble placing a pillow over my loved one’s face a putting a bullet through it.
If there was a riot forming and ammo was low, I’d suffocate (I don’t know that I’d get the neck snap right, and would not want to cause more pain
