Your personal opinions trump those of the state? Glad to see that you’ve come around on this issue.
I do not dispute that she had the legal right to commit suicide.
I dispute that she should have.
And yet you called her “insane” for doing something that is within her legal rights to do to avoid immeasurable pain for her and horrible memories for her family and friends, something that her family, friends and medical team supported. The only real detriment so far is your displeasure that she didn’t feel more pain-when/if non-dying people decide to follow in her footsteps then you’ll have a solid argument, but not until then.
She didn’t have the right to decide what her family should or shouldn’t go through. I’m sure they “supported” her once it was clear she wasn’t going to change her mind - what else would they do, shut her away to die alone? - but that doesn’t make her act any less selfish and insane.
Then I guess I’ll have to keep watching the headlines.
You’re sure that’s how it went down? What accounts of their ordeal did you read, where you got that idea?
You do that. Come back to us when the sky starts falling, o.k.?
Smapti believes it because, apparently, s/he is pissed–and possibly jealous-- that Maynard traveled to far-flung places of this world.
Or something. I know; logic has nothing to do with it.
By your own argument, that’s exactly what they should have done, and they were cowards for not doing so and thereby protecting themselves from her forcing them to “go through” whatever it was they “went through” as a result of her decision.
Perhaps they were.
I believe it because I believe that when someone has been given much, much will be required in return. People who live lives of privilege and leisure, as she did, are obligated to adhere to a higher standard as examples to the rest of us. Killing yourself because you can’t climb mountains and tour Europe anymore is an abrogation of that duty, petty, selfish, and shows that life is of little value if it’s less than perfect.
Once again, what accounts have you read of their ordeals, of what they feel about what transpired?
Smapti, I keep have to read this trainwreck because you keep it going, needlessly.
Before you post any more silly one-liners, I want you to post exactly why you think that anyone has an obligation to continue to live in pain. Not the silly assertions that you have thrown out, thus far, but an actual thought, developed from facts and logic, that presents a clear case for your belief.
[ /Moderating ]
Required by whom? What do you know of what she has given in her life? what have you read about her life journey? What gives you the right to hold the scales of her life and say whether or not they balance out?
Some people would rather live a short happy life than a long one full of pain. You may choose otherwise, but that’s your choice, and your’s alone. You don’t have the right to make that choice for other people – even if you wish they’d stay around for you. You claim you have no intention to suffer or risk yourself for others – well, it’s a two-way street.
You know, it’s funny - I’m anti-suicide in general, which should surprise no one here who has engaged me in other threads about suicide, but “terminal illness” is one situation where I could, if not condone it, at least accept it.
She seems to have had access to proper medical care, it was not impulsive (didn’t she re-schedule the date and decide to live a little longer than originally planned?), she clearly carefully considered the situation, and so far as I know there was no coercion involved here. I don’t know if I would have made the same choice in her place, but it does seem to have been a choice.
I am uncomfortable with her suicide, but in this instance I am OK with her choosing to go that route. I have expressed my concern before that in terminal illness an option to die might become a duty to die, which latter I would definitely oppose, but as I said, I don’t see where there was any force involved.
If we are going to allow suicide for the end stage of a terminal illness I’d prefer it to be like this one, where a doctor prescribes a certainly lethal dose with, I presume, instructions to make the outcome certain rather than risk botching it and leaving the person even worse off than before.
This statement is too vague to even rise to the level of a platitude, rests upon an assertion of fact not in evidence (unless you have a cite that she was “given” stuff as opposed to spending money she earned fair and square), and is readily discarded by you when inconvenient (e.g. if you consistently applied this doctrine, you would be hailing Edward Snowden to the skies for giving up his comfortable upper-middle-class American lifestyle rather than casting cheap shots at him).
Now, can we haz some of those “facts and logic”?
She also volunteered in the area of animal rescue after working for a Master’s Degree in Education.
Getting a Master’s is no easy task, and animal rescue is not glamorous.
Not good enough. I believe anyone who climbs Kilimanjaro is obligated to work in a leper colony for 18 months minimum.
Uh… have you ever actually seen someone die? Frankly, the “actual mental and physical experience” of it sucks, even for a “peaceful” death.
It’s like arguing that if you need to have a limb amputated you shouldn’t have anesthesia, you should have the “actual mental and physical experience” of having an arm or leg sawed off. Um… no.
Actually, “sucks” isn’t strong enough a word for dying. Death itself - the dead don’t suffer, they’re actually at peace. Dying, on the other hand, can be awful and I just don’t have the words for how bad it can actually get at times though, thanks to modern palliative care, it’s not always as bad as it used to be.
(Actually, my mom’s death, which I was present to witness, didn’t require pain medication, she hadn’t had any medication for several days, and was pretty peaceful as these things go. I still would not describe it as fun and she sure as hell was neither “lucid” nor “aware”)
“Lucid and fully aware” does not accurately describe the state of someone in the final stages of terminal cancer. Either they’re awake and undrugged and in sufficient pain to drive anyone mad, or they’re drugged unconscious, or maybe in some state in between, hopefully closer to “dazed” rather than “screaming in agony”.
The fact she had brain cancer makes it almost certain that had she stayed to the bitter end she’d either be in a coma or else very much not in a state one could describe as “lucid and aware” because her BRAIN is effed up beyond all hope of repair, therefore not working properly, therefore not lucid even if retaining some awareness. In that state you’re lucky if they can drug you into a coma.
Let’s see, the choice is either “die in a haze of agony” or “die in numb haze”. Gosh, I get to choose?
This wasn’t someone physically healthy who could, arguably, go on to live a fulfilling life with the right treatment. This is someone who was going to die soon anyway. In my view it’s one of the few times where choosing suicide can seem rational.
Very well.
Human beings are social animals. Our primitive ancestors functioned, as we do, not as individuals, but as a group; and our evolution as a species has produced civilization and the social contract, whereby it is tacitly agreed that none of us are capable of living an optimal life on our own without the assistance of others, and that we surrender aspects of our absolute free will as individuals to the whole for the greater good of all.
As such, every human being is burdened with numerous obligations from the day they are born until after they have died. Some of those obligations are inherent in the circumstances of their birth; for example, the obligation to preserve their own life, the obligation to abide by the laws of the society in which they are born, the obligation to love and support the family they are born into. Other obligations are assumed voluntarily; the obligation to excel at the occupation they are employed in, the occupation to abide by the laws or rules of the organizations they have chosen to affiliate with as adults, the obligation to love and support the family they have created. These obligations, once assumed, are not easily dismissable - they form the backbone of the social contract that underpins civilization, because civilization cannot function if an individual cannot trust those he depends on to fulfill their obligations.
Self-preservation is the foremost obligation of any human being, because no other obligation can be upheld if it is not. If the individual fails to keep himself alive, he is incapable of loving and supporting his family, incapable of supporting his country, incapable of providing a better future for his children, incapable of doing anything at all, because he no longer exists.
The next most important obligation (after the obligation to the state, which will not be addressed here as it is not especially relevant) is the obligation to family. The family is the core social unit in which the human being operates; it is the first unit an individual is part of from the moment they are born, it forms the nexus of their experiences as a child and as a young adult, it evolves over the course of their life as they go from the family they were born in to creating a family of their own, and, in general, it is the family that will support them in their final days and address the disposition of their affairs afterward. Obligation to family encompasses multiple sub-obligations; a child is obligated to obey his parents, a parent is obligated to support, nurture, and protect their child, older siblings are obligated to protect and tolerate younger siblings, younger siblings are tolerated to respect and learn from older siblings, spouses are obligated to support each other, and all members are obligated to love one another, because the human being functions best when it knows it is loved.
Death is a traumatic and irreparable experience to the family. The individual who dies can no longer fulfill the obligations they once had, and the remainder of the family is diminished. The spouse no longer has the love and support of the person they came to love more than anyone; the child lacks an exemplar and source of education; the sibling no longer has the person with whom they have more in common than any other human being; the parent no longer has that into which they invested time and labor and emotion in the hopes that they would grow to be productive and happy.
Thus, it is in the rational interest of any individual to avoid death for as long as possible; for their own sake in knowing that they will be able to fulfill their various obligations to others, for the sake of the family that they love and which loves them and which depends upon them for various reasons; and for the greater sake of the society around them, to which they owe various obligations not addressed here.
To willingly end one’s life prematurely is a unilateral abrogation of these obligations. The individual can no longer fulfill any of the various obligations set upon them, because they no longer exist; and therefore, all those who were depending on the individual, for any reason, are left short. Those with emotional bonds to the person ending their life may claim to support their action, because they love the person and do not wish to display hostility towards them in the final stage of their life; but they are nonetheless harmed by the person’s absence as explained above.
Furthermore, as described above, human beings learn by example from those to whom they hold an emotional affinity. By ending one’s life prematurely, one teaches those who view one as a teacher that ending one’s life prematurely is acceptable behavior, which, in the long term, both diminishes the perceived value of human life as the conditions under which life is deemed to be worth living are drawn narrower and narrower, and weakens the social contract and civilization as a whole as suicide comes to be viewed as an acceptable end-run around obligations one does not wish to fulfill.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon those who are experiencing a poor quality of life not to commit suicide, and, instead, to endure any suffering that may subsequently result; because suicide cheapens the value of human life, because suicide has a negative impact on those left behind, and because only through choosing to live can one embetter the world around them.
Will that do?