Thoughts on suicide and assisted dying.
When you think about it since the beginning of time human beings have been solving their problems with death. Cane and able two brothers cannot get along, death provides a solution. Two nations can’t stand each other. Well they can kill each other until everyone who cares about it enough to go to war is dead and then the problem is solved. death brings peace. Are your old people too ill, too dysfunctional? too many mouths to feed for someone who isn’t pulling their weight? Put them out exposed to the elements and death will solve the problem. Are your people so miserable that they can’t stand to get out of bed in the morning, well leave them in bed until they starve or until they kill themselves in despair. Death solves the problem.
As human beings we frequently resort to death to solve societies problems. To solve individuals problems that they cannot tackle on their own. Resorting to death to solve our problems is just human laziness.
Because collectively we have the power to really do something about most of these problems. We have the technology to feed the world, we have the technology to house the world. Our medical technology has greatly increased peoples lifespans because we’ve poured a lot of energy and effort into acute diseases. But the problem is sometimes we work so hard on extending peoples lives we forget that chronic illness can rob them of a reason for living. It might be long-term disability, painful conditions, long-term mental health issues, either way the resources to address this sort of thing simply aren’t there. It’s not because we don’t have the technology. I can tell you for a fact what’s been achieved on the lab bench even decades ago, often doesn’t make it into clinical practice. Sometimes it’s because of life threatening side-effects. More often it’s because the process of commercialising the technology is too expensive. many of these experimental lab techniques are developed under the assumption that shortcuts can be found later on to avoid some of the more complicated and resource intensive steps. When that proves not to be true, when you discover you can’t avoid time-consuming tissue engineering or substitute simple compounds for gene therapy, then interest tends to wane. Governments aren’t willing to shell out huge amounts of money to resolve chronic illnesses unless they’re life-threatening or hugely expensive in terms of maintenance treatment. By the same token there are only so many individuals with the kind of money to buy such things privately.
Something similar could be said for mental health. So often it’s not as simple as just giving people therapy. Therapy is a good start but long-term mental ill health is often driven by situations. Disability, addiction, social isolation, The hopelessness of having limited options in life. Feelings of being trapped which are validated by real life circumstances. It’s not enough just to give people therapy sometimes you have to change peoples situations and that tends to cost money, time and effort.
So when people commit suicide we tend to blame them. we tend to suggest it’s a form of weakness on their part. But I think just as often the weakness that is highlighted is societies weakness. Or even worse societies laziness. That we are perfectly prepared to use death as a solution to the problems that drive people to a state of hopelessness in which they would contemplate taking their own lives.
This is I think what makes the philosophy of assisted dying so abhorrent to me. Don’t get me wrong I don’t look down upon those who feel compelled to end their own lives. I look down on the society that has chosen to leave them in a place where they feel they have no other option. We wouldn’t have to consider assisted dying if there was more support for assisted-living. It’s not particularly difficult to jump off a cliff or swallow a lot of pills. Even Stephen Hawking, I assume, if he had felt suitably inclined could’ve programmed his wheelchair to drive him off the edge of a cliff. If we maintain peoples independence until the very last moment they always have the option to end it for themselves.
Even someone in the early stages of dementia could before the effects became severe acquire poison and keep it in a safe place so that if they ever get to a point where they can no longer tolerate their situation, they can in a lucid moment dig out that bottle of poison.
When we talk about assisted dying what we typically mean is painless dying. I don’t think it’s in peoples interest or the public interest for suicide to be painless. I think if the thought of a painful death troubles you enough that it would prevent you from doing it then maybe it’s a good thing. because clearly your situation isn’t that dreadful if that is enough to stop you.
I somewhat feel the same way about hospice care, I can’t imagine wanting to spend my last days in a place that would remind me of the fact that I am imminently about to die. I’d rather have my body patched up and proped up and pumped full of whatever drugs were necessary to keep it moving so that I continue to experience life on my own terms until the very last moment. Maybe we can never outrun death but we can give it a damn good try. By living our lives instead of waiting for the end.
People seem to have this fake sense of moral superiority in this notion of accepting death. I personally think it is more noble to live one’s life to the full in spite of imminent death and in defiance of it.
Call me cynical but it is far easier to dump someone in a bed and faun over them than it is to perform extensive medical procedures upon them knowing that all it’s going to do is to improve their quality of life for a few weeks or months after which they will inevitably die.
If we spent more time trying to make life worth living and less time trying to stop people dying I think people would probably live longer.
People say war is a failure of states craft. Famine a failure to plan for the future. I consider assisted dying to be a failure of medicine. And suicide in general I considered to be a failure of society to look after its most desperate and vulnerable members.
