The Times Online describes an chance too good to pass up: to live and let die.
The founder of the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas was criticised yesterday after revealing plans to help a healthy woman to die alongside her terminally ill husband.
Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities. Critics said that the plans highlighted the risks of proposals to legalise assisted suicides in Britain for people in the final stages of a terminal illness.
AdvertisementThe Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than a fifth of people who had died at Dignitas did not have a terminal condition.
Mr Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.
One of the factors complicating the suicide debate — as with any other — is the question of money. The agency problem has a bad habit of rearing its head in many places. And here it comes again. In this case, the situation is when you hire an agent, Minelli, to advise you on your best interests. But the problem is that is that he stands to make money from urging you to take a certain course of action. Your death is in his best interests. When he describes a suicide at his clinic as a “marvelous opportunity”, is he speaking simply from a sincere belief (never mind whether you disagree with it or not) or is he speaking from an expectation of gain? The Telegraph reports that some people are already looking into the money angle:
While some regard the assisted suicide group as offering a last measure of dignity to those who want to end their suffering, others see its activities as immoral. But now the clinic’s founder, Ludwig Minelli, is being investigated by Swiss prosecutors over claims that Dignitas is making a profit from the fees it charges patients – contravening the Swiss law that sanctions assisted suicides and its own status as a charity. Prosecutors told The Sunday Telegraph that they are also investigating an allegation that patients’ personal possessions have gone missing after their deaths.
The accusations are part of a two-year inquiry by the authorities in Zurich into Dignitas’s activities. Mr Minelli has refused to talk about either the allegations or the investigation, although it is understood he has strongly denied the claims to prosecutors.
Here too, one wonders whether the State is investigating Minelli out of a sense of “morality” or whether it simply wants to maintain its prerogatives as the sole dealer of death to citizens. The fact is that persons contemplating death either cost money or have money. People have wills, legacies and medical bills. And money, like some unseen gravitational force, warps things in proportion to its mass. Put enough money and a knife in a room and anything can happen. These factors exercise an influence on the mind and its useless to deny it. The phrase “a marvelous opportunity” can apply to death or to making money. Drink this, sir. It’s a marvelous opportunity. And in any case the real commentary on our civilization is that if there’s a crime being committed, in modern eyes the crime will be in making a profit, not in the death. That reminds me of a bad joke about bandidos. “Most of the time I kill people for money,” said the bandido to someone he knew, “but you’re since my friend, I’ll kill you for nothing.”
“Embedding disabled by request”
“Most of the time I kill people for money,” said the bandido to someone he knew, “but you’re since my friend, I’ll kill you for nothing.”
heheh
“The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism” by Edward Feser is a good read, very humorous, attacking folks like Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens (“Truly inscrutable are the way of the Hitch; he is a riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a cocktail napkin.”) and showing how in the author’s view the West has turned into a moral and intellectual sewer since jettisoning Aristotle and Aquinas. And we’re so far down the sewer pipe, we hardly notice anymore.
Either there is a soul and an afterlife, in which case suicide is a bad idea because a Power that Be might object to you doing yourself in, breaks a union rule or something, or there is no soul and no afterlife, in which case suicide is also a bad idea because this is all there is. Is that my best run on sentence yet?
Suicide is an act of extreme selfishness, it falls under the Greek sin of hubris by taking on to yourself the powers reserved to God.
Maybe not always a form of extreme selfishness. I’ve got a living will (what a name) for instance, that gives my wife the right to pull the plug under certain conditions (and she will, too!
) and isn’t my willing the withholding of care a kind of suicide? But I don’t think it’s wrong, at the end, when you’re totally worn out. The problem with assisted suicide is the slipperly slope problem, folks being what they are, and there’s the estates, etc. so it’s got to handled very very carefully. It’s not an irrational or selfish thing to long for a little rest after 85 or 95 years of human effort. It should be handled in the family, with the family lawyer, family doctor, etc.
A marvelous opportunity, sir
He said with a winsome smile
With that I’m sure you will concur
Since we’re here but little while
So why not take the chance to find
Some peace and quiet now
Your troubles we can help unwind
We’ll smooth your troubled brow
This contract tells you what you get
We urge you read each line
For surely you’d not want to fret
That things were not condign
The Power of Attorney sir
A bit of legalese
That I am sure will not deter
Your wish to be at ease
Ah there we are, our task is done
Please lie down on this couch
The needle now, it’s only one
There’s never any ouch
The peace of death be unto you
We know your life’s a wreck
Goodbye dear friend, and toodle-oo
And thank you for the check
The wife heaved a sigh of relief
He’s finally gone, she thought
And through this heavy final grief
A little peace he’s caught.
I watched an aunt care for her Alzheimer’s husband for over 12 years. Sometimes it just isn’t worth it.
M*A*S*H the tv series ran from 1972 into 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history. The show is still broadcast in syndication. It spanned 251 episodes and lasted eleven seasons. The theme song, from the eponymous film, “Suicide is Painless” was first released in 1970, but belatedly became a number one hit in the UK in 1980 after being championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmonds. (italics mine) The refrain is
‘Cause suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
And I can take or leave it if I please
3. Lifeofthemind:
You have come very close to Paschal’s Wager. Thus:
“Pascal’s Wager” is the name given to an argument due to Blaise Pascal for believing, or for at least taking steps to believe, in God
It is important to contrast Pascal’s argument with various putative ‘proofs’ of the existence of God that had come before it. Anselm’s ontological argument, Aquinas’ ‘five ways’, Descartes’ ontological and cosmological arguments, and so on, purport to give a priori demonstrations that God exists. Pascal is apparently unimpressed by such attempted justifications of theism: “Endeavour … to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God…” Indeed, he concedes that “we do not know if He is …”. Pascal’s project, then, is radically different: he seeks to provide prudential reasons for believing in God. To put it crudely, we should wager that God exists because it is the best bet.
Pascal maintains that we are incapable of knowing whether God exists or not, yet we must “wager” one way or the other. Reason cannot settle which way we should incline, but a consideration of the relevant outcomes supposedly can. Here is the first key passage:
“God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up… Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose… But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is… If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
Blaise Pascal (pronounced [blɛz paskal]), (June 19, 1623, France, Clermont – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher
Sources: Stanford.edu, Wiki and readings from my philosophy classes 42 years ago.
If life is a drive towards God, as the religions assert, and the last half of life should be oriented towards death, as Jung says is psychologically healthy, and if the dead do begin to sing from their dark in our sleep, as the poet affirms, then perhaps the end shouldn’t be mechanically monkeyed with tubes, pumps, respirators, which God may hate for all we know, not having giving them us as our natural heritage, delaying a reunion devotedly longed for, a marvelous opportunity not to be unduly delayed.
Or, in the words of the Kaisar, “dogs, would you live forever?”
Pascal was beyond his own wager, which was a proselytizing tool, having had his own night of fire.
I’m not dying on my own, someone or something is going to have to kill me first. As long as I have a brain and an ability to communicate, I’ll have something to contribute. That is God’s will, I think.
11. bob:
“Pascal was beyond his own wager, which was a proselytizing tool, having had his own night of fire.”
I know of few philosophers who could not be charge with proselytizing. Is that a menace or an abjuration of their postion?
His Night of Fire was an epiphany not a negation of his wager. Be he theist or deist?
“It’s not death I’m worried about, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Woody Allen
He wasn’t a believer, but a knower. “Certainty, certainty” A realization, in his Christian terms. Once you know you don’t have to wager.
test
The year of grace 1654
Monday, 23 November, feast of Saint Clement, Pope and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology.
Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, Martyr and others.
From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight.
Fire
‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’ not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
@3. LoTM
I think it is a hoot but cannot fathom why an otherwise rational man would “believe” in something he cannot directly experience.
Looking at postmodern secularists frequently reminds me that belief in God can certainly help people to be more graceful, but…
There’s an alternative world view outside mainstream western tradition. Buddha basically said you should not believe what you cannot experience directly. His approach to the whole God thing is, I think, far more graceful. He put forward some precepts/guidelines to help people learn to see things as they really are. Some of the practices that help are things like meditation and living according to precepts somewhat similar to the ten commandments without the lasting damnation.
The graceful bit comes from directly experiencing God rather than having some priested Mick tell you about it in a theoretical sense (because he hasn’t been there either).
Did that make me sound like another fallen away ex-Catholic, LoTM?:)
It works and chatter mind stops (for awhile, so far).
That is somewhat amusing for a journalist to say I guess. There’s certainly no irony deficiency here. And of course I don’t get paid for the gaps (silence) between the words.
Colorado professor wins wrongful-termination suit
Ward Churchill’s ‘little Eichmanns’ reference to victims of 9/11 started a storm that led to his firing.
Reporting from Boulder, Colo. — The University of Colorado professor who likened 9/11 victims to a Nazi leader was fired in retaliation for his controversial remarks, a Denver jury ruled Thursday.
Jurors in the wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by Ward L. Churchill agreed with the embattled professor’s contention that he was the victim of a “howling mob,” not the perpetrator of academic misconduct.
Ward Chuchill, David LaneHowever, they awarded him only $1 in damages, an amount Churchill dismissed after the verdict as unimportant.
“What’s next for me? Reinstatement, of course,” Churchill said at a televised news conference outside the courtroom. “I didn’t ask for money. I asked for justice.”
It’s up to Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves to decide whether to return Churchill, 61, to his $96,392-per-year job as a professor of ethnic studies at the Boulder campus. The judge also will determine whether the university must pay his legal fees.\
Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, said the verdict represented a victory “for the 1st Amendment and academic freedom.”
“We’ve never argued the fact that [the 9/11 essay] is what started this ball rolling,” said Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the University of Colorado system.
But Churchill was fired for academic misconduct uncovered in the aftermath of the essay’s publication, he said.
“We’re certainly disappointed in the decision, but it doesn’t change the fact that 20 of his peers found he engaged in plagiarism and academic dishonesty.”
McConnellogue said the university has not decided whether it will appeal.
Two issues with suicide:
1)The only thing you are born with, that which is truly yours, is your life. You should be allowed to end it whenever you want regardless of your reason. Selfish? Maybe, but who else has a right to your life? God? Then you are an indentured servant who should only live for his sake.
2)I find it ironic, in my experiences and participation in discussions, the ones who refuse to let you die on your own terms are also the ones who have no qualms about aborting a life barely begun. Other experiences may vary but I find it quite often oddly.
In Switzerland, when a healthy woman seeks to commit suicide so she can die at the same time as her husband, Mr. Minelli calls it a “marvelous opportunity”.
In India, they call it “sati”.
Who gets to pick who dies and when?
when the pickers start to say, “Hey lets get this next bunch before their ready and save time and money and make more room for youth” THEN you have gone from assisted suicide to genocide.
It could be argued the euro/jewish holocaust 1930′s to 1945 was just one big assisted suicide aided by sympathetic NAZI’s.
I highly recommend that anyone thinking about all this read Philip Rieff’s Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life among the Deathworks.
Any serious practitioner of an Abrahamic religion (say) has had at least intimitations of the divine in deep prayer (in my case, a peculiar peace and even, at times out of the blue, a sense of being loved). If you want more than that, hierophanies (to use Eliade’s term) are a dime a dozen, even in our spiritually repressive culture. If you haven’t had one, ask around.
I have known several people who have had mystical experiences (which they were reluctant to discuss) and one who had a Pascalian thunderbolt of revelation that turned him from an atheist to a convinced theist. Those who are on principle dedicated not just to questioning but naturalisticaly reducing such experiences may profitably be “read” in terms of Reiff’s analytical categories. This does not prove that they are wrong, but it certainly shows that their cultural program is nihilistic. This may be the “best” one can do, but that is a conclusion incapable of demonstration.
Buddha’s “salvation by annihilation” strikes me as a flight from a reality which simply cannot be escaped because it is, after all, real. Having said that, I recognize the greatness of Buddhism and its points of affinity with, say, the via negativa of the Abrahamic mystics.
Best,
Richard Moorton
@ 20. SpeakEasy:
2)I find it ironic, in my experiences and participation in discussions, the ones who refuse to let you die on your own terms are also the ones who have no qualms about aborting a life barely begun. Other experiences may vary but I find it quite often oddly.
Maybe I were skim reading too fast… so please do point out specifically where you see it here.
I would say this is not the case and you are presenting a nice corpse made entirely of straw.
Pardon me for flippin’ your points over…
1)The only thing you are born with, that which is truly yours, is your life. You should be allowed to end it whenever you want regardless of your reason. Selfish? Maybe, but who else has a right to your life? God? Then you are an indentured servant who should only live for his sake.
Let’s just say that you, in some capacity (a composite of many yous), agreed to be born and live as you, for some purpose. In ending your life before its time, you are negating that purpose. I can assure you that experiencing suicide is never that purpose.
OT:
tiny.cc/TGwCg
NYT this morning:
Stimulus Thinking, and Nuance
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Every so often, history serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant.
In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.
More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.
The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.
I see. It is 0bamism, a different animal then. BTW, these autobahns were built by young mandatory volunteers. Once they were told they are volunteers they were all happy and smiley faced. Just like their soviet cousins that enjoyed subotniks.
@18 Bob Murphy
Actually you sound more like a renegade Protestant to me
Seriously though, there is more to the eastern tradition than your description of the relative virtues of Buddhism allows, which in any case strikes me as more of an aesthetic appreciation than a philosopical assertion or a statement of faith. Your use of the word ‘graceful’ is telling. For what it’s worth, Confucius, who was nothing if not a rational man, taught that grace had its special value in matters of adornment and style, but was no basis for deciding important things.
As for suicide, I do believe it is ultimately selfish, as LotM says, having lost several friends and relations to it over the years. In every case, I felt as much anger as grief. Life is precious, whether it’s a one-time deal or merely a warm-up for the real thing. Either way, if we are conscious at all, it’s a gift and not to be squandered.
That said, it’s impossible to know what’s in another’s mind when he’s looking into the void. One of the more comforting lies of the postmodern era is that life never gives people more than they can cope with. Some of the things I’ve seen, among them suicide attempts gone wrong with irrevocable results (a still cognizant mind but a hopelessly paralyzed body that will nevertheless go on for years) make me hesitate to judge too harshly those who come to that pass. Nevertheless, as a nurse, the idea that professional caregivers should assist in the process appalls me. How can patients feel safe when the caregiver could just as easily be an executioner?
There was an incident down in Oregon not long ago where a woman was denied coverage for an anti-cancer drug because it wasn’t in the formulary. This is routine enough. The problem was she also received a letter informing her that she qualified for assisted-suicide benefits. As I recall lots of people at work were suitably aghast (“That is soooo inappropriate”) but no-one questioned the system itself, just the lack of oversight. A familiar refrain these days…
The only thing you are born with, that which is truly yours, is your life. You should be allowed to end it whenever you want regardless of your reason. Selfish? Maybe, but who else has a right to your life?
The issue is not suicide. It’s assisted suicide. The question is when is it allowable for one person to kill another. Whether the killer has the permission of the killee is immaterial, because at some point, what the rest of us are left with is a body and a person standing next to the body with a murder weapon. “I had his permission” and “it was for the best” are what we could expect proponents of assisted suicide to say as justification. How do we verify either statement?
Maybe there’s a signed consent form, but can that be forged? No, of course not, that never happens. No murderer has ever forged a suicide note.
And the second statement is even more frightening. “It was for the best” starts out as a muzzy “so he didn’t need to suffer any more” and ends up “so we didn’t need to suffer him any more.”
So he is going to arrange for the healthy wife to die alongside her husband? Isn’t the word for this “suttee”? And wasn’t suttee once considered an outrage in the English speaking world, and vigorous methods deployed to stamp it out?
Can there be any more vivid indicator of how horribly the values of Western elites have drifted?
Minelli sounds like a horrible monster, any sane society would have him properly locked up in an institution of some sort.
Frankly, Pascal’s Wager only works if you treat the question as a simple binary: “Does [this particular, wrathful diety] exist?” If you cross it with any other question, such as ‘does [diety] care if you acknowledge [diety]?’ or allow any alternative to the *particular* diety whose existence is in question, the wager ceases to have an obvious answer. If it’s parsed as “does the God of Scripture exist?” then follow-ups of “which scripture” and “which interpretation” and so forth and so on rapidly reduces the answer to arbitrary gibberish.
There is no train of logic at the end of which waits God, revealed by reason & rationality; likewise, there is no train of logic which leads inevitably to the absence of the ineffable, to the absolute exclusion of the intangible.
There is no logic which can replace faith, which you either have, or have not. I have not.
twoby/26; re 1933, we’ve just had the best four week stock mkt rally *since* 1933 (said the tv pundit just now). Also, re Hitler’s ‘solving unemployment’ –the fact is, he invaded Poland two years before his generals wanted to. The army wanted the whole buildup before they jumped off. But Hitler couldn’t do it –by mid 1939 he was busted, he’d run out the credit-money string. The bottom fell out rather suddenly, and when it did, he had little choice but escape his bankers either via bankruptcy or by blowing away the system. He chose door #2.
@ 28. JMH:
The issue is not suicide. It’s assisted suicide.
Well, both.
In the first case, there is an innate understanding that suicide is wrong. The occasional overrides (samurai), do not negate this imperative.
as for the second…
“I can’t do it. Can you please murder me?”
“We came to suicide you!”
@ 30. Mitch H.:
There is no logic which can replace faith, which you either have, or have not.
There can also be an experience. You don’t need faith to validate it. It is hard to convey, as any experience that is not in the common pool and is somewhat outside the “normal” paradigm.
In response to Walt’s Marvelous Opportunity (#5)
Just toodle-oo? that’s all it takes
to shake off all the sweat
of years of trying mightily
yet piling up the debt?
Of lovers kissing off, not
ones that plan to hang around…
or opportunity that’s lost
instead of one that’s found?
Your service seems so simple,
painless just the way I like it.
So prep my dose, I’m ready now,
and don’t forget to spike it.
So here’s my check in payment,
as I have no urge to blubber.
I hope my cocktail works before
you realize that it’s rubber.
“SuicideS R Us — CasH OnlY”
Buddy
Hope Christine doesn’t drop in all that often, I’ll lose my job. Best I’ve seen in a long time, including my wan efforts.
Sure does add a dimension to the thread as a sort of musical score –talk talk talk then –the sudden scherzo –great fun!
In the first case, there is an innate understanding that suicide is wrong. The occasional overrides (samurai), do not negate this imperative.
2×4, this is a case where I think an insistence on absolutes hurts the overall cause. Suicide is wrong, but SpeakEasy doesn’t agree about that. He’s not completely alone. There are enough people who could be pursuaded that, under some circumstances, with caveats, and lots of hmmming and hawing, that maybe, once in a while, regretably, it might be okay and who are we to judge that poor cancer patient anyway.
So along comes a deathcultist like Minelli or Kevorkian, who starts pushing assisted suicide. It’s a baited trap for you to walk into. The deathists do a subtle shift and equate suicide with assisted suicide. By arguing against both in an effort to uphold decency, you help them do this (as they expected you would). After a while, with your help, they’ve got enough people confused about the difference between the two. Then the deathists pounce, playing on people’s compassion for some poor sap worn out by years of painful battle with cancer to get assisted suicide – e.g. murder – legalized. And once they get consentual murder legalized, they’ll start working on expanding it. First it’l be “reminder” letters like the one Marymcl mentioned in #27 above, then more aggressive suggestions. The progression is familliar. Allowed becomes suggested becomes recommended becomes mandatory.
Far better to build a firewall between the bad thing the public is unwilling to absolutely condem (suicide), and the worse thing that people would only support if they had it confused with something else (murder). Because you don’t need any legislation to deal with suicide. You can declare it immoral without making it illegal (what’s teh punishement, the Death Penalty?). But if you keep a clear line between suicide and assisted suicide, simply refuse to take the bait offered up by SpeakEasy, then you can win the argument about keeping consentual murder illegal.
Walt, #35
Your inspiring prose
can make one think,
or make one smile.
Your job is intact,
I just dropped in
for a short while.
Serious topic, comic relief only. Glad Buddy enjoyed too.
Christine – please, make yourself at home. The more the merrier – we need all the comic relief we can get!
I’m sorry, but I have to say that a terminal patient of [for now] sound mind should be able to plan when and how, with help of *their* choosing, to go.
Of course there’s a slippery slope against which safeguards must be taken — there always is. But a patient signing a DNR, or having a living will saying other extraordinary measures should not be used, or stopped, is not that different from letting them also specify how they might want to be eased off.
By contrast, watching them slowly starve to death and/or die by dehydration is more humane how?
The worst of the slippery slope can be avoided if the foundation of the argument is one of purely *individual* choice. It is when one resorts to more social-utilitarian or ‘humane’ arguments that decision starts to leave the individual’s hands.
More problematically…
For that matter, similar to the way some life insurance policies start paying out *before* a terminal patient has died, I could almost see *medical* insurance companies giving a rebate of some portion of the savings from taking the early exit. On the one hand, if by law that portion is set high enough, the incentive for the health insurers to get you to kill yourself is decreased — OTOH it increases the incentive for your family to get you to do it.
This is one of those issues where I find myself straddling the libertarian-conservative divide: the former says to allow it in the interests of human freedom, the latter asks do we want to live in the culture that might result where not pulling the plug, or not doing it soon enough, is seen as selfish in the other direction.
yes, christine –i agree w/ mary –& more of the distaff take on the news & views would enliven the commentary–