“Assisted dying is the quintessential policy of our times. It is a policy that reflects the fatalistic mindset of those who rule over us, leaders who can no longer promise a good life so instead offer a “good death.” Opponents of assisted dying in Canada and elsewhere have asked how a society can maintain a commitment to preventing suicide with one hand while enabling it with the other. The answer is that our society doesn’t actually value human life and so doesn’t oppose suicide. What it opposes is the lack of a bureaucratic process that oversees, controls, and administers suicide.”
And yet, consider the source of this “article.” It gives “jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs” vibes.
Tw: suicide
I think society’s dark secret is likely that if you were suffering from a debilitating illness mental or degenerative you would have been either 1. Dumped in a facility where you were declared incompetent and forced to rot out the rest of your days or 2. Where the means or facilities like that did not exist you fell under the care of your family until you begged them to kill you, they got fed up with you and killed you, you killed yourself, or you wandered off and left it to the elements. This was likely covered up and hushed. Or 3. You died early of a secondary illness that we now treat easily, like a bladder infection.
What has changed?
- Our facilities - they are far fewer and far less likely to declare someone incompetent now. And! Not owned and administered by the Church.
- Capitalism and the double earning household - we can’t be caregivers and at the same time support ourselves.
- Collectivist vs individualist society - we don’t use the resources of our village and care for each other anymore.
- We are less religious - there is less emphasis on suffering through life due to some moral duty to god.
- Criminal methods of investigation have changed - it was easier to claim someone died in their sleep when they really got the pillow because if they were old and the family hadn’t sought an autopsy the police at the time were probably like cool case closed. In the really early pioneering days there was no police oversight and you buried your relatives on your own plot of land. How they ended up in the ground was between you and god. Look at how many kids died in residential schools in Canada without investigation or police involvement.
- Our views on suicide have changed - it’s not illegal anymore, and honestly it’s really just deterred when it’s a spur of the moment action to a temporary state of being. How long should someone be suffering and in pain and be contemplating suicide before they are justified in seeking MAiD? Some would say it’s never justified. And yet, like abortion, people still end their lives whether it’s sanctioned by the government or not. The author makes it seem like MAiD is evil government control and murder, but it’s really just normalizing and empowering end of life and giving families closure in the most dignified way possible.
- Conspiracy minded people might also believe that MAiD solves our healthcare scarcity issues by removing those who would otherwise burden the system and take away resources from “healthy” people. This would be the elderly, mentally ill, and those with complex degenerative disease.
Speaking from a Canadian perspective, I don’t really have an argument for why this is not the case. However, to solve this we would need to solve our healthcare system, and to solve our healthcare system we need to fund it better and take the profit incentive out. We also need to plan for the baby boomers and their ongoing burden on this system relative to the rest of the healthy population. To better fund the system we need more people, except birth rates are down. To get more people we would need to then accept more immigration, but shit, in Canada there’s not enough housing or skilled labour jobs, and the immigrants we’re accepting are just barely enough to replenish our working population and fund our social safety net. So, going down the list, we can only get more revenue for this system by privatizing (a Conservative’s wet dream) or taxing the rich (which no neoliberal government on either side is going to do). This is capitalism’s natural and horrific end: all of the resources are being gobbled up by corporations and the billionaire class. Our ancestors solved egregious imbalances of resources via revolution.
We’re right and proper fucked bud. The US is taking a wholly different christofascist approach and forcing women to have citizens who pay taxes and corporations to keep the train chugging along.
From a personal perspective, and seeing loved ones with horrific and nightmarish mental and degenerative disease, you bet I’ll seek MAiD if it comes to that point. No one should have to live through hell in an institution waiting years to die.
And yet, consider the source of this “article.”
I have the article, I’ve read it, I think it raises valid points. Why dig for something ad hominem to discredit it?
The Intelligencer article goes ad hominem in the first few paragraphs and if I’m reading it correctly it is mainly concerned with credentials and ideological backgrounds of contributors. Other than calling out the magazine for having both left and right opinions, there’s bullshit like “Compact stands athwart history and yells, “Look at me!””, which means nothing and then there’s stuff I can sympathize with, such as “Compact ascribes to liberalism powers it doesn’t really possess. The liberal world order is weak, weaker, perhaps, then it’s been in decades. Compact would be somewhat more admirable if it would at least admit it senses blood in the water.” But not being an American, it’s very tiring to have to establish credentials of every author and source. I’d rather just consider what’s stated.
It gives “jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs” vibes.
It also uses words arranged according to grammar rules to explicitly state things, I prefer using that before vibes to form my opinion.
So you haven’t given any thought to the counterpoints then. Cool 👍
“You’re using ad hominem attacks!”
Proceeds to… attack me based on the light tone I was using.
The article is from a disingenuous conservative trash rag and makes bad faith statements while desperately trying to sound astute but not actually thinking through the whole problem or offering any sort of solution that goes beyond criticizing government (large government bad). More helpful?
