A close friend had stage 4 cancer and ALS: 24-hours-a-day pain and suffering and near-helplessness.
Was it not a rational, justifiable, humane, selfless choice to end her life while she could still make that choice? Would you have urged her to continue to suffer?
Of course not. Didn't you read the post? I would never affirmatively tell someone to kill themselves, under any circumstances. But if this person chose to do it anyways, I mean, I'd definitely understand their reasons.
End of life is really messy. A lot of people don't know they are going to die when they go into the hospital. My Dad went in for a surgery that had some risks, but he also hoped to come back home healthy. He ended up dying, but not after a lot of suffering. The hospital ignored his Do Not Resuscitate multiple times. Quite frankly, it's hard to die in a hospital especially once you start losing cognitive function or are incapacitated.
I think it's simplistic to say "it's easy to kill yourself". It's easy for cognizant capable people in their own homes to commit suicide, but those very criteria make one a lot less likely to do so. It's when they stop being true people want to go, but by then its often too late and the system has you.
good, i must have mis-read (I've been binging through your posts).
for me it's like, well, it's none of my business what a person does.
However, there's a growing online "industry" among teems promoting suicide, and that's troublesome. There's a guy (in Holland I think) who was convicted of causing several young teen girls to kill themselves (after he tricked them into posting sex pics and then he spread them on the internet).
>However, there's a growing online "industry" among teems promoting suicide, and that's troublesome. There's a guy (in Holland I think) who was convicted of causing several young teen girls to kill themselves (after he tricked them into posting sex pics and then he spread them on the internet).<
There's also a notorious case of a young healthy Dutch woman (I believe she was only in her 20s) who used MAiD to kill herself because she was "depressed." And I think she's not the only case of this.
That is what I am driving against in this post: The dangers of making suicide an officially approved societal standard, of telling people that it is a Good Thing. It isn't. There are cases like the one you posed where it's very understandable, and in many cases I would say that I would not be willing to raise a hand to stop someone from committing the act. But that is very different from giving it active approval and encouraging people to do it.
but the kid in Holland wasn't given active approval, he was tracked down (by an extensive and expensive Interpol operation) and prosecuted and will spend the rest of his life in jail.
So I don't think is gets "active approval" and universal encouragement in society; what is changing is that is has become a legalized option for those who choose.
But then that gets perverted by weak or sinister minds, and exploited for political purposes.
And the so-called "social" media have simply amplified the whole thing.
More and more I try to refrain from making moral judgements about other people's choices, except when I see clear malevolence or political opportunism, and then I feel the need to speak out.
The real issue at hand here is MAiD, not whether or not it is a crime for a sociopath to directly encourage suicide on an interpersonal level. I seriously doubt that the Holland kid has any defenders at all, on any side of the MAiD question.
A close friend had stage 4 cancer and ALS: 24-hours-a-day pain and suffering and near-helplessness.
Was it not a rational, justifiable, humane, selfless choice to end her life while she could still make that choice? Would you have urged her to continue to suffer?
Of course not. Didn't you read the post? I would never affirmatively tell someone to kill themselves, under any circumstances. But if this person chose to do it anyways, I mean, I'd definitely understand their reasons.
End of life is really messy. A lot of people don't know they are going to die when they go into the hospital. My Dad went in for a surgery that had some risks, but he also hoped to come back home healthy. He ended up dying, but not after a lot of suffering. The hospital ignored his Do Not Resuscitate multiple times. Quite frankly, it's hard to die in a hospital especially once you start losing cognitive function or are incapacitated.
I think it's simplistic to say "it's easy to kill yourself". It's easy for cognizant capable people in their own homes to commit suicide, but those very criteria make one a lot less likely to do so. It's when they stop being true people want to go, but by then its often too late and the system has you.
good, i must have mis-read (I've been binging through your posts).
for me it's like, well, it's none of my business what a person does.
However, there's a growing online "industry" among teems promoting suicide, and that's troublesome. There's a guy (in Holland I think) who was convicted of causing several young teen girls to kill themselves (after he tricked them into posting sex pics and then he spread them on the internet).
>However, there's a growing online "industry" among teems promoting suicide, and that's troublesome. There's a guy (in Holland I think) who was convicted of causing several young teen girls to kill themselves (after he tricked them into posting sex pics and then he spread them on the internet).<
There's also a notorious case of a young healthy Dutch woman (I believe she was only in her 20s) who used MAiD to kill herself because she was "depressed." And I think she's not the only case of this.
That is what I am driving against in this post: The dangers of making suicide an officially approved societal standard, of telling people that it is a Good Thing. It isn't. There are cases like the one you posed where it's very understandable, and in many cases I would say that I would not be willing to raise a hand to stop someone from committing the act. But that is very different from giving it active approval and encouraging people to do it.
but the kid in Holland wasn't given active approval, he was tracked down (by an extensive and expensive Interpol operation) and prosecuted and will spend the rest of his life in jail.
So I don't think is gets "active approval" and universal encouragement in society; what is changing is that is has become a legalized option for those who choose.
But then that gets perverted by weak or sinister minds, and exploited for political purposes.
And the so-called "social" media have simply amplified the whole thing.
More and more I try to refrain from making moral judgements about other people's choices, except when I see clear malevolence or political opportunism, and then I feel the need to speak out.
The real issue at hand here is MAiD, not whether or not it is a crime for a sociopath to directly encourage suicide on an interpersonal level. I seriously doubt that the Holland kid has any defenders at all, on any side of the MAiD question.