6 Views of death (3) – ‘Normal’ ends of life: the self-extermination challenge.

6 Views of death (3) – 'Normal' ends of life: the self-extermination challenge.


Torrey Orton


Oct.1, 2010

My life / death view: I am sure I have a right to live and die in as much as I can choose to do so. I did not choose to be born, but choose everyday to stay alive. I'm aware that I may not get to choose when to die, but I certainly will die. The same cannot be said for my birth; it was not certain. Like my birth, my death will be in the hands of others in some respects, the least of which, from my point of view, will be cleaning up afterwards, just as it was for my birth.

I deal three days a week with younger people (20's to 40's) who think /feel their lives are not worth living for various amounts of time, with regular recurrences and typical shared origins in excruciatingly inescapable traumas. Also typically, they have self-administered palliative problems (addictions) and often have irregular employments, housing and similar signs of fragmented lives. Quite a few sustain professional presences of great sophistication and substantial achievement. I have no trouble believing it's too soon for them to go. How successful I am in conveying that conviction into self-affirmation is a session by session challenge.


…unlucky not to die well.

 As for myself, on the other hand, I am quite sure I want to have the choice of dying when I see fit. That means dying before my natural time, possibly. That I may die as I write will do fine as my time, should it be so. It's a ponderous decline into multiple incapacities, worst of all a mental decline, which I will choose to avoid if I can. Given diagnoses of certain kinds, I would initiate a process of self-extermination, I hope. That 'hope' expresses my awareness that I may not be strong enough, which I may get a chance to test, if I'm unlucky not to die well. Next to a lingering death, a failed effort at pre-empting it is my greatest fear. I'd like some certainty in my own hands. Either this will be legal – e.g. running a car into an immovable object – or, at the moment, illegal by amassing a sufficient quantity of appropriate medications.


I do not have the time to read much of what's written in the so-called 'debate' about euthanasia. I don't really care about much of the detail, or to make arguments in detail which I am intellectually competent to do. I have patients to care for and other things to think. Not to write at all on this is dangerous and part of me knows that the fools in the religions and the politics of late capitalism and post-modernity are likely to lock away pre-emptive opportunities I am as certain I deserve as they are I do not. That's the making of rages, and even the fools I just mentioned must know these are growing day by day, just maybe not in the minds of people like me.


Natural right to choose…

 I know I have a natural right to self-extermination, but not a legal one here in Australia. There are those who would say I have no natural right, either, but they do not check their assumptions about the sources of right, being stuck in a system of presumptive answers which is historical, not 'natural'. This system is the Abrahamic religions of the Book. I really do not mind their believing what comes with allegiance to The Book, including endless to-the-death struggles about whose version is correct, true or The Word. I am amazed that a profoundly clear truth, like that the religions propose, should produce so much distress for believers, but not amazed enough to want to help them out by adding myself to one of their ranks. How could I choose?

"But our right to choose is important and is too often deliberately forgotten or conveniently ignored by those who evangelise around "the right to life"...." .Geoff Gallop, in The AGE 28092010.

The Australian politics of life-death are this: a few (about 20 %) of the electorate in Australia are prepared to fight (to the death?) to preserve the right of every conception to come to term and every adult to be constrained from dying on their own terms, assisted or not. The latest pro-euthanasia figures are 76% in favour. The 20%ers get a larger electoral influence because the field of voters is finely poised between the major parties and small factors shift small margins in the most finely poised electorates. Electorally correct and ethically unfair


Fundamentalist convictions

 So what part of the anti-euthanasia arguments are just tactics to cover fundamentalist convictions? Such tactics might be expressions of moral outrage, pseudo-scientific or "evidence-based" facts and ad hominem assaults demonstrating other non-believers' attitudes descend from character faults or notional immoralities.… Where such tactics do not work there are only implacable demands or refusals on offer.


An example of apparent evidence-based arguments is Dr. Ruth Gawler in TheAGE, Letters 29/9/2010. In a self-described backflip on euthanasia, she notes that cancer patients "initially … are often confused in their thinking." She doesn't say anything about what happens to the initially confused after some work. Competent cancer treatment like the Gawlers provide must help clarity, among other things. Viz- people who start confused do not have to remain that way.


She adds to her evidence against euthanasia that population issues make getting clear about good reasons for dying unlikely. This is an argument carried by her professional status, not any clarity of fact or causal connection.


Because we can do it…

 Underlying the pro-life argument is a scientistic lie – that unnatural efforts must be made to preserve lives – at the beginning or the end of the life span, and in some cases before it (IVF) because we can do it scientifically. I don't think this is what the gods recommended in their times. Once again there was a sad letter pleading for families to let their elders die when ready and to do the legal homework to minimize useless resuscitations. (TheAGE 29/9/10).


This reflection yields another: that there may be a need to achieve something for my life in / thru my death, a clarifying of the moral ground…which invites a recollection of possible causes for choosing to end life, eg.: (1) to save the life of another; (2) to prevent a useless decline into a terminal outcome; (3) as a weapon of struggle (martyrdom); (4) to save precious resources for others (cousin of #1, but with no specific other(s) in mind or view).


Two self-destructions

 Finally, let's notice a matter of origins. There are two self-destructions: the Greek one and the Roman one. Euthanasia, the good death, is Greek; suicide, the bad death, is Latin, as are its familiars matricide, fratricide and patricide. But a death by one's own hand is self (sui) killing (cide), whatever the labeling. Some deaths we choose to label nicely and others not. The choice is a discrimination between those with an acceptable rationale and those without one (in the eyes of some others). I don't know that the Greeks and Romans differed that much on matters of life and death. The choice is moral, not factual of course, leaving aside the problem of determining if a death is by accident or intent.


A song comes along with this thought – "Suicide is painless.." and reminds me of the absurdity of life and death, except when we can give meaning to it. Generally the meaning achieved by making our own choices exceeds that by following others' choices for us. Perhaps the worst situation is that where making meaning seems impossible but action is required which only produces absurdity. There's a literature around this dilemma. Yossarian, where are you? Slaughter House 5, Catch 22, Mash...