I was sure this was going to be a Boing Boing Shop post
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Give it time.
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It’s because so-called “pro-life” movement is actually about controlling and punishing women. Poland has now a law that even fetuses that can’t survive at all have to be born and right now they are pushing for law that bans abortion even when mother will die otherwise. Their argument is that a religious miracle may happen.
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The thing is death is rarely convenient. Not so much that it may happen when you least expect it, but the mode is often less than desirable. Perhaps it could be “gamified”. Death Lotto. The winner would be dispatched according to a list of appealing choices. The first 10 losers OTOH would receive cash prizes.
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It’s not just the legal bit; there are huge philosophical issues with current self making decisions on behalf of future self. This gets especially complicated when capacity is lost. Does that person with dementia that now shows all the signs of happiness still want to die as per the wishes of pre-dementia self? Does pre-dementia self still exist?
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I’m glad to hear I wasn’t the only one… 
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There are also issues around ablist/elder abuse where disabled and elderly people are bullied into thinking that they are a burden on society and everyone would be better off if they were dead. I believe there have been a few cases where there is evidence that happened (and the reporters weren’t pro-lifers).
I am cautiously pro-choice regarding euthanasia, but it is a very complex issue and it needs to be done correctly. Ayn-cap style death booths on the street corners ($5 a go) are not something I want to see.
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Bust a deal, spin the wheel!
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Not sure how the reviews will work.
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I don’t see anything complicated about it. I should be able to define how I wish to die and under what conditions that applies at any point in my life. I’ve watched several grandparents slip away due to alzhimers and dimentia. It’s not a way I want to go. Sure at some point they enter a child like state and seem happy, but past that stage why? They no longer remember themselves and at some point require basic care to stay alive. I don’t want to die like that. At the minimum I should be able to specify that I wish that no additional medication or preventative action should be taken.
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Good Death Centre… car park… seems like a great opportunity for a towing company and/or a used car dealership.
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Are you suggesting you should be able to make irrevocable statements about how you wish to die? Ignoring the wishes of future self, one should be treated according to the desires of past self that made the original binding plan?
Same as every other product in the Boing Boing Shop:
“Didn’t work as advertised.”
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Is it possible to construct a comment so poetic, so powerful, so soul-fillingly complete, that the brain that composed it just shuts down, its tasks laid to rest?
Not this comment obviously, this is just nonsense…
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Yes, yes, there’s lots of hand-waving and what-ifs that opponents of a peaceful death use to obscure their actual religion-based opposition to suicide.
What those arguments all boil down to is the claim that no person is truly capable of deciding when to end their own life, so others (who don’t approve of suicide) must make those decisions for them. And guess what the decision will be - a “natural” death, no matter how much that violates my own wishes.
If I decide, while I believe that I am mentally sound (your opinion of my mental soundness will be tainted by your own beliefs, and should not have any force), that I want to be killed humanely if I reach a particular state of dementia or inability, there is no way that your opinions should override my wishes. If I’m a happy demented person, great! It’s a good time to leave peacefully, rather than waiting until I am a miserable demented person in great pain or anguish. Who are you to decide that I was “wrong” to make that decision while I could still think clearly?
You guys tart up your opposition to suicide with noble sounding philosophical what-ifs and how-abouts, but you really just want to deny me personal agency and make decisions about my life. You want to usurp my control over my life and force me to live my life by your rules, not mine.
You are no different from a fundamentalist christian minister saying that I should be murdered because I am gay - in both instances a stranger is insisting that their opinions about how I should exist must override my own. Do try to get that hubris under control. We all die - my death should not be under your control, it should be under mine, either to let it work out on its own, or to end my life early. My choice. Not your choice.
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I suggest you read the original post i was responding to before getting in your high horse. Nowhere have I suggested an opposition to suicide.
A more diplomatic way to say it would be: people don’t want suicide to be a matter of choice, because they don’t trust themselves (and those they depend on) with that choice.
I don’t think the majority of even religious people think it is morally wrong to make a person’s certain death easier. But as soon as you try to turn that general consensus into specific criteria, you expose a question that many people are desperate to avoid: “should I kill myself if I don’t believe my remaining life has any value?”
Our culture pretends that even considering suicide is pathological; we are taught, more or less, that the thought should never cross a healthy person’s mind. So it’s no surprise that if you ask people to think about when suicide is OK, it provokes massive resistance. That’s how we end up with the idea that people must suffer unbearably before they can make such a decision – once you’re suffering unbearably, your experience is no longer congruent to mine, so that doesn’t trigger any uncomfortable self-reflection.
I hasten to add, there definitely are unhealthy ways of thinking about suicide, plus actually doing it has costs for other people, so society has every right to weigh in. But Western society sometimes prioritises feeling good to the detriment of being good, and I think that applies here. We’re basically too preoccupied with thinking happy thoughts to process death in an enlightened way.
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I wrote the original post you were responding to. And your response throws up excuses that you and other people use to oppose my own decisions about whether I want to end my life early or not, because (you say) I’m not my future self yet.
Your post is challenging my own agency, my own ability to decide my own fate. You’re saying that if I’m a happy demented person looking forward to a nice piece of pie for desert in the old people’s home, that should override my wishes when I was still thinking clearly. Your beliefs and desires should control my life at that point, even if I had decided that I want to go have a “special nap” and never wake up if I am a happy demented person, and that I want to leave while I’m happy rather than wait for agony and anguish. Death is inevitable, but you want to control when I die, rather than leaving it up to me.
So yes, you are opposing suicide, but in a hand-wavey “philosophical” way. If you drill down, you’ll find that your attitude is firmly based in judeo-christian theology, not respect for me. It is yet another justification for imposing your will on other people by claiming that they decided wrongly, by your criteria.
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No, I’m asking if your agency now should override your agency in the future. If you don’t think that poses philosophical issues, I’m not quite sure what else to say.
