Quote:
Originally Posted by Acrylic-bob
I must admit to being a little ambivalent on this subject.
Would I wish to be helped to die?
I don't know, honestly, I don't. The thing that naffs me off about this whole subject is that we are actually having the discussion in the first place. I am an adult taxpayer and yet the organisation that I help to fund appears institutionally incapable of treating me as an adult.
I am advised on a regular basis what I should and should not eat and how often. I am restricted in what drugs I may legally purchase. I must apply for a license to do anything more complex than passing water. I getting just about sick to the back teeth of the army of concerned professionals nannying me to death.
And not content with adding insult to injury but twisting the knife too, the decision as to whether or not I can legally end my life when I have had enough of it is in the hands of people like Graham Jones and his best mate, Ed Millband and is something over which I will never be allowed any say whatsoever.
There is something seriously and sadly wrong with our society.  |
It is by adding your voice to discussions such as these that society as a whole, and the individuals that make it up come to some concensus on what is right or wrong - laws are made and boundaries laid down, for the good of, if not all, then at least of the majority.
As you high-light the main problem currently is the translation of the collective voice through the political system, which would then allow change. The rules are there to be tested and challenged, as society itself and the individuals that make it up are constantly changing.
You are obviously one of societies rule testers and question much of what is imposed on individuals. Constant discussion and the sounding of the communal voice is the way to effect change in a democracy- so lets keep talking about even the most controversial of arguments which are part of all our lives.
Let's not forget that each individual also has to take responsibility for his actions within society, and take the consequences of those actions. The major social changes of the last century would never have come about if not for those who questioned the norm and voiced concerns and exchanged knowledge and experience.
Currently there are some people who risk imprisonment by going with their loved ones to clinics in Switzerland where they can end their lives in a dignified way. Some are challenging the judicial system directly and there has recently been an overview which suggests that medics in the UK should be able to offer such a possibility to all terminally ill patients with less than one year to live. I am personally in favour of their efforts at change in this direction. Sorry this a long-read if you've made it this far
The following is extracted from philosophy paper I translated a few years ago, which in part prompted the above
"As we all know, in our age, the most challenging bioethical questions are about what a person is, what are his rights, his unity and his proper boundaries. The notion of “person” is a static one: it implies invariance, uniformity, stability, regularity and predictability, all notions extraneous to life.
Man is a community (of ideas, of signs, of interpretations), as the community is the most consistent individuality: there is a continuity, among selves, among ideas, and among inner experiences of any human being.
The community is not simply the collection of its individuals, as an organism is not simply a whole composed, as a machine, by the assemblage of its parts. It has an identity, a consistency, a coordinated body and a ‘social soul’, that has aims, hopes and common memories, that feels and suffers. The community is thus more real and concrete than any single individual"