Extracts
- Everyone dies sometime. But when and how? Those questions become more salient as birthdays roll by.
- ...
- Open discussion of death is rare, especially in a culture where a charge of ageism has become an all-too-common threat.
- ...
- What value is there in existing if the ability to do what you most value becomes unavailable? It is, indeed, possible to live too long.
- ...
- Medical aid in dying and other practices pertinent to end-of-life care are surrounded by enigmatic and controversial issues involving religious beliefs and civil rights. Many people believe that life is sacred, and therefore the beginning and end should be left to divine intervention. The doctrine of the ‘sanctity of life’, commonly based on a theistic metaphysics, holds that killing oneself or others destroys the God-given intrinsic value of life. By contrast, a secular utilitarian view holds that there is a duty to ‘maximise happiness’ and therefore a moral obligation exists to end a life when it is characterised by indignity and suffering. Some moral philosophers argue that, just as it is wrong to compel people to die, so it is wrong to compel people to live under conditions they find intolerable.
- I do not have the wisdom or inclination to solve such ethical complexities. I do, however, hope that the ‘right to die’ becomes a civil liberty issue in the way that daily living options have been expanded for marginalised ethnic groups, women and gender minorities.
- (...) I assume that I will die, not by choice, but by the lethal default of accumulated peripheral decisions. So far, I have been fortunate. My body’s awkward way to the exit has not diminished the gratitude I feel for the many undeserved blessings I have received.
Author Narrative
- Robert S Gable is emeritus professor of psychology at the Claremont Graduate University. He served as an aide in a mission hospital in South Africa and as a volunteer at a hospice organisation in Los Angeles.
Notes
- This is brief, interesting and important. The abstract says it all, really.
- It's also important that the paper is written by someone (aged 88) for whom the prospect of fairly imminent death (or worse) is a live issue. The - mostly excellent - comments are also made by those qualified to talk on the subject. Most are older than me (69) but sometimes not by much.
- Despite the logic of the situation, it's still difficult not to act like Ivan Ilych.
- The idea of living too long is different in this paper, where the problem is decrepitude, than in the Makropulos Case, where it is boredom.
- But this paper is not so much about death itself, and the denial thereof, but the often unhappy route thereto.
- Presumably there's a tension here with Transhumanism, though the transhumanists presumably imagine a return to eternal youth.
Comment:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2024
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