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Why stop with older people? Why not simply allow anyone who wants to off themselves to get on with it safely? After all, we wouldn't want young people to thin

Why stop with older people? Why not simply allow anyone who wants to off themselves to get on with it safely? After all, we wouldn't want young people to think that being useless is something you have to suffer with for years. To take it a bit farther, why wait for them to decide to go themselves - some of these people don't have a lot of get-up-and-go in the first place, maybe they just need a little helping hand. Why not off those who are _demonstrably_ providing little value to {others, the state, the corporation}? ---- In case you don't do sarcasm, this is how we wound up with Nazi Germany's death camps. They were (from the Nazi's perspective) humane solutions to the problems of untermensch polluting the gene pool. s/gene pool/society's emotive context/g. ---- Life is worth living. No matter how worthless you feel, no matter how how alone you seem. You are not alone. You are not worthless. You Are Loved. [1] [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Left-Tell-Discovering-Rwandan-Holocaust/dp/1401908977 https://www.amazon.com/Left-Tell-Discovering-Rwandan-Holocau...

b_tterc_p 7y ago
Strawman, and not an especially relevant one tbh. Life is generally worth living. You can have loving family. But you can also be doing nothing but waiting to die in a retirement home away from friends and family, in pain and hopped up on drugs. It’s really not an empathetic thing to assert that people who are comfortable with the end of their life must believe they are not loved. Ending your life does not have to come from grief. It is BETTER to have acceptance and die than to die alone in fear. It is BETTER if people talk about this difficult subject rather than stave it off as long as possible. People will be happier if they can do this. If your doctor tells you that you’re going to have an uncomfortable 3 years, it may make sense to you to just say no thanks and have an honest good bye with your family, saving you and them from the uncomfort to come. It is ok to die. Even without (but for 99% of people only with) medical circumstances.
- svieira 7y ago
  > It is okay to die. Dying is the one part of life we are guaranteed - I absolutely agree with you that it is okay to die. I also agree that you don't need to take extraordinary means to preserve your life - you don't have to take the chemotherapy, for example, or have your heart kept active after all other vital signs have ceased. I also know that our lives our not our own. We do not choose to pick them up and we may not choose to lay them down ourselves. People are happier when they accept this (I assert, as an _ad contra_ to your assertion). Why do you say that "for 99% of people only with medical circumstances is it okay to die"? Is it just that you think most people _will not_ choose death? Or that they _should not_ choose death?
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    > I also know that our lives our not our own. We do not choose to pick them up and we may not choose to lay them down ourselves. People are happier when they accept this (I assert, as an _ad contra_ to your assertion). I think it depends on how you view the importance of your feelings. Dying of a heart attack on the toilet is pretty common (I think?) and probable majorly sucks. But... you also die immediately after so you don’t really dwell on it. Conversely dying peacefully surrounded by friends and family with a celebration of your life is pretty cool. One could argue that the moment of death doesn’t matter because it’s shortish and final, or you could argue that your final thoughts are going to be important to you and thus desire for them to be controlled. I’m going to bet that while people generally want to maximize time alive, they also like the idea of a warm and peaceful exit- and would value that over the assumption that you will have more days of life but a sudden and frightening exit. And while I think your point of view is also reasonable, my contention is that nobody has the ability to pick my point of view. > Why do you say that "for 99% of people only with medical circumstances is it okay to die"? Is it just that you think most people _will not_ choose death? Or that they _should not_ choose death? I’m saying 99% of people would probably not choose to end their life without a medical problem as the alternative. But there’s nothing saying you can’t decide you’ve had enough while healthy. Differentiating this from impulsive decisions made in stress and grief. Edit: I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This seems like a good post.
    - svieira 7y ago
      > my contention is that nobody has the ability to pick my point of view. Completely agree. The question is, "should the point of view matter"? In general, in morals, we distinguish between that which is acceptable to have differing opinions on (having red shades in your bedroom) and that which it is _not_ acceptable to have a differing opinion on (killing Gypsies because they are Gypsies). Morally neutral vs. morally charged. You seem to be of the opinion that killing oneself is a morally charged act, but that it can be morally good. I agree with you that it is morally charged. I hold that it is always morally evil. We do not receive our life freely and we may not let it go freely. It is ours to put in the service of others, even at the possible expense of it, but not to reject.
ghi5goio3qno4i3 7y ago
There is a difference though. One is voluntary, the other mandatory. And I can see it having it's advantages, even if offered to people of all ages (only requiring evidence that they comprehend and understand what it is they're asking for). Suicide's main issue is the sudden and unexpectedness of it all for those that remain. We like to say that there is help, that we need to talk, but every time someone like me reaches out, the ones that espouse the most of saying life is worth living, that there's someone willing to listen...are often the ones that swiftly step back when they realize that execution is more costly then rhetoric. If you're lucky you find only silence, if unlucky, becoming ostracized from people that cannot or do not want to understand. A medically program would help would negate this. Being able to say definitively that you're going to kill yourself with an open way of doing it means that at least the family has some time to prepare themselves. And perhaps bring some comfort in a person's last minutes; the moment of dying is terrifying, even against the greater fear of living. And as to your last point... it's a nice thought. But for many that simply is not true. There are people's who's lives have no value, even to their family. There are people that die without any to mourn them, even among the very young. You never see them because they are often invisible unless you look carefully; the one looking tiredly out the window of the bus, or the one shuffling down a street asking for change. And the systems that collects the unmourned dead is rarely ever thought of by the living.
ionised 7y ago
> Life is worth living. Prove it.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

Strawman, and not an especially relevant one tbh. Life is generally worth living. You can have loving family. But you can also be doing nothing but waiting to die in a retirement home away from friends and family, in pain and hopped up on drugs. It’s really not an empathetic thing to assert that people who are comfortable with the end of their life must believe they are not loved. Ending your life does not have to come from grief. It is BETTER to have acceptance and die than to die alone in fear. It is BETTER if people talk about this difficult subject rather than stave it off as long as possible. People will be happier if they can do this. If your doctor tells you that you’re going to have an uncomfortable 3 years, it may make sense to you to just say no thanks and have an honest good bye with your family, saving you and them from the uncomfort to come. It is ok to die. Even without (but for 99% of people only with) medical circumstances.

svieira 7y ago
> It is okay to die. Dying is the one part of life we are guaranteed - I absolutely agree with you that it is okay to die. I also agree that you don't need to take extraordinary means to preserve your life - you don't have to take the chemotherapy, for example, or have your heart kept active after all other vital signs have ceased. I also know that our lives our not our own. We do not choose to pick them up and we may not choose to lay them down ourselves. People are happier when they accept this (I assert, as an _ad contra_ to your assertion). Why do you say that "for 99% of people only with medical circumstances is it okay to die"? Is it just that you think most people _will not_ choose death? Or that they _should not_ choose death?
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  > I also know that our lives our not our own. We do not choose to pick them up and we may not choose to lay them down ourselves. People are happier when they accept this (I assert, as an _ad contra_ to your assertion). I think it depends on how you view the importance of your feelings. Dying of a heart attack on the toilet is pretty common (I think?) and probable majorly sucks. But... you also die immediately after so you don’t really dwell on it. Conversely dying peacefully surrounded by friends and family with a celebration of your life is pretty cool. One could argue that the moment of death doesn’t matter because it’s shortish and final, or you could argue that your final thoughts are going to be important to you and thus desire for them to be controlled. I’m going to bet that while people generally want to maximize time alive, they also like the idea of a warm and peaceful exit- and would value that over the assumption that you will have more days of life but a sudden and frightening exit. And while I think your point of view is also reasonable, my contention is that nobody has the ability to pick my point of view. > Why do you say that "for 99% of people only with medical circumstances is it okay to die"? Is it just that you think most people _will not_ choose death? Or that they _should not_ choose death? I’m saying 99% of people would probably not choose to end their life without a medical problem as the alternative. But there’s nothing saying you can’t decide you’ve had enough while healthy. Differentiating this from impulsive decisions made in stress and grief. Edit: I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This seems like a good post.
  - svieira 7y ago
    > my contention is that nobody has the ability to pick my point of view. Completely agree. The question is, "should the point of view matter"? In general, in morals, we distinguish between that which is acceptable to have differing opinions on (having red shades in your bedroom) and that which it is _not_ acceptable to have a differing opinion on (killing Gypsies because they are Gypsies). Morally neutral vs. morally charged. You seem to be of the opinion that killing oneself is a morally charged act, but that it can be morally good. I agree with you that it is morally charged. I hold that it is always morally evil. We do not receive our life freely and we may not let it go freely. It is ours to put in the service of others, even at the possible expense of it, but not to reject.

ghi5goio3qno4i3 7y ago

There is a difference though. One is voluntary, the other mandatory. And I can see it having it's advantages, even if offered to people of all ages (only requiring evidence that they comprehend and understand what it is they're asking for). Suicide's main issue is the sudden and unexpectedness of it all for those that remain. We like to say that there is help, that we need to talk, but every time someone like me reaches out, the ones that espouse the most of saying life is worth living, that there's someone willing to listen...are often the ones that swiftly step back when they realize that execution is more costly then rhetoric. If you're lucky you find only silence, if unlucky, becoming ostracized from people that cannot or do not want to understand. A medically program would help would negate this. Being able to say definitively that you're going to kill yourself with an open way of doing it means that at least the family has some time to prepare themselves. And perhaps bring some comfort in a person's last minutes; the moment of dying is terrifying, even against the greater fear of living. And as to your last point... it's a nice thought. But for many that simply is not true. There are people's who's lives have no value, even to their family. There are people that die without any to mourn them, even among the very young. You never see them because they are often invisible unless you look carefully; the one looking tiredly out the window of the bus, or the one shuffling down a street asking for change. And the systems that collects the unmourned dead is rarely ever thought of by the living.

ionised 7y ago

> Life is worth living. Prove it.