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Deliberatly Ending a Human life- How can we justify it ?
Angus
Vietnam Explorer
What do people thing about the normalization of euthanasia? I ask because a good friend of mine in his 70s recently told me he has a plan, already paid up and prepared for when hes going a bit senile he will just get himself "put down"-a bit like what people do with their dogs when they get too old. It seems to me its directly against the 1st precept, although of course people in the west will come up with their own interpretations to justify anything so they can feel ok about it. Apparently my last post on the subject was deleted because it caused offence- maybe because it mentioned abortion.
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Euthanasia is legal in Switzerland. Someone we knew from there, who was in constant nerve pain, decided after visiting us to end her constant pain. She had aready decided we wer not causal ... You think she should just suffer incurable pain?
We looked after my mother at home with Alzhiemers/Dementia until a week before her death in hospital. She could not drink and was barely responsive. Two doctors recommended taking her off drips and support. Me and my siblings agreed to this. We did not have to BUT she would never have wanted to be a burden. She was very well looked after by the NHS.
So to answer your question. Suffering is optional. Not for you? OK, don't!
Job done.
You are not offensive. Did you want everyone to suffer for your preferences? Just askin'.
I think most human lives are ended like that these days, @lobster … my stepfather had a bowel obstruction which wasn’t responding to treatment, and he wouldn’t have survived the required surgery. He would have died from this in 2-3 very painful weeks. Instead we decided to give him morphine and he slept for a week and then died in his sleep. A shorter life, but much less painful.
I worked in healthcare for years. My wife worked in healthcare her entire career until retiring a few weeks ago. In the critical care fields, ICU, CCU, Neurotrauma, etc it is an overwhelmingly widely held perspective among the caregivers that euthanasia should be much, much more widely available. These are people who see the prolonged suffering firsthand, and care for the patients and their families.
Every human life will end. Every single one. Euthanasia has no impact on that inevitable outcome; instead it compassionately establishes the how and when.
Cruelly and deliberately prolonging agony, pain, and suffering — How can we justify it?
The more traditional Buddhist teachings I've heard around pain at the end of life is that it offers an opportunity to purify much negative karma before moving on to the next life. If those are your beliefs it makes more sense to allow the end of life to occur naturally. Having those ideas will help relieve much of the mental anguish that also occurs from feeling like you're suffering needlessly. I wonder how you feel about removing someone from artificial life sustaining machines or stopping feeding someone who can't feed themselves?
Most people, don't have those beliefs though and unless you can conclusively demonstrate their reality to others on what grounds do you suggest to coerce them?
Its also a little like lying to protect someone from harm. Lying is negative karma, but in some cases it seems justified to prevent a greater harm.
So strictly speaking euthanasia does violate the first precept, but perhaps letting a terminally ill person die peacefully rather than in pain is more compassionate?
On the other hand, removing or diluting the sanctity of life may, down the road, lead to people being okay with something like someone killing themselves when they're going through a hard time.
What do people think about the normalization of euthanasia?
Life necessitates the consumption of other life to exist.
For this Buddhist, the 1st precept is not an ideal that offers an escape from that truth.
It is a teaching that asks a practitioner to minimize the suffering caused by that necessity whenever possible. Otherwise, I'd be a Jain.
A practice that is having to address the question of euthanasia need only ask whether an individual considering euthanasia for themselves will result in more or less suffering for all concerned.
The answer is probably different for each case. Trying to reduce it to a black-and-white pronouncement of righteousness for everyone seems the more obvious breakage of the 1st precept that you expressed so much concern about.
It is not just the people of the "West" who seek to justify whatever they want.
@Angus I'm under the impression that when a being is 'ready' to enter this world or leave it, it all depends on Karma...Some spend a short time (succumbing to illness, disease, intentional or accidental taking of life) some a long time (eventually succumbing to old age, illness, disease, intentional or accidental taking of life) and some in between...it all depends on what accumulated Karma has in store...It can be full of surprises....
One is just a vibrating bundle of energy flux held together by Karmic glue.
Arriving and departing this Samsaric world, when our Karma package is through.
Not so long ago in the Dutch parliament there was a request that was debated about a new right which some of the political parties were sponsoring to be put into the constitution. This was a right to die at a completed life, so basically euthanasia for people who felt their life was ‘complete’ and what remained would only detract from it.
A lot of the people sponsoring it were elderly, and were thinking about a possible dementia or Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Some were mental health patients. Some were sufferers from other illnesses. There were quite a few groups whose needs would have been addressed by this.
But in the end the debate in parliament failed to gain the needed majority.
I think when it gets to medically assisting someone's death due to factors of mental illness it gets pretty controversial and sketchy. I also worry if that becomes socially acceptable will there be a next boundary that gets pushed.
Yes, I can see that worry. But on the other hand, old people often don’t want to become a burden. In a way this is the result of better medical care and prolonged life, previous generations didn’t live so long and didn’t have these issues. Perhaps it’s time to modernise our morality.
We have 8 billion people on the planet, population growth is slowing and so people are having fewer children. The demographics tell us there will be a wave of greying populations sweeping the globe. That’s a lot of end-of-life suffering and strain on healthcare if we have to let them all die naturally.
Policymakers will have to face this question.
This gave me something to think on. The burden population decline puts on the younger generations is an issue that will need to be addressed as this century continues. My thought on this has been that it will act as an impetus for the development of robotics (not that it really needed more). But the idea that maybe the elderly could voluntarily end their lives to ease that burden isn't an awful idea.
A couple concerns that occurred to me thought were the value the experience of someone who's lived a full life can offer to the younger generations shouldn't be lost on us. I've heard suggestions for mandatory civil service post high school where kids interact with the elderly as being good for both generations.
Two, if the idea of old people taking their lives to relieve the burden on society becomes normalized would there be the danger of some sort of social pressure for old people to do it? Like, rather than an option that some might take, there becomes a social stigma on the olds that opt to keep living?
Some of these questions can’t be answered before it is enacted. It might depend on the culture, I imagine in some countries there will be more resentment than in others, in the Netherlands there is a strong socialised care system where people are paid quite well for the time spent caring, in other countries it might be more family based and more of a strain and a bigger moral question.
I imagine household robots will be something like a second car or a colour television — expensive and at first rather limited. We will have to see whether they catch on, just to do the vacuuming, tidy the dishes and so on. I’ve heard Apple now has a household robotics team that is going to try and build one within the next decade — mostly engineers who came off the unsuccessful self-driving car project.