The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Aragorn (13th November 2022), Silly Wabbit (13th December 2022), Wind (13th November 2022)
I can respect that and it seems like mercy to me. I assume it's a relatively painless way to go. Sleeping in your bed, surrounded by your loved ones while you slowly drift away from your body to the greater realm with the help of some medication.
I see nothing wrong with that, but for the life of me I can't understand why euthanasia is not legal in many places including here in Finland. I'm allowed to put down my dog if he is suffering terribly and in fact it would be seen as unethical if we prolong the suffering of our beloved pets who are our family members, yet we can't extend the same grace to human beings? To me all life is sacred, but life shouldn't be prolonged if all sensible options have been tested and there's nothing but pointless suffering ahead. Then you are already good as dead, but why suffer even more? Life is already hard and full of suffering. When your time is up, then it's up. The quality of life matters far more than the span of it. If people have decided to end their lives then they're going to do so and now laws can prevent it.
Our lives are not completely our own as we are connected to other people. That's why I'm alive too and if I have the choice then I'd not return back here. From what I have gathered all the important sources is that if you leave too early with unfinished business, then you certainly will choose to come back and face the same issues and lessons again. That's the last thing I would want to do. Yet no man will decide for my life, it is up to me and for the Creator to know and decide when my life ends. I hope I will have lived well before it.
"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one." ~ Epicurus
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCC8tjrXYE8
Last edited by Wind, 6th August 2023 at 02:29.
"The more I see, the less I know for sure." ~ John Lennon
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Aragorn (13th November 2022), Fred Steeves (13th November 2022), Silly Wabbit (13th December 2022)
In Belgium it is legal nowadays — but that hasn't always been the case, and it has only been legalized somewhere within the last two decades — but there's a whole bureaucracy involved. You have to have the approval of at least two doctors, and I believe a psychiatrist as well.
As the matter of fact, it was recently in the news again over here that a young woman who as a teenager was present at the Zaventem Airport in Brussels during the 2016 terrorist attacks had herself euthanized — I believe in 2019 or 2020 — because of the unbearable psychological suffering due to a perpetual PTSD related to the attacks.
It's a long story, but it basically came down to that this young woman's life was ruined forever; she was afraid to travel — in whatever way — and she was constantly living in an overwhelming and debilitating fear. So eventually, after having talked about euthanasia with her parents, and with their approval — which must have been extremely hard on the parents themselves — the young woman put in an official request to be euthanized, and after a thorough psychiatric evaluation, the request was granted.
In medieval Japan, seppuku was a way for a disgraced samurai to restore his or her honor and dignity by committing suicide. They would commonly do so in the presence of their friends and family if possible — and in that case, they were then assisted by a trusted second, who would cut off the samurai's head with a sword as a coup de grace, so as to make the pain resulting from the samurai's self-disembowelment as short as possible — but they would even do it in solitude (and without a second to assist them) if there was no other option.
Self-disembowelment was the traditional way for a samurai to commit seppuku, but there were other accepted ways. For instance, it was quite acceptable for female warriors to cut their carotid artery. Also, many Ancient Roman soldiers were known to have committed suicide by "falling onto their sword".
I regard the position that life is sacred as a subjective one, in that one should always treat another person with respect and regard their life as sacred, but I also hold the opinion that one has the right to end one's own life if said life isn't worth living anymore due to intolerable suffering. Fred has already referred to it here at the forum as "saving the last bullet for yourself", and I myself fully support self-determination.
No one should have the right to deny another person's choice to end their life. One can try talking the person out of it, yes — and I am also of the opinion that one has the moral obligation to at least try doing so — but no one should have the right to forbid it, let alone to punish and penalize those who've attempted to end their own life and failed.
Well, I guess it all depends on the situation. Everything is connected and therefore every action has consequences. Even when a person dies of natural causes — or if their life is taken by someone else, or if they are killed in an accident, or by an animal — there will be consequences for their family members, friends, business associates, and so on. It's unavoidable. So I regard it rather from the perspective of whether one is truly ready to leave mortal life behind them or not.
Many of those who end their own life do not really want to go, but they are acting out of an emotional impulse without having given things much thought — and this is especially the case among those who've tried ending their own life but failed, although even among them this is not always true — while others are truly ready to go at any point in time and are only still alive because they haven't had a valid reason yet to leave this realm, and because Providence is still keeping them alive for some reason that only it knows. But then if and when such a valid reason were to present itself to those people — for instance, a sudden onset of great suffering (in whatever shape or form) without any prospect of being able to either escape from it or to overcome it — then they certainly wouldn't hesitate.
Some people lose their life while trying to save the life of another person, but then this doesn't necessarily mean that the person sacrificing their life would be ready to go, or even that they would be willing to die. Maybe they are simply trying to save the other person while expecting that they themselves would survive just the same. Or maybe they're not even thinking about that at all, and saving the other person's life is all that's on their mind at that point in time. And this, then, makes it into an ethically entirely different debate, because technically, it wouldn't be suicide — they're not dying by choice but out of necessity, whether they realize that they are about to die or not.
And then of course there are those who are still alive because it's against the law to shoot them. Well, okay, this thread is after all called "The Sideshow"*, so I'm only kidding now. Or am I?
I agree. Be very hard on yourself, but very forgiving toward everyone else, and live every day as if it would be the last day of your life. For all you know, it could be.
* Note: This discussion has now been split off from the Sideshow thread, so that comment is no longer valid.
= DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Fred Steeves (13th November 2022), Wind (14th November 2022)
Damn man, some really good points and observations by both you guys.
Like many things in life, there's not pat black and white answers to it, or being condensed into a bumper sticker statement of for or against it. Abortion would be another example of such a sliding scale subjective issue. Some people would like to see a woman using the abortion pill the day after insemination criminalized, while others may go so far in the other direction as seeing it perfectly fine to have a baby being ripped out of the mother's room when it could well be actually born any day.
Personally I'm AOK with the terminally ill having access to medications that put the power of when they check out into their hands, you decide when you've had enough; then again, I may well have a bit of a hang up with granting such access to a young lady barely out of her teens who is not terminally ill, but psychologically devastated.
I think the decision to have an abortion should be in the hands of the woman, and not criminalized, but then to what point? If she's 8 months in, and then decides to abort, I'm thinking that's hard fucking core and it looks more like baby murder to me. Maybe there should be limits to that like there are.
And then there's the bumper sticker answers...
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
I read about that recently and had some conflicting feelings about it.
On the other hand I don't judge her, but I still think it's a bit different when it comes to young people. Youth represents vitality and life, to see that ended is always even more sad then seeing the old die, because it seems almost unnatural. Yet it's still part of life too that young people die for various reasons. Did she try out all possible options before checking out? Psychedelic therapy too? Somehow I doubt that.
I know also how depression feels with suicidal ideation, also I know how PTSD is. Granted, I have not been a victim of terrorist attacks nor have I experienced any severe violence either. I wonder about her case though, she survived that attack which almost was like a miracle or that she was supposed to survive it, yet she was left with crippling PTSD and perhaps survivors guilt too. Yet she found no other solution to that than death. My conclusion is that it's sad and I don't know what to make of it. I hope her soul found peace.
Yeah, the Japanese sure have been quite hardcore about that honor thing. Also many have been forced to commit a suicide, but then again I suppose that for Asian warrior class it was worse than death to lose your honor, so it was better to die than to lose your honor. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?In medieval Japan, seppuku was a way for a disgraced samurai to restore his or her honor and dignity by committing suicide. They would commonly do so in the presence of their friends and family if possible — and in that case, they were then assisted by a trusted second, who would cut off the samurai's head with a sword as a coup de grace, so as to make the pain resulting from the samurai's self-disembowelment as short as possible — but they would even do it in solitude (and without a second to assist them) if there was no other option.
My stance on abortion is fairly laid back, but I think that late term abortions aren't ideal unless the mother carrying the fetus or child is in danger. Earlier stages are different. That doesn't mean that I think that people should just carelessly have sex and get pregnant, then terminate it. Yet it is common that accidents happen and people don't want to have that child. Or there are some complications. It's perfectly fine, sometimes it can be very hard for women to do that operation. I can't really even fathom how it might affect some people psychologically. That doesn't even include the cases where the pregnancy might have been totally unwanted like through a sexual crime.
If one ponders about these things from the spiritual perspective, then from what I've heard and read often if not always is the case that the soul chooses the parents and the body with the place where it's going to be born in. Although the soul lingers near the developing baby, it doesn't fully attach itself until the very end of the pregnancy. So I can understand why people have conflicts about this issue because they're debating when does life truly begin and end? Well, legally it's of course decided that life ends when you no longer have a pulse and you're brain dead, right? So many think that life also begins when you begin to have a pulse. Yet it's not exactly that simple.
Also even though child-death like any death is always a tragedy or a very sad thing, we have to also remember things from the perspective of the child's soul. For various reasons it has chosen that experience, but it will have another body to incarnate into later on. Life truly doesn't end in death nor does it begin in physical birth, even though we have the terms birth and death so we can make sense of our incarnations. Ethical things like these do matter a lot of course and a lot of consideration should go into them.
"Did you start at the moment of partition? At the moment of conception? Or when you were an evil gleam in your father’s eye?"
~ Alan Watts
Last edited by Wind, 14th November 2022 at 01:26.
"The more I see, the less I know for sure." ~ John Lennon
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Aragorn (14th November 2022), Fred Steeves (14th November 2022)
Well, here's a very personal illustration of how this is a very grey area instead of a black & white one... The official cause of death on my dad's death certificate was listed as heart failure, but in reality, he was actually euthanized — at that point in time, it was still illegal here in Belgium. Apart from himself, only three other people knew about it, i.e. the doctor, my dad's housekeeper, and my brother. My brother even had a semi-active role in it, because he was supposed to lock up in the evening, but on that particular day, he had to leave the door unlocked, so that the doctor could come in later and administer the injections.
I myself was not in on it, and my brother only told me about it on the day after the night that my dad passed away. And, man, I can tell you that I was feeling a great relief not having been involved with any of it — not because of any legal ramifications, but because of the ethical dilemma. I was still a Catholic at that point in time, and I had very mixed and conflicting feelings about euthanasia as a whole, let alone that in this case, it was my dad.
I did not judge or condemn either my brother or the doctor, because it was a given that my dad was not going to live for much longer due to his condition — it was a matter of one or maybe two more weeks at best, and he was suffering with immense pain. But even today, I'm not sure whether I myself would have been able to play an active role in it all, and especially since it was my dad.
I believe that he had a right to die, but I don't know whether I would have had a right to help him die, nor whether I would have been emotionally able to do it. So down to this very day, I am glad that I didn't have to make that decision.
Here in Belgium, abortion has been legal since 1990, but there are certain legal requirements and requisites.
First of all, it is generally allowed up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy, and it must of course be carried out by a certified doctor, within a period of six days since the woman applied for the procedure, and after having suggested alternative solutions to the woman, such as giving up the child for adoption. Beyond 12 weeks, it may only be carried out if the continued pregnancy poses a real and present danger to the life of the woman or if the baby is diagnosed with an incurable disease, and in both those cases, a second opinion is legally mandated.
Furthermore, a nurse may refuse to assist in the procedure based upon moral objections, and even the doctors themselves may refuse to carry out the procedure, but they are then required by law to direct the woman onto a doctor who's willing to comply with the abortion request.
In the meantime, there have been submissions of new legal proposals, which would increase the legal term from 12 to 18 weeks and would also reduce the grace time in which the woman can rescind her abortion request from 6 days to 48 hours, but I do not know whether these proposals have been accepted into the law at this point. What I do know however is that the law is very strictly applied, and that any deviation from the terms as laid out above is still considered a felony in Belgium.
The legislation regarding abortion is also specific for every European country — there is no pan-European legislation about it. The Netherlands and France for instance are more permissive in their legislation — e.g. they allow the interruption of pregnancies longer than 12 weeks more liberally — and although I don't know about France, I do know that abortion has already been legal in the Netherlands since at least as early as the 1970s, because many girls/women who got pregnant here before 1990 would secretly go to the Netherlands to get an abortion, and this was a well known fact.
Well, the girl did try getting therapy, but I do not know which kinds or for how long. And yes, I too am having very mixed feelings about all of that, exactly because she was still so young, and because she did after all get spared during the attacks — she got another chance, unlike those who died that day. So I'm wondering whether there really was no other option for her than to die.
The matter has recently certainly generated a lot of discussion again. But of course, for the girl it's all water under the bridge. She's gone now. And that's a sad thing, indeed.
= DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Fred Steeves (14th November 2022), Wind (14th November 2022)
I'll tell ya man, some things like that I just chalk up to it's their culture, their business. I certainly understand the hard focus on honor, and I do honor that, just that their way is not my way of handling matters of honor and dishonor. Hopefully that warrior class would understand other ways of going about that in the same manner.
A lot of consideration indeed. I've always seen that one as a paradox, in that a soul may well choose to incarnate into some insufferable condition; yet for their peers here in this realm, how very dangerous things could become in acquiring the attitude that any given horrific situation someone faces was a choice, thus out of respect stand back and allow it to continue.
I know you're not advocating that, and I've pondered that one for years myself, just laying out the real world implications it could theoretically lead to. Like war gaming it out.
Ah good ole Alan watts. One of the biggest impressions he laid on me, right at the true beginning of my spiritual journey back in the late 90's and sticks to this day, was the following from one of his old Zen video recordings:"Did you start at the moment of partition? At the moment of conception? Or when you were an evil gleam in your father’s eye?"
~ Alan Watts
And sound the gong. Zen Buddhism 101.The past is a memory, the future an expectation, neither past nor future actually exists, there is simply eternal now.
A tough one. That shit gets real, real quick.
Reminds me of a somewhat similar situation my kid sister and I found ourselves facing and responsible for back in late 2012, just a few months before the move from Florida to Tennessee. Dad had checked himself into the hospital with severe breathing difficulties, it was a heart problem, we were there with him from beginning to end, and he had asked us to be responsible for his medical treatments and well being should he be unable to make the decisions himself. It's called "Power of Attorney" here.
Two weeks in he's forced to go into the Intensive Care unit, because his heart just starts wildly beating out of control, and it's getting harder and harder for them to zap it back to normal. So the main doctor calls for a pow wow at his bedside, explains how they feel they'll have a better chance of getting his heart stabilized under full sedation, and he said "let's go for it". For a couple of days he was stable, we'd talk aloud to him just so his subconscious would be aware he wasn't alone, and then that night he had a full blown heart attack. They got him back.
Then the very next night, another heart attack, only to be brought back again. It was decision time for the son and daughter now making all of his choices for him.
(Shit, amazing that I still cry when reliving this...)
So we sit down alone in a room, and the question of the day is "what would dad want?". That leads directly to "would he want to live like this, under full sedation, barely being brought back from heart attack after heart attack?" Through a lot of tears, the answer was "no, no dad wouldn't want to live like this. If he makes it out of this then we do whatever it takes to help him live even a half normal life now, but if it happens again, it's time to let him go if that be the case. No more resuscitations".
And it didn't take long, he had yet another heart attack that night, and he was gone just like that. Neither of us have ever regretted the decision, and I know that he agreed with it, but it's one of those deeply personal moments in time that in a certain way must be a defining moment in one's life.
Last edited by Fred Steeves, 14th November 2022 at 08:53.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
Hospice does a great deal in allowing, and facilitating, one going out on their own terms. If at all possible they'll give palliative care in the comfort of home, or in facility if need be, whatever the case. I've personally been up and personal when a Hospice nurse is needed, and usually been quite impressed as it takes a special kind of person that every human you care for winds up dying. It's not unusual for them to wind up getting attached to their patients, some of course more than others, and in certain cases they need to step away for a bit and decompress with "the conclusion of a case".
That's not surprising.
I like "Hospice Nurse Julie", the experiences she relates and the lessons she's learned can't be taught through any course, you live it and learn it literally hands on. This is a pretty cool story. They're all short, roughly 3 minutes or less:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AATWiEovJ8
There's also a darker side to Hospice, one I'd still probably still be unaware of had it not come directly to us. Turns out there are two schools of thought with this trade, the darker side is my opinion only as they do not consider this to be the case, but if they can get away with it they'll "help the patient along their way" by drugging them to the point of unconscious, and leave it to their own devices to get a drink water should they want some.
The patient of course will quickly die of dehydration. Pisses me off just thinking about it again...
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
Aianawa (15th November 2022), Aragorn (15th November 2022), Silly Wabbit (13th December 2022), Wind (15th November 2022)
Removed the post as those it was meant for, saw it... I suppose I posted it for them, just to know me a bit better... and how tragedy can become strength.
I want to add... when one gets to the end, there are medications to help with pain... Good ones... So people can be "Comfortable" to a certain degree... I do not have a problem with end of life decisions for those who truly are ready however. I just hope they don't do it "Too Soon", when they had a chance for much more time...
Last edited by Silly Wabbit, 13th December 2022 at 16:26.
Aragorn (13th December 2022), Fred Steeves (13th December 2022), modwiz (13th December 2022), Wind (13th December 2022)
It would appear fentanyl has made it's way into my area... Watching those on it try to function? is horrific... They're taking their own lives, right on the streets for all to see...
Sometimes I wish I was blind... as it is heartbreaking that their lives are so worn down, that they need that kind of high to feel good... As life no longer gives them any pleasure.
Just Tragic
Last edited by Silly Wabbit, 13th December 2022 at 16:28.
Aragorn (13th December 2022), Fred Steeves (13th December 2022), modwiz (13th December 2022), Wind (13th December 2022)
Aragorn (13th December 2022), modwiz (13th December 2022), Silly Wabbit (13th December 2022), Wind (13th December 2022)
So I see you edited both of these posts. That's understandable but thanks for the share, as you say those it was meant for saw it, and your story is testament to the resilience of the human Spirit.
And I agree end of life decisions really should be when all hope is gone, not just when it seems that way. Especially for the young.
That Fentanyl is some evil shit when not administered by medical professionals. My wife and I knew a "kid" who had his whole life ahead of him, except that monkey on his back he couldn't shake finally did him in. That's been about two years now, he was only 26...
It feels weird to pine (not the best word to use) for the "good old days" of just straight up heroine, were that still the case, he well may be alive today with more rounds of that heavyweight bout for his life still to go. Or not... but I don't think people used to OD back in the day in near the numbers they do today, not even close.
Last edited by Fred Steeves, 14th December 2022 at 03:32.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
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