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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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When a society does not have medically-assisted euthanasia, the implied goals of the society are to improve people's situations so that they don't want to kill themselves. The goal will not succeed for everyone. But there's less of a, "Don't like it? Then quit" attitude.

Countries with ubiquitous medically-assisted euthanasia seem to have determined that in a lot of situations people should just quit instead of receive support or help. For example in Canada people are being euthanized because they are disabled and are not receiving the financial support they need, or they are unable to see loved ones due to Covid precautions. Patients have recorded hospital staff pushing assisted-suicide against their express wishes.

These people might be making the rational best decision for themselves at the individual level, but society might be failing them overall. When society gives itself the out of, "They can always just kill themselves," there is less incentive for it to try to improve the lives of people with fixable, temporary problems.

For example in Canada people are being euthanized because they are disabled and are not receiving the financial support they need,

This is sorta misleading .From what i gather from the article, Canada's healthcare system is so bad that a handful of people are choosing euthaniza, not that they are being killed against their will or to save costs. It shows how despite how much people complain about healthcare costs in the US, which is an understandable complaint, things could still be so much worse.

In countries without Euthanasia, people being denied access to medical treatment leads to dissent, disagreement and debate over policy, and potentially, the policy being changed in future. Seemingly, in countries with Euthanasia, it (at least in this example) leads to suicides. Not all pressure valves are good. Euthanasia permitting greater misrule as angry people instead become dead people is a plausible problem.

I think our current governments would euthanise a lot more than just the elderly if they could.

I understand there are some aesthetic issues, especially with the actual transition from no-euthanasia to yes-euthanasia but I can't imagine that if we had always had it as an option that we'd seriously considered rescinding the option. Hospital staff pushing it is a whole other thing, I would certainly not want it incentivized in any way. Nature and society have always failed people and always will, we have to organize what we can around that possibility. The OP isn't an example of something society seems able to fix, despite much effort we cannot reverse this person's trauma, I think we should try but I also think we should try developing FTL travel and cold fusion but support other sources of transportation and energy production in the meantime.

When society gives itself the out of, "They can always just kill themselves," there is less incentive for it to try to improve the lives of people with fixable, temporary problems.

Doesn't that require assuming that society doesn't prefer trying to improve the lives of people with fixable, temporary problems? I doubt anyone who favors euthanasia in these circumstances is any less eager to find nonlethal solutions than people who oppose euthanasia.

This is intuitively correct. The kind of personality that goes into the helping professions are generally not indifferent go f*** yourself types.

Well they're not at first.

Do you know many nurses, firefighters, medical practitioners, etc? There's definitely a lot that do it for altruistic reasons, but you'll also find a lot of people who become extremely jaded and detached. And probably by necessity, as seing people hurt all day can destroy your mind if you don't put some barriers up.

But were it true that the care takers are always the caring people manifest, we wouldn't have so many instances of neglect and malpractice.

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