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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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I share your intuitive revulsion to state-sanctioned suicide of a physically healthy young person. Yet doesn't euthanasia, at least for the non-paraplegic, require you to drink the latter-day hemlock yourself? In which case, does this not require an approximately similar amount of courage as downing a pint of vodka and swallowing a handful of barbiturates? And yet the latter would be acceptable to you, simply because it is not done with the sanction of the healthcare system? I am not sure the difference is truly as great as you profess.

Yet doesn't euthanasia, at least for the non-paraplegic, require you to drink the latter-day hemlock yourself? In which case, does this not require an approximately similar amount of courage as downing a pint of vodka and swallowing a handful of barbiturates?

No. The hospital provides the cocktail, and the hospital bed, and the softly cooing coterie of palliative care nurses. Even if the final act is done voluntarily, it is done having been stripped of its transgressive nature. If you want to kill yourself, you should want it badly enough to break through the transgressive barrier yourself, without the soft susurrations of medical experts gently lowering it to the floor.

In which case, does this not require an approximately similar amount of courage as downing a pint of vodka and swallowing a handful of barbiturates?

I don't think the courage required is even close to on par. The state sanction of it and the medical supply and feel of it lends the imprimatur of normalcy to the whole thing. If there's anything I learned from the fiascos of 2020, it's that for many people, anything outside the sanction of the state is illegitimate and impermissible while anything done by the state is de facto good and accepted.

That's vastly more respectable in a Socrates and hemlock sort of way. My respect for euros has increased.

Mind you of all the horrible venues to go for one last drink...

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