Re: Dead Funny

I think the next St. Superman comic will be about, not just American culture, but modern culture the world over, and it’s unabated lust for everything to be easy (Like this ‘right to die’ mess).  Nothing should require temperance, nothing should demand discipline, nothing should ever have to hurt.  Everything should be quick, if not instant, and it should be effortless.  I can’t live forever, so I’d rather not wait for death.  It’s about control, really.  People get so caught up in their own self-centered egotistical ways that dammit, if death is coming for me, he’s gonna be on my clock. It’s like this with every aspect of our day to day lives.  I work at a 1-hour photo lab, with a big honking sign that says, ‘1-HOUR PHOTO, and people drop off their orders all day long asking, ‘and how long will that be?’  Lady, if you don’t get outta my face….  Not everyone’s like that, some people are impressed or surprised, anticipating a delay due to high business volume, most are reasonable and friendly, but at least 30% of the crowd that day got out of bed that day, put their socks and shoes on, stepped out the door, and got themselves in a goddamn hurry. I don’t let my attitude get affected by the upper-middle class’ demands and overall irritability, and if I can save the customers some time I endeavor to do so.  But it’s really a pure example, though less alarming than the ‘right to die debacle’, of modern society.  And all our progress and all our innovations boast all day about making life easier when they really just make life faster.  Life is, was, and will be hard. One way or another, for everybody-  either that, or empty.  That’s what seems to be the case.

An aside, I do agree with ‘pulling the plug’ when someone who is hospitalized has been brain-dead for a considerable swath of time and shows no hope of coming-to.  I think at that point God has taken them and their body is only being kept alive.

But when people who are dying or the people who are charged with their care simply grow impatient I have to wrinkle my brow and look down my nose at the dominant ego of modern times.  I’d take my own life with a katana before I suggested out of my own God-given mouth that my sick and dying mother die easy for her sake and everyone else’s [convenience].

To summarize this post, ‘Give me a fucking break.’

-One love

Dead Funny

I don’t mean to bring anyone down with this post, but the ‘right to die’ debate has been particularly in-your-face in the UK in recent weeks, with Sky One airing a suicide video, the BBC doing special episodes of Paranoia and Moral Majority, and a whole slew of news coverage from all the papers.  Most of the coverage has been sympathetic to the right-to-die folks, and so this funny and well argued article on the Guardian by comedian David Mitchell is a rare take on the debate;

Surely we haven’t cheated evolution so much that we’re even losing our survival instinct? That would be tampering with nature in a way that makes embryo research and GM crops look like the rhythm method. The normal reaction to death must still be to fight it, to deny it, to resist it to the last. I’d hate all this talk of dignity and ‘facing up to the inevitable’ to make people think that there’s anything wrong with raging against the dying of the light.

I had a similar gut-instinct response whilst watching the episode of BBC Paranoia which advocated assisted suicide, presented by Scottish Parliamentarian, Margo MacDonald.  One thing I get rather cynical about in the whole suicide debate is the narcissistic tendency of proponents to make it all about them and their unique suffering.  For example, Margo writes:

As someone with a degenerative condition – Parkinson’s – this debate is not a theory with me. The possibility of having the worst form of the disease at the end of life has made me think about unpleasant things.

One wonders for whom Margo imagines this debate *is* theoretical?  All of us are going to die, many of us in horrible and painful ways, of AIDs, or lung cancer, or being hit by a lorry.  Most of us will grow old, bits will fall off, other bits will stop working, and we’ll become incontinent, wheezing old bags, struggling to stay cheerful.  And, yes, we will all suffer.  Margo talks of dignity;

“I feel strongly that, in the event of losing my dignity or being faced with the prospect of a painful or protracted death, I should have the right to choose to curtail my own, and my family’s, suffering.”

But isn’t it undignified to set one’s thoughts on a type of death that might not even happen, inventing and exaggerating the awful details till it becomes an all consuming fear?  I mean, check out the video on this link for the Australian granny giving instruction on how to make a suffocation bag! If you’ve got old folks like this giving ideas to the kids, then perhaps it would just be best all round to finish them off with a tender, loving pillow hug.  How should one respond when someone expresses suicidal sentiments?  I do hope we can do better than sympathizing with such wishes!

Mitchell also goes on to write about the effect a loosening of the law would have on wider society;

Legalising the right to die would weaken, in some people, the stubborn will to survive which is the cornerstone of our nature. Many would be seduced into finishing life in good order, clearing their desks. Millions of pensioners already dutifully sell their houses, move into care homes and take out insurance policies to pay for funeral expenses: they don’t want to be a bother or a financial drain. It’s not going to take much to make some of them give everything up – give up – just to be selfless and tidy. Only the selfish and messy will make old bones.

This is what worries me more than anything else about the whole discussion; that suicide or euthanasia will become normalised and even encouraged.  It can cost in the tens of thousands of pounds to pay for a year in a nursing home, and if suicide was an option this would put enormous pressure on old folks to do the selfless thing.

h/t to In Hoc Signo Vinces, whatever that means,