A Duty To Die

[PJABBER]

Not so long ago, humanity was subject to a hand to mouth existence, subject to the whims of nature and subject to the unending competition for food. A few thousands of years ago we could be attacked by predators, fall ill and die from infections and diseases. We were strong bodied and strong willed but subject to famine, drought and pestilence.

Today, mankind has taken some huge leaps forward. We still live subject to the disruptions of weather and disease, but we seldom are concerned by predators, famine or drought, at least in the developed countries.

Life was cheap before. Unending wars as well as environmental conditions took many lives. But, in achieving the extraordinary comfort and security we now have, has life really become any more precious?

As a society we have institutionalized infanticide with abortion on demand simply by proclaiming that a child has to be born before it can be considered fully human. And hundred of millions have thus died in the course of only a few decades.

As a society we have institutionalized war, becoming impossibly efficient with weapons that no one can stand against, though we have not used them to full effect, yet.

As a society we have gained such an expectation of personal comfort that very little can be imagined that would have precedence over that comfort. In a way, we have become the most selfish manifestations of humanity yet.

This expectation is made manifest is through our attitudes toward those who are most dependent and those that require the greatest expenditure of time, effort and money to keep alive - the youngest and the oldest.

The youngest and most helpless, those that can't fight back in the slightest, we already know how to deal with them. But how will we now deal with the aged?

There is this myth of the "golden years," a time without the cares of wage earning and labor, a reward for a lifetime of effort. The myth can only be supported by the use of very expensive medical care to hold off inevitable death. And as all life ends anyway, when does the cost outweigh the benefit?

Oh, I doubt we will mandate pulling the plug on anyone over 60, 70, 80, 90, anytime soon. We will likely just institutionalize the idea that once someone is too old to work and contribute it would be a good idea that they voluntarily go somewhere and die quietly.

Maybe we will celebrate them choosing to die with (inexpensive) memorials and testimonies to the braveness they show in their self-sacrifice to our own comfort and convenience. Maybe we will disenfranchise them so that, should we need to make that kind of choice for them, we can do so with greater ease and efficiency. Maybe, with universal health care, a faceless bureaucracy can make the choice to prohibit (for the greater societal good, of course) the most expensive life prolonging treatments to those who are in their "golden years" for us.

Our society is still making choices. We have already chosen to abort the unwanted children that would make our lives inconveniently difficult. How far away are we from choosing to remove the unbearable inconvenience of our expensive aged?

May 11, 2010

A "Duty to Die"?

By Thomas Sowell

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have "a duty to die," rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.

There was a time - fortunately, now long past - when some desperately poor societies had to abandon old people to their fate, because there was just not enough margin for everyone to survive. Sometimes the elderly themselves would simply go off from their family and community to face their fate alone.

But is that where we are today?

Talk about "a duty to die" made me think back to my early childhood in the South, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One day, I was told that an older lady-- a relative of ours-- was going to come and stay with us for a while, and I was told how to be polite and considerate towards her.

She was called "Aunt Nance Ann," but I don't know what her official name was or what her actual biological relationship to us was. Aunt Nance Ann had no home of her own. But she moved around from relative to relative, not spending enough time in any one home to be a real burden.

At that time, we didn't have things like electricity or central heating or hot running water. But we had a roof over our heads and food on the table-- and Aunt Nance Ann was welcome to both.

Poor as we were, I never heard anybody say, or even intimate, that Aunt Nance Ann had "a duty to die."

I only began to hear that kind of talk decades later, from highly educated people in an affluent age, when even most families living below the official poverty level owned a car or truck and had air-conditioning.

It is today, in an age when homes have flat-panelled TVs, and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites-- rather than the masses-- have begun talking about "a duty to die."

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about "a duty to die."

Many years later, while going through a divorce, I told a friend that I was considering contesting child custody. She immediately urged me not to do it. Why? Because raising a child would interfere with my career.

But my son didn't have a career. He was just a child who needed someone who understood him. I ended up with custody of my son and, although he was not a demanding child, raising him could not help impeding my career a little. But do you just abandon a child when it is inconvenient to raise him?

The lady who gave me this advice had a degree from the Harvard Law School. She had more years of education than my whole family had, back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann.

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which "a duty to die" is just one.

These efforts at changing values used to be called "values clarification," though the name has had to be changed repeatedly over the years, as more and more parents caught on to what was going on and objected. The values that supposedly needed "clarification" had been clear enough to last for generations and nobody asked the schools and colleges for this "clarification."

Nor are we better people because of it.

 

[DesiPower]

if you have a point. its pretty vague... is it just a rant?

 

[Danube]

Reading Ezekiel Emanuel describing health resources being deserved most by those who most ensure the health of the "polity" (not the very young or the very old) sounded like something from Nazis.

 

[PJABBER]

if you have a point. its pretty vague... is it just a rant?

Choose life, always messy, inconvenient, disruptive. Or not?

When the choice is yours, while the choice is yours, how do you choose?

Sometimes choosing is as simple as a vote for or against abortion on demand or for or against "universal" health care. Sometimes it is more personal, as when you make the choice to have life support pulled from a terminal patient, maybe a patient that happens to be a parent or grandparent.

As a society, we seem to have chosen convenient death as often than not. We have chosen the most pro-abortion politician ever as our President. We now have an ongoing debate as to what constitutes life worthy of investing limited funds for medical support.

I think, to most, the choice is clear. Some may couch the terms as politely or technically as possible to make their choice more palatable, others are less politic. But most do know where they stand, for life or against.

Once a choice is made, once clarity is reached, the next choice is always between being passive or active in support of that choice.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Choose life, always messy, inconvenient, disruptive. Or not?

When the choice is yours, while the choice is yours, how do you choose?

as usual your points are vague and utter nonesense.
As a society we have never ever chosen to ask our aged to die for thr better good!!
That wioll never happen and it is plain stoopid to equate this with the abortion issue!!

 

[Lemon law]

In our ancient hunter gather past, if the old and sick could not keep moving with the tribe to tap fresh resources, they stayed where they were, and yes were then more likely to die. But for the larger tribe, they could not endanger their own physical survival by staying in an area where they had already depleted most of the food resources needed to sustain the larger tribe.

Now much of humanity has better technologies and we take of our old and sick. As we can and do take care of the old and sick, without endangering our own physical survival in the process.

 

[heyheybooboo]

BLABBER should return to his beef wellington and pinot noir, and leave reality-based discussions concerning death and quality of life to reasonable adults.




--

 

[StageLeft]

I enjoyed your post and the article. And in fact it is not far off at all. I myself have pointed out the extreme cost in keeping old people breathing when it's become a desperate and expensive measure to do it.

 

[jackschmittusa]

while I might choose to die rather than be a burden on my wife someday, it would certainly not be because of some sense of duty. I simply love her enough that I would not want to be responsible for destroying her quality of life.

I might also decide to die if my own quality of life dropped too low and pain and discomfort were too high.

But out of some sense of duty? Can't see it.

 

[CrackRabbit]

I enjoyed your post and the article. And in fact it is not far off at all. I myself have pointed out the extreme cost in keeping old people breathing when it's become a desperate and expensive measure to do it.

Only one problem with the whole thing, assisted suicide is still illegal in most places (in the US).
Seems so silly to me that you can have your pets euthanized, but not yourself.

 

[irishScott]

Since when do emos want to be Buddha?

 

[PJABBER]

while I might choose to die rather than be a burden on my wife someday, it would certainly not be because of some sense of duty. I simply love her enough that I would not want to be responsible for destroying her quality of life.

I might also decide to die if my own quality of life dropped too low and pain and discomfort were too high.

But out of some sense of duty? Can't see it.

You are making reasoned choices for yourself. Others are considering taking those torturous choices off your hands.

Some argue that you might not be capable of reaching conclusions that they would see as being more reasonable, especially in light of the needs of society. Especially should you choose to live expensively rather than die.

Obama did say that at some point you may have made enough money. It is no stretch to consider that at some point you have spent enough money.

Others still believe that it remains an individual prerogative to make such choices, but that may be a shrinking voice.

 

[Moonbeam]

I wanted to be put on an iceberg and float out to sea, but, alas, the icebergs are disappearing.

I also, however, have no idea what you are on about, PJ.

 

[TruePaige]

Soon enough it won't be necessary to keep organic pieces of flesh in a usable state, we will simply replace them with new, grown tissue or cybernetic replacements.

Nice way to be an anti-choice, pro-hate troll though.

 

[PJABBER]

I wanted to be put on an iceberg and float out to sea, but, alas, the icebergs are disappearing.

I also, however, have no idea what you are on about, PJ.

It is all about how far we are going to take the Commerce Clause.

 

[umbrella39]

BLABBER should return to his beef wellington and pinot noir, and leave reality-based discussions concerning death and quality of life to reasonable adults.




--

Or at least to the adults not so obsessed with delusions of grandeur...

 

[MJinZ]

You are making reasoned choices for yourself. Others are considering taking those torturous choices off your hands.

Some argue that you might not be capable of reaching conclusions that they would see as being more reasonable, especially in light of the needs of society. Especially should you choose to live expensively rather than die.

Obama did say that at some point you may have made enough money. It is no stretch to consider that at some point you have spent enough money.

Others still believe that it remains an individual prerogative to make such choices, but that may be a shrinking voice.

You are pretty short sighted. As Technology develops and becomes more available, costs will diminish. Eventually, keeping someone alive on life support at 100 years old will be pretty cheap. Eventually 100 years old will be the new 50 years old.

You didn't think people in the past lived much past 40 or 50 did you?

Abortion is pretty weak argument. If you want to save the babies, start with the ones that are already born - look at Africa. I'm convinced that people like you really don't give a shit on the inside. Intellectually, yes, maybe, but not empathetically. Which is pretty much the case with most people anyway.

 

[Blackjack200]

The piece is absolute tripe and a real effort to finish. I looked up Sowell and was shocked to discover that he's an accomplished economist. What garbage.

 

[CycloWizard]

According to supporters of the recent healthcare bill, demand for healthcare is always finite and increasing demand on healthcare has no effect on (or, even better, somehow magically decreases) costs. Until they wrap their heads around the fact that even after we expend an infinite amount of money and resources prolonging death, everyone will still die, there can be no progress on the discussion of how to deal with healthcare "reform."

 

[StageLeft]

Only one problem with the whole thing, assisted suicide is still illegal in most places (in the US).
Seems so silly to me that you can have your pets euthanized, but not yourself.

I agree it doesn't make sense.

 

[Perknose]

Now much of humanity has better technologies and we take of our old and sick. As we can and do take care of the old and sick, without endangering our own physical survival in the process.

Of course, this can and does contribute to our tax burden, which is probably why PJ is feeling some pressure to kill himself.

 

[Jaskalas]

Now much of humanity has better technologies and we take of our old and sick. As we can and do take care of the old and sick, without endangering our own physical survival in the process.

Does endangering the budget count?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I think I might have a way out of this. Starting at, say, age 40, people could be given the option of paying some extra percentage of their income as taxes (with their being a minimum dollar amount of extra taxes to be paid--sorry poor folks) to be eligible for coverage for medical care to extend life an additional 6 months.

 

[zsdersw]

We have chosen the most pro-abortion politician ever as our President.

Pro-choice != pro-abortion

 

[CLite]

Why do people think of costs as going to a blackhole? The "cost" of staving off old ages infuses the medical profession with funding. This funding drives research into the basics of our biology and provides benefits beyond helping granny live for another few years. Additionally the money goes to nurses and homes which then spend that money on the rest of society.

Ultimately it re-invests grannies money into the system, leaving her children with little inheritance (booo-hoooo, work for your own money).