Euthanasia

Hey, I just had a chat with someone who presented himself as the First being. But I’m positive it’s a prank…

Me: …while I’m at it, ill give you my viewpoint on euthanasia. Given that I cannot stand to see others suffer, I am in favor of local euthanasia dispensed in priority to those who suffer confronted to the suffering of others. Like that it will only be necessary to take care of those who suffer without having to be bothered by those who don’t suffer. Me for example, if a family member dies, I have asked for some local euthanasia beforehand… because I do not want to suffer unnecessarily, nor lose my dignity. It is not only liberty which stops at the moment where that of the others begins, you too may I point out!

First being: Only the suffering of those who are close to you make you suffer?

Me: It is a question which is absent of you. I suggest the following one. Who is close to you? It is in effect not customary for you to interest yourself in what is measurable and quantity, rather in what is not measurable and quality. It is even the first time I hear “solely” in your mouth. May this serve as a lesson, for now you are diabolically preoccupied by the fact that a suffering does not weigh enough.

First being: there is much subjectivity in your words. What do you know of my “morals”? Why should I only be interested in what is not measurable? Why should measure be a quantity?

Me: Your morals? How do I know them? Don’t be a snob please, as if we did not know each another! Jeepers! Why would you only be interested in what is not measurable? With what you pay me, do you really think you are the right one to ask me this?? Why should measure be quantity? That one is easy, because quantity is measurable….:slight_smile:

First being: hmmmmmm

Me: Don’t pull that face!! No joke, I find your strategy consisting in sending the ball back in a backhand crosscourt passing shot with “it is in your head that it is true…” undertones a bit short. Short passing shot if you will. If I were in your sandals I would try to have a bit more fun. You have no excuse really! I would help them to a theology of the sea on its natural metaphysics coulis. If you want my opinion, there is only you to ban religion. Hey, for example we spoke of humility, why didn’t you answer: “Humility bores me. It has in common with arrogance that in both cases you speak of yourself.” How did you say? “Hmmmmmmm”. Did I say that right?? :0)

I had a few chats with this First being, on his web site (where he gives answers to questions). Now I am not only sure that he is a fake but also that he is a nasty character. :0)

Harvey: Hey, I just saw that someone asked you: “why do you not intervene in the Middle East? In Palestine, where a war is going on? And everywhere else in the world?”

I feel compelled to tell you a true story, one which you necessarily remember, even if it is just one amongst many similar types of stories. We are in a nazi death camp. I forget which one precisely. It is the height of winter and some prisoners escaped the day before. The camp guards wake everyone up at 4 or 5 in the morning and decide to execute some prisoners so as to deter any other candidates to an evasion. They thus pick out three individuals: two adults and one twelve year old kid. A few hundred motionless prisoners witness the executions. For the two adults, it happens quite rapidly, but the kids weight is insufficient and he gesticulates at the end of a thick rope which is completely frozen. His agony is endless and it is insupportable. Suddenly someone who cannot bear this situation anymore murmurs:

-Shit, why does God allow this?

After a few seconds, another voice murmurs:

-Shutup, he is hanging on the end of the rope.

God: You have fallen into sensationalism, my poor friend. You act exactly as the Germans which you speak of here. You dangle horror from the end of a rope in the hope of making an example of it. And of course, you tell only the part of the story which fits your thesis. Like all those who like you dream of evasion but prefer to witness a hanging.

Harvey: The narrowness of your intelligence is only equalled by your nastiness. You understand the inverse of what the text signifies, and this is moreover a true story. It means essentially that “God” moves aside in front of the cruelty of men and leaves them free of any folly. Continue on with your psychocretin coutchicoutchicooz. I say for the moment not only are you someone without talent, but you are also a jealous and nasty person. Do you know what a jealous person is? An asshole who seeks a master over which to dominate. It is funny that you reproach me the aggressiveness which transpires from you… even your psychocretinism is off the mark.

God: If you seek a master over which to reign, look for him on your side. On this side of the mirror there is nothing to see.

Harvey: That’s right, I have noticed for a while now there is nothing much to see on your side. Your aggressiveness, your prejudices, your lack of cultivation, your heaviness, your arrogance, how did all that come to be? Could you tell me what made you lose your means? It is not I who am playing by signing God on this site! It is not I who am exposing myself freely. Do you see what you have been eructating in your last comments? Senseless insults. Is that all you have in stock? Well you are no good man, and you are rather delicate and vulnerable for a first role! As a matter of fact, insulting is a delicate art you know, which does not allow for much approximation… One must not play when one is not a player, one must not play the master when one is the apprentice, in the same way that one must not play the apprentice when one does not want to learn. Further, what is left in the end if you also do away with humour? Ummm? What is left to motivate you? You wouldn’t take yourself for God by any chance? Because there is some margin before you can under expose the shadow of a mere doubt, I’m telling you, even for a novice shrink who couldn’t tell the difference between a phlebitis of the mind and haemorrhoids of the personality. :unamused:

I would support any law that it would enable someone to alleviate their suffering. It’s one of the few political issues I have an opinion on. Most of them I am indifferent, uninformed, or both.

It is mostly the good of the family and close friends which is considered in this debate, not that of the ailing person. It starts like that you understand. He who is nearing the end of his life needs to be loved, and if he receives time and again the message that he is a nuisance and that it is high time it stops, or even if he just feels it, it is obvious that person will ask to end it all! Yet we all know that the end of a life is a moment as difficult as it is rich… “revealing the intimate thoughts of each of us” to borrow on the biblical expression.

The first fault, quite common, is affective abandonment. It is the most widespread; any person with knowledge of a service for the dying would confirm this, as any person in this same type of service would tell you that if a patient in the terminal phase is adequately surrounded, it is extremely rare that that patient ask for euthanasia. The question is of a rare subtlety, and I’m not saying that in some cases of extreme suffering the option of killing the patient not be envisioned, I can’t say. I can only say one thing, what follows:

I accompanied for several years a woman whom I dearly loved; I did it at each moment, not allowing anyone to touch her, if it wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, and not just any nurse; I slept in the room when she had to stay the night; I did not even accept an armchair with wheels after heavy operations (bone-marrow transplant and the like). I took her in my arms everywhere, always, in the elevators, the parkings, everywhere; and I can tell you she never considered putting an end to her life… because I loved her and vice-versa, that was the reason; it was her and it was me, for that is exactly what goes on, it is at the measure of how one loves or not, and it is tough to love, arid, when one must stick it out till the end, but it is immense, even if a priori and seen from the outside I lived at home with a vegetable during the last two years, for I did not want to put her in palliative care. I was the palliative care, even though I knew she could drop dead from one second to the next. The doctor had explained this clearly to me: possible cerebral haemorrhage from one second to the next, and I had her at my home for two years, watching her almost 24/7, second by second precisely! Lol

For what was hidden was immense, a cathedral! Yet she did not wish for her life to be prolonged by medical means, and I never encouraged her to take that route, because with my relations, I could have obtained some “extraordinary” treatment; in the terminal phase the suffering was there, but the smile was too; I made sure nothing was done to prolong it unnecessarily, all the more so since she had chosen to experiment new medication, coming out of a phase of experimentation on rats, the last one in fact having spectacularly hastened her death. Now if I had seen anyone approach her to inject a mortal liquid, he would have died before her… at the end all that remained in her bag was to nourish her body, nothing else, no antalgics, no anxiolytics, nothing, only survival vitamins for the body.

All this to say that what counts is love, and I’m telling you that I was the exception, everyone said this to me: "but Sir what courage, nobody takes care of their close ones like you!” What blockheads!! Lol Really, what blockheads!! And when I put her in the hole, a priest found the nerve to say ‘you must be relieved it is all over!” What a moron! He was lucky not to have followed her down lol

I saw many die alone, including children. The hospital I was in has no more secrets to me: I hung out there for five years. I even saw a mother accelerate the transfusion of her 10 year old child, a heavy chemotherapy, because she was in a hurry to get it over with, to leave to do her shopping in her bourgeois boutiques, knowing full well that the transfusion should have transpired drop by drop, given that the nurse had just attenuated the rhythm!! This is what is behind the desire of euthanasia most of the time. And if I told everything I saw, you would not believe me.

Each of us acts as he wishes faced with the death of close ones, and for that matter his own death, but to legalize affective abandonment is a different game, and it is necessary from time to time to call things by their name. Now I am not generalizing my own experience, and I know that certain end of lives (few, because today modern medicine can alleviate 95% of suffering, but obviously it costs a lot of money and the palliative services are very rare!) are particularly horrendous, as some cancers of the face, but let us not legalize the exceptional!! Best teach people to not be scared of death, and precisely not to abandon their family or close friends by giving them the means to be present.