RE: Do we own our own lives? A discussion on the morality of suicide and voluntary slavery.
December 11, 2012 at 5:01 pm
This is a complex issue that is near and dear to my heart, because not only have I lost a friend to suicide, I have attempted to take my own life. I struggle trying to reconcile my beliefs of a human owning their own life and my personal experiences.
Suicide is too complicated of a topic to simply say that it either is or isn't moral, and my personal philosophy is that the consequences and movitavtions of an act need to be taken into consideration when deciding whether it is moral.
I think that a person does have the right to take their own life if their qualitiy of life is so terrible that being alive is actually doing more harm to them than if they were dead. The problem with this, however, is how do we determine what measure of quality of life is acceptable to commit suicide? I think is the biggest hurdle people that are pro euthanasia have to overcome.
Then there is the issue of recovery. Say two people are suffering the same amount, but one has a 50/50 chance of recovery while the other has a significantly lower chance. This is important when we get into mental illness, because most of them are manageable if the person can understand it well enough and put forth the effort. If euthenasia had been completely legal, I would be dead, as I could never see myself getting to the point I am at with my depression.
Like I said, it's a complicated issue, and I will post more later.
Suicide is too complicated of a topic to simply say that it either is or isn't moral, and my personal philosophy is that the consequences and movitavtions of an act need to be taken into consideration when deciding whether it is moral.
I think that a person does have the right to take their own life if their qualitiy of life is so terrible that being alive is actually doing more harm to them than if they were dead. The problem with this, however, is how do we determine what measure of quality of life is acceptable to commit suicide? I think is the biggest hurdle people that are pro euthanasia have to overcome.
Then there is the issue of recovery. Say two people are suffering the same amount, but one has a 50/50 chance of recovery while the other has a significantly lower chance. This is important when we get into mental illness, because most of them are manageable if the person can understand it well enough and put forth the effort. If euthenasia had been completely legal, I would be dead, as I could never see myself getting to the point I am at with my depression.
Like I said, it's a complicated issue, and I will post more later.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
