Those folk are mistaken. — Banno

Ahhhh!

On the account being considered, virtue is found in both social and individual behaviour, morality only in social behaviour. — Banno

Then why are so many acts performed in private considered immoral by so many people? Why would they expect you to confess - make known at least to God and one other person - even the most individual thing of all: impure thoughts?

Both virtue and morality are social ideas; their nature and hierarchy devised according to the requirements of a particular society at a particular period of its history. The prevailing philosophy (or world-view) sets out the principles; the current requirements sets the standards. At the start of a war, courage and loyalty are the paramount virtues; at the end of a war, industry and charity become highly prized. When a religion is rising in the world, it's most valued asset is zealous adherence; when it has consolidated its power, it values meek obedience; when it is in decline, it preaches tolerance. (And when it is in power and afraid of having that power challenged, it resorts to torture and calls that virtuous.)

I see progress in the universe, from matter to life to consciosuness and this forward movement is in danger of being impeded/reversed by science e.g. love is oxytocin — Agent Smith

How till that impede or reverse the progress of the universe? For that matter, how can a human activity interfere with the universe at all?

I 'believe' the 'human created' Asprin, will cure my headache(a human 'condition'). — universeness

Aspirin, prayer, the rack, MRI, nuclear missiles, polio vaccine, the guillotine, television, chemotherapy, refined sugar, ma jong, plastic, electricity, fracking, DDT, the Mars rover, birth control pills, flags, gods... Lots and lots and lots of inventions. Political and religious ideologies are also human inventions.
Humans use these inventions. There is a clear track record of how humans have so far used these inventions.
To believe that next week or next year humans will all come together in a single, benevolent "We" and start using their inventions wisely for the betterment of all is a great leap of faith.

people used the autonomy argument there but failed to define or justify it as if we all agreed on something before hand — Andrew4Handel

Were they debating in a society where the law requires adults to take responsibility for their actions, then it was something they all agreed on before this particular tropic became a subject of debate.

If one is assumed to have control over one's actions, one is considered an autonomous adult. Once the age of majority is reached, the citizen is entitled to vote, sign contacts, buy property, marry without parental consent, choose where they will live and what work they do, beget and raise children. And if they attack you late at night and you call the police, they will be arrested, tried and punished - just like grownups who are expected to pay their taxes, keep their promises, fulfill their duties and make their own autonomous decision.
Shouldn't obligations and responsibilities come with rights and freedoms?

Is that your best shot? — unenlightened

I wasted the first two.

Can you provide any evidence for this claim? I can provide evidence to the contrary. — Andrew4Handel

What you provided was evidence that people who disapprove of assisted suicide disapprove of it and don't discuss it with people who do approve of it. I have similar anecdotes, and more recent senate committee hearings.

This is not complicated, though some people want to complicate it, drag all kinds of unhappy teenagers and dysfunctional families and what-ifs into it, claim superior moral judgment and plead extreme susceptibility to suggestion, saying that easy and painless death should not be available to people who ask for it, because it might then tempt people who could be helped in other ways, and making cheap and fast death available to people who want it will somehow diminish the capacity of the system to provide other kinds of help for those who need it, and besides the people who do want it already have easy ways available, but my wanting to make them legal will somehow make them more attractive to people who don't want it.

It's actually quite simple:
Most people don't want to die. And if they can be helped to live, that should be their choice.
Some people do want to die. And if they can be helped to die, that should be their choice.
Not yours. Not mine. Not their daughter's. Not Judge Dredd's. Not Kevin Stitt's.

It is a matter of how much we value preserving everyone and how hard we are willing to try and of course what to sacrifice for doing so. — Tobias

We have a pretty good indication of how well governments and societies do that in the way the Covid pandemic has been and is being handled. We also have a pretty good overview of the public responses to government efforts. It's given us a fairly comprehensive picture of humanity in crisis...
...and from here on, it's all crisis, all the time.
Yes, there is some remote possibility of saving civilization. It's just that I lack faith in our collective will to save it.

There are quick accessible ways to potentially painlessly kill yourself if you are able bodied. — Andrew4Handel

Yeah. Like helium and carbon monoxide. But as I recall, those people I cited who took your recommended exit, didn't count because they were in favour of assisted suicide.

If people don't have access to advanced palliative care how would they have access to assisted suicide? — Andrew4Handel

Weeks in a hospital bed with 24 hour care on constant morphine drip vs 10 minutes in your own bed - after the two-week wait time for the paperwork. Multiply by number of chronic, long-term and terminal patients who would prefer to stop having to cope.
Lots of people don't have access to either. But those states make it easy to get a gun - problem solved. So what if a mentally ill suicides decide to take a theater or school full of companions along, oh well, thoughts and prayers and flowers on the sidewalk - same time next week?

Your side of the argument are doing your own scaremongering and convincing health old people that they could face and unpleasant and unbearable death.
Several of the most prominent terminally ill assisted suicide campaigners died peacefully and or quickly in the end — Andrew4Handel

In the end. The last two minutes may seem quick, and loss of consciousness may seem peaceful to an onlooker, but it was preceded by quite long periods of slow unpeaceful illness.
I don't know what cancer treatments and surgeries you've undergone, how many dead people you've seen or autopsy reports you've read, but for myself, I'm never convinced by the press release, or well-meaning stranger saying "He didn't suffer."
Yah, he did.

I'm waiting for someone who disagrees to tell me something about something that does not relate it to another thing. — unenlightened

Everything relates to everything else in some way. Therefore, nothing and nobody has any identity at all; it's just one big jiggly-wobbly mass of vibrating strings.

No you are throwing millions under the bus and the integrity of the health and care systems and the value of life due to your desire to have someone help kill you. Something you could easily do yourself. — Andrew4Handel

That's where we came in. Old people in reasonable health are killing themselves long before they need to die, and in unnecessarily painful and messy ways, for fear that if they are no longer strong and independent when the time is right, they will be forcibly prevented from dying, by someone thinks the world should march to his superior moral drumbeat.

Your society is already, according to that bridge business, expanding a lot of its resources to protect some vulnerable people from themselves. You want everything to be organized around saving you from yourself, and if it means depriving everyone else in the world of the freedom to make decisions about their lives, well, you figure you're worth that little sacrifice.

ou would have interfered because you want assisted suicide legalised which would mean I could have been drawn to an assisted suicide before knowing I had autism and ADHD. — Andrew4Handel

You could have been drawn to jump off a bridge without any help from me. Are you going to make bridges illegal - just in case?

You want to throw vulnerable people under the bus with health systems that are complex and easily compromised and societies marred by social inequalities that make slow progress. — Andrew4Handel

And buses. Outlaw buses, in case I'm drawn to throw somebody under under one.

And you fail to comprehend the vulnerability of people who don't want an assisted suicide under your legal system. — Andrew4Handel

I won't compel you to come here.
You really are pushing this too far. The entire world does not exist, and millions of other people should not have to suffer, for the sole purpose of safeguarding your specific personal vulnerabilities.

things are secondary and intuited from their relations. — unenlightened

Intuited by what? Who are they that have relations? The cart is pulling the horse.

those are qualitatively different modes of faith. — Merkwurdichliebe

That's true, I guess:
Believing - in the absence of any evidence - that someone who created humans will solve the human condition.
Believing - contrary to all evidence - that something humans created will solve the human condition.

The truth always lies within the middle of two biases. — Benj96

Between, yes. Not in the middle. In no conflict are both sides equal in any particular, including honesty in recording.

Relations are actual. I get my 3 ducks in a row; their relation is being "in a row". That's an actual row of existing ducks, but not 'three ducks and a row' 4 existing things. — unenlightened

If they are actual ducks, we know nothing more about their identities. Are they live ducks, drakes, wild ducks, white Pekins, dead ducks, wooden decoys, squeaky rubber ducks, fuzzy toy ducks?
We know nothing about their relation to one another except their current spatial arrangement. Are they siblings? Rivals? Three amigos? Consecutive items off an assembly line with no relatives at all?
All we know about their relationship to you [an unidentified 'I'] is that they are your property and that you placed them in some arbitrary row.
We do know that actual ducks with actual individual identities had to exist and that an owner, 'I', with an individual personality had to exist before the 'I' could form a row of them.

I am saying that you cannot say anything about your personal identity as unique inner being, but only describe your relations to the world, and this is because language has to be public, not private. — unenlightened

Why? Language may be shared, though not all languages are accessible to all publics, and not all the speakers of any particular language actually speak or understand the same language, but that doesn't mean it must always be shared, or that the vocabulary is unavailable for private use.
Also, human and other baby animals who have not yet acquired language do exhibit a personality, and have a sense of identity, before they can communicate in words, and people at the other end of life, who have lost the power of speech but not memory still retain their inner identity.

Relations are actual. — unenlightened

Yes. They are transactions between two or more separate personal identities.

Tell us about this actual personal identity that does not relate to the world. — unenlightened

Who said a person doesn't relate to the world? But something actual has to exist as a discreet entity before it can relate to anything else that exists.

I feel we have an odd debate because I feel we are in agreement, but you are not agreeing with me — Tobias

The only real difference is optimism vs pessimism. I think we'll run out of time, resources and options before the [relatively; numerically] insignificant matter of suicide, assisted and otherwise, can be addressed in any systematic way. I think far bigger and more urgent matters will take up all our attention and efforts...
At this moment, hydro repair crews are working their tails off all around the province, trying to restore power to dozens of communities. We are in a good position, because we invested in diverse sources of heat and light. The technology has existed for decades to make every house and village energy-self-sufficient, and the Liberal governments made some progress in that direction, but every few years a conservative government came along to undercut those efforts: one step forward, one step back. As the conservatives gain strength and keep shifting rightward, the forward step is just to regain lost ground, then one step backward, then two steps back.

... until the final collapse of our civilization. Many civilizations have collapsed before, and I'm pretty sure their comfortable middle classes also refused to contemplate the possibility that their own could go the same way. What comes after is open to interesting speculation.

I do not know what a civic minded smart administration is. — Tobias

But you can imagine it: government that puts the needs interests of the citizens before those of its military or financial or religious or political elite, designs policy, enacts legislation and allocates funds with those priorities.

I doubt though that when we install it, presto, all our problems will be over. — Tobias

I didn't suggest anything of the kind. If we ever installed such an administration, we could begin to solve our problems; unless we do, all the problems will keep growing bigger. Events - catastrophic events - won't wait on us to come to our senses.

Do not look at the state to keep you alive, we will only do so when we still see some benefit in it, after all you can pay for it yourself, or choose death....'. — Tobias

That happens anyway, when we run short enough of everything. It already does. Increased privatization of health care and emergency services, plus the recent overwhelming challenges, means exactly that, even if it's not spoken aloud. People are already dying in emergency waiting rooms in Canada. How they/we feel about suicide recedes as an issue for a growing number of people who can't get cancer treatments or surgery to relieve pain or even an appointment with a GP. It's not a question of how much we value life in general; it increasingly and inevitable becomes a question of how many can be preserved at all.

I tend to agree, but, that said.... well, the religious. conservatives may well be concerned with the value of human life and oppose it on that ground. There is a plethora of conservativisms. — Tobias

That's what I said. The ruthless right-wing collected into its support base the religionists by offering to ban their moral bugaboos: assisted suicide, abortion and same sex marriage. It collected the xenophobes by offering to build walls and secure the borders against migrants. It collected the white supremacists by offering to shut down the BLM movement, keep the Confederate symbols and arm more police. It collected the financially insecure by convincing marginally employed people that cutting tax for business, destroying unions and relaxing environmental protection will result in job-creation; that cutting back on support for the homeless, mentally ill and higher education will increase the spending power of decent, hard-working like you. They have collected the paranoid by offering to increase national security and taking up a tough attitude toward other nations. It collected the 'rugged individualist' fringe with anti-science, anti-institution, anti-state conspiracy propaganda (laughably easy with social media), letting them arm and organize, and inciting them to oppose medical protocols and election results.They have collected these factions that normally would not be under one flag - like God, Guns and Trump - through relentless propaganda. And since the crises keep coming, there is always a scary thing to blame on the scapegoat of the week. The more people are anxious and insecure, the easier they are persuade that only "a strong leader" can save them. Come to Poppa!

Populist parties often couple the law and order values with economic policies that might well be agreeable to the progressive left. — Tobias

I'd be interested to know how that platform reads. Once in power, it doesn't matter what they promised. The communist dictatorships put that kind of program forth as their agenda, but actually do the opposite in power. The fascist-leaning ones the same. I know our premier promised to expand education and health care capacity before the election, and he cut both immediately after he got a majority, plus opened the Toronto green belt to 'development' in the face of public outcry. He has five years to wreak whatever havoc he wants - and those trees and schools and clinics will take much longer to regrow once he's gone; the soil and water will stay polluted. This is always the case: construction is slow and costly, especially when it must be preceded by extensive cleanup; destruction is fast and cheap. He's not even on the far right, and he's already caused a huge amount of un-undoable harm; the new federal conservative party leader is much worse. And so the handcart to hell gains momentum.

Personal identity is not relational; it’s actual. — NOS4A2

Yes. Its roots are in DNA and cultural heritage and grows on the individual like the rings of a tree, through life experience, interactions and memory. It doesn't change by external designation or an observer's description of physical traits. You may attain the rank of colonel and acquire the nickname Colonel Nosehair, but, unless you deeply identify with the rank and the facial flora, that is not who you are; it is a role you play.
Identity is personal. Because of the attitude of a group you happen to be in at the moment, or the society at large, you may choose to disclose much or little of your actual self. Among fans, you may identify as a fan, even though Star Wars, which you like well enough to understand the references, occupies only a tiny fraction of your attention; among armed racists, you probably wouldn't advertise your Black grandmother.
What we do in public is play assigned roles. Among friends, we let our guard down in some degree, but don't disrobe entirely. Even in intimate relationships, we continue to reserve a core of separateness.

Not everyone has an accommodating Germany next door. And what, when all the well-prepared nations need the capacity for their own critically ill - who will take the extra old and infirm off your hands?

the shortages now are the result of past policy choices. — Tobias

So is climate change, but knowing that doesn't alleviate the present problem or mitigate the much larger future problem or increase the available resources for whenever the polity is ready to throw out the bums and install a civic-minded, smart administration. With every hurricane and coastal flooding. more infrastructure is destroyed. How many hospitals did Katrina take out? And she was a pussycat, compared to storms yet to come.

ou use a lot of ' it' and ' they', so much so that I have trouble understanding your argument — Tobias

Yes, sorry. I'll see if I can sort it better.
I had alluded to the conservative parties - everywhere, not just in the US - moving rightward, striking down laws for personal autonomy and cutting social programs, including health services.
To which you replied:

Assisted suicide or euthanasia laws may play into that hand, because if we do not have to keep people alive, and it becomes socially not to, we can cut more beds. — Tobias

By which I assumed you meant liberal governments' permissive suicide laws encourage conservative governments to cut health-care on the pretext that old people will have been killed before they need it.

I contend that this is not a cause-effect situation.

The 'because' doesn't fit. — Vera Mont

That's not why they do it. 'It' is the policy of allocating resources from agencies of public service to agencies of control. 'They' are the aforementioned right-wing political parties which are taking over governance in much of the world.

They were already doing it when they themselves legislated against assisted suicide and abortion, against gay rights and birth control, against science education and school lunches, against environmental protection and worker's safety

I.e. They are not concerned with the value of human life, and never have been; their attitude didn't change when the law was relaxed.

- but for guns, prisons, executions, militarized police and even more tax-cuts.

What they are interested in is central, lock-step power, protecting concentrated wealth.

Not because of erosion of humane values, but because the things they were for required lots of gullible votes and they presented their platform of 'againsts' as the moral choice.

To which end they wooed and won the religious fundamentalist, the racist, the xenophobic, the economically insecure voter blocs by appropriating their simple, punitive values.
There is a clearly traceable history of this trend in the US, which devolved from Nixon to Trump and may end in much worse: a competent megalomaniac. I see the etiology and current state of affairs in Canada. I don't know how it came about (other than through the Middle Eastern debacles) in Europe, or how it will play out in each nation. You're in a far better position to see that side and predict what comes next.

This type of palliative care is used at end of life and not to keep someone in a coma for years or it would not be classed as palliative care. — Andrew4Handel

Okay. Only eight viable patients, then? Same moral principle: she's not really alive, but she's not technically dead, so we didn't make her suffer and we didn't kill her. Still not sure how many gods would buy that side-step. You cut the god-given suffering by four weeks. Maybe when they finally do die, the victims have to finish out their sentence in purgatory. After all, god is not mocked.

I am just looking for evidence people value human life. I started this thread with examples including a 44 year old and 24 year old who had assisted suicides for mental health reasons not terminal illness and whose lives were shortened considerably. How is that valuing human life? — Andrew4Handel

I didn't claim to value "life". As I explained several times, I value individuals, their autonomy and the quality of their lives. If it has value for them, I would try to help people preserve their lives, however miserable or difficult. If I had the power to improve their lives, I would do that. My very simple policy is: If you can't repair them, let them go.
If the lives they are in, that they experience from hour to hour, has no value to the persons living them, by what authority (in the absence of a sense of moral superiority) could I overrule their assessment? In the cases you cite - presumably because they stand out for some reason - I imagine that the patients were spared many years of torment, rather than only a few weeks, which is the more common situation. Then again, going by the precedents I do know about, they probably would have found a way to do it themselves.

I also raised the cases of my brother who didn't want an assisted suicide despite being paralysed among other things and the case of myself who had undiagnosed cognitive conditions that I received no help for and nearly ended my own life because of the side effects of these conditions. — Andrew4Handel

I would not have interfered in either of your decisions. But you want to interfere in mine.

People on your side appear to assume they are right and have the good on their side ( for no reason) — Andrew4Handel

"The good" is not a concept I consult for my decisions. In fact, I doubt such a thing exists or can be defined. I see an injustice, I object to it. Just that simple. I don't accept your moral superiority or your entitlement to other people's lives and deaths.

without the slurring the opposition, hyperbole, bad faith arguments and a heavy dose of personal ideologies your position would be much weaker. — Andrew4Handel

I'm in Canada, where we already won. In the US, things are much worse, and since there are person there whose well-being is of concern to me, I keep abreast of the situation. Which is dire.

Not causing someone's death and devaluing life. Not causing suffering but not ending life. Not making the value of life dependent on one subjective individuals evaluation. — Andrew4Handel

Keeping the not-quite corpse on ice until God sees fit to collect them. (BTW, we're charging the family $1200 per day and taking up a bed in which 28 viable patients might have recovered in these seven months if You had not seen fit to collect them, but, hey God, we didn't snuff this one, so we did good, yeah?)

Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. It doesn't follow logically or causally that the forbidding of assisted suicide leads to high suicide levels and lax gun laws. — Andrew4Handel

No. I made the comparison between the kind of suicide they try to prevent and the kind they don't try to prevent. I'll settle for 1:10. And the accompanying usual group of political choices.

In the democratic process you cited, it represents the winners. Those are their choices.

One palliative care option is that people can be put into a coma until they die. — Andrew4Handel

The value being....?
Oh, yes: We can tell God we didn't really kill them, we just put them in cold storage for You. Sure, He'll buy that.

It is like polluting other peoples characters based a complete other persons collection of ideals. — Andrew4Handel

Like this?

I'm beginning to think the pro suicide people lack values and morals. — Andrew4Handel

According to the 2021 Data Summary, as of January 22, 2022, prescriptions have been written for 3,280 people, and 2,159 patients have died from ingesting the drugs.

vs

An estimated 20,966 firearm homicides and 26,320 firearm suicides occurred in the United States during 2021

Texas and Florida have the most guns and the highest suicide rates. Both forbid assisted dying. Texas is second in executions; Florida is 15th. Texas banned most textbooks; Florida was third.

That is what happens when you live in a society and in a democracy. — Andrew4Handel

Yes indeed and those are political choices. — Tobias

Hardly. Which politician orders up a flood or a snowstorm or a pandemic? Those are realities with which real, live, present-on-the-scene health care, rescue and emergency workers have to deal with. There are too many of those and too few of them. No politician is able to pull a few thousand doctors out of his hat. People with chronic debilitating illness don't have ten or twelve years - it would actually longer - for a new crop of graduates, even if higher were offered without tuition fees immediately.

because if we do not have to keep people alive, and it becomes socially not to, we can cut more beds. That was what I was arguing against. — Tobias

The 'because' doesn't fit. They were already doing it when they themselves legislated against assisted suicide and abortion, against gay rights and birth control, against science education and school lunches, against environmental protection and worker's safety - but for guns, prisons, executions, militarized police and even more tax-cuts.
Not because of erosion of humane values, but because the things they were for required lots of gullible votes and they presented their platform of 'againsts' as the moral choice.

The reason we shouldn't kill people. — Andrew4Handel

And that is how one draws a perfect, self-containing circle.

If you have nihilist, spiritless values I think people are entitled to impose value on you because by rejecting value you have no argument they should value your opinions. — Andrew4Handel

You are entitled to oppress me, because you consider me unfit to live my own life, while you walk arm in arm the gods. Got it.

Nothing about the value, profundity and continuation of human life. — Andrew4Handel

What about them?

I think killing someone or allowing them to die is at odds with valuing human life — Andrew4Handel

Almost everything in human history attests to a species not valuing human life. As I've mentioned before, live has value in proportion to its quality. If the live-valuing moral factions in the US were serious,
they'd stop allowing guns in every household, where

An estimated 20,966 firearm homicides and 26,320 firearm suicides occurred in the United States during 2021

Many of them impulsive youngsters, not sick old people.

I use empathy for morals. It's done me all right, so far.

Yes and sometimes hard choices need to be made. However, I do side with Andrew when he argues that euthanasia laws may also be a symptom of a careless society. The notion that we do not sacrifice people for the greater good, but we do our utmost to keep them on board is meaningful. — Tobias

That's the ideal, and many good people have been striving to do so. But privileged elites have always, everywhere, been indifferent to the condition of people who were surplus to the feeding of their own wealth and power.
I don't believe we are a careless society; by and large Canadians tend to be compassionate and civic-minded. Or used to be. As the waves of crisis - influenza, fire, flood, windstorms, blizzards, power outages, road accidents, emotional trauma: more emergencies - keep coming, the resources, notably medical staff and hospital beds, are never replenished, let alone expanded to meet the need; patient backlogs keep building up. The cost is not only financial: the last two years have taken a severe toll on production capability and even more in human resources.

And all the while, conservative factions are growing more radically right-wing and aggressive, striking down humanitarian legislation enacted by their progressive predecessors, defunding programs that relieve the burden on caregivers. The first impulse of the far right is to forbid and punish - which invariably exacerbates the problem. I honestly don't believe the center can hold. It almost doesn't matter what's legal now, or what new federal laws come into effect before the next election: they won't last.

Therefor it is best to argue in the abstract. — Tobias

Laws are necessarily made in the abstract. But they're also made within a political and economic framework of what is possible. In a culture strongly influenced by religious factions, certain ideas cannot be considered for legislation - as had been the case with birth control and gay rights. In a debt/profit economy, the source of funding for any proposed legislation determines its viability.

In a day and age where we are fond of measuring, caluclation and efficiency, decriminalizing assisted suicide runs the risk of becoming standard practice because we simply do not want to pay the price for keeping someone alive. — Tobias

It's not so much that we don't want to pay the price of keeping people alive - we cannot afford to.
A number of factors to consider on the economic side: demographics - aging population, longer pensioned life, fewer young people to take their place, fewer employed people and funding: shrinking tax-base, mounting national and household debt, rising price of insurance, almost insurmountable price of a medical degree, technological advances that can artificially extend an unproductive life at $1,000/day/patient - that's without medical interventions; if there is surgery involved, the cost goes through the roof. And that, of course is assuming that facilities and staff are available at all.
Even the best health care systems are already under severe strain. One more round of the current pandemic will collapse even the most robust.

So, if governments make it illegal to help people die, they will be helped illegally - as before - or stored away somewhere until they die, in whatever conditions, whatever agony - as before.

What lawmakers and many citizens so often fail - or refuse - to distinguish is the line between personal and civic behaviour. It is necessary for government to mediate interaction between persons and between the individual and the community. Thus gun laws, hate speech laws, traffic laws, property and contract laws. But it doesn't need to get involved in the citizens' private lives, and can't do it successfully when it tries.
A government can lock people up for their sex lives, substance use, faith and ideals, habits and games, but it can't make them stop being who they are, needing what they need, feeling how they feel.

It can, however, improve their circumstances so that they may not need self-medication and escape; may not feel helpless and hopeless. And it can make their environment less dangerous so their inevitable mistakes and poor judgment has a lower cost to society.

The first species of holes is between who I feel I am and who I am. It seems that feelings alone don't cut the mustard. The nature of those holes is brought into relief by inverting the account, which brings us to the second account. — fdrake

My teeth hurt from biting bullets - wish you'd brought toast instead. My problem with felt account is: where would such a feeling and commitment originate, if not from previous positive experience? Why would anyone imagine himself a Star Wars fan without having seen and admired the films?
The other one, identifying as a police officer, could be a fantasy role in the same way as fandom - from watching fictional police at work and believing that those imaginary guardians or peace and good order are better than you are as a real person. (Why this putative 'you' had such low self-esteem is moot, for the moment.) You don't have to 'work as' your role model; only to imagine. But it can evolve from fantasy to impersonation - where you actually dress up in a uniform and buy the weapons (the weapons seem to be crucial) and on to delusion: some impressionable people who identify with police do act out; they go into the street and shoot 'bad guys'.

We need others to point out areas in which we are deficient, and tell us how to do better. So in that sense, "DO listen to other people," is sometimes the way to go. — tomatohorse

The trick is discerning which others give useful constructive criticism, and which are harmful to our self-esteem. It's not always easy, because well-meaning relations who do have helpful insight are sometimes tactless in their communication; lovers or friends may be too kind and hold back the truth, while some well-spoken rival may use guile to undermine our self-image and adversaries may exaggerate our faults and shortcomings to erode our confidence.

Here you come, and shall I run from you, fight you, fuck you or eat you? — unenlightened

I like that summary - or the dog's classification of encounters. We don't get much from sniffing bums, so we look, listen and exchange some kind of greeting. That's what makes apparel so important. Not just the concealment of genitalia, but the display of sex, class, rank, marital status, occupation, material wealth, maturity, temperament, inclination. Voice, too, timber, tone, accent, enunciation, vocabulary and syntax all reveal not only how we are situated in society, but a good deal about our antecedents, self-image, attitudes and aspirations.
I've never liked physical contact with strangers, from the time I was patted on the head or had my cheeks pinched as a small child... right up until some time in hospital, when I perforce let go of that reserve. In between, I learned to accept handshakes; never did get used to the instant hugging that's standard in some circles. The greeting is like showing a badge: if you know the special handshake or use the correct salute, bow or curtsy, extend one hand or two, kiss one cheek or both - these greetings tell the other person whether you belong to their "us" or not, and if not, some indication of which 'them' you're a part of. Makes all the difference in the next step of aquaintance.

That is why some people convey a fake identity because it is an identity they wanted or it is an identity that is useful to them at some time. Such as evading capture or identity through elaborate disguise — Andrew4Handel

I think you may be confusing different things here.
Identity is who you feel yourself to be. It may be necessary to conceal or disguise it, or you may be confused about some aspects of of it, and it may be difficult to express, but that's your actual self.
Self-presentation is something else again. That's not about who you are, but how you want others to see you. It is self-presentation that drives the cosmetic surgery, fashion, makeup and hairdressing industries, as well as a good deal of PR and advertising.
You may, for whatever reason, wish to present yourself as something entirely different from who you really are, but that doesn't change your identity; it's just pretend. It's also quite normal for people to present themselves slightly enhanced, a little better than their natural best, in order to attract mates, opportunities and friends. That doesn't change their identity, either.
People choose careers and invest a huge amount of time and effort becoming lawyers or doctors or senators, and that desire, that investment becomes part of their identity. Not all of it, because the same people also identify as husbands, mothers, golfers, siblings, Masons or whatever.
A person's identity is made up of whatever ingredients that person feels is essential to being themselves. Identities are complex; they can be stunted or crippled by early experience; they can be expanded and liberated by success in work or love or friendship or therapy. They grow and change.
A person reveals as much or little of their identity as they think is appropriate to - or safe in - a situation, and environment, a relationship or a social setting.

Well, alll right!

But I don't see why you would trust the government to a manage an assisted suicide considering their track record of eugenics and the current problems with it. — Andrew4Handel

Because I trust self-righteous, interfering power freak even less. I have no current problem with eugenics.

There certainly is the issue as how far can we trust the government and how much power can we invest them with. — Andrew4Handel

And that's why I would rather have me than the government deciding when and how I'm allowed to die.

However Antinatalists often face the objection that if you don't like life you can just kill yourself. — Andrew4Handel

If your views become popular enough, there will be no more assisted and no palliative care and no food production or electric power, so the whole issue will be moot for the last generation of old people. If they can't commit suicide on their own, they'll either have to help one another or wait for God to finish them off.

It is an easy way out for parents to say "well you can commit suicide?" and have the state facilitate it. — Andrew4Handel

I don't see this becoming a systemic problem. I have never heard a parent say that to their child. I have heard of a few parents killing badly damaged children out of pity, and a lot more killing undamaged children and many more infants, for various societal and personal reasons.

It is something that people have said to me and health professions and other professionals can offer suicide over assistance as has happened. — Andrew4Handel

Yet you keep telling people to seek help. What makes you think they'll get it? What makes you think that's a viable option for everyone who has a life they find difficult to bear?

Maybe you can find a few, to defend the idea that religion is the problem. — Andrew4Handel

In the question of "who owns a life", religion is and has always been one of the two central problems. The other, of course, is its bed-partner, the military state, with all its hungry coffers and cannons.

But you trust the same governments and society to enact an ethical assisted suicide scheme? — Andrew4Handel

I have no choice. I had no choice - or only very limited choice - for most of my life but to live under governments that made discriminatory laws, stupid laws and lousy decisions. Every now and then, they get something right. I vote; I hope the government shifts to policies more in line with my convictions.

A lot of peoples jobs are part of their identities and a valued part of their life. — Andrew4Handel

The operative word there is "part". It is what they do - and they can change to another occupation - in fact, many people nowadays have to change several times during their working life. Gone are the days when an old geezer, forced to retire from his bookkeeping job, died six months later, because he had lost his identity. And many people have to take two or more crappy jobs to earn a living at all. I hope nobody in the world will ever have to live with 'stockboy' or 'gofer' as their personal idnetity.

Many people have many delusions and self-delusions. They are not considered crimes or misdemeanours, and only sometimes considered mental illness. — Vera Mont

What are the ramifications of this? In your opinion. If you care to comment? — Andrew4Handel

Worst case? Truly horrendous. One guy's delusion is that the Jews conspired to thwart his artistic ambition and his nation's aspiration to greatness, so he drags a nation into a disastrous war and genocide... with the resultant creation of a truly problematic new state where all the great global powers are locked in a fifty-year standoff, which eventually explodes in sporadic violence in a number of far-away countries, and a series of small but destructive local wars - all because a nation went went along with, shared in, the delusion.
Another guy's delusion convinced many generations of otherwise decent people that their beloved deity would sentence them to eternal torment for breaking his nonsensical rules.

Most of the time, it's harmless fantasy, with no ramifications.

I used the Police officer example to suggest how personal identities can be problematic and that we might want to (pardon the pun) Police them. — Andrew4Handel

Claiming to have an occupation or rank you do not have is not a personal identity; it's a simple deception or role-play or joke, depending on the circumstances. Unless you actually believe you are are a cop and try to arrest people, in which case you may be committed or arrested, depending on the consultant's verdict.
We've been over this. Why would anyone's job-description be their personal identity?
Now, if you believe you're a reincarnation of Gandhi or King Arthur, that actually is about personal identity; that's real mental illness.