Comments

  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    Anyway, how far can you trust a loving, merciful god who would condemn you to eternal suffering for refusing to prolong the undeserved suffering he'd meted out to you?
  • The Limits of Personal Identities
    In the concluding paragraph, I took personal identities to mean something more fundamental than wearing a badge or saying you're a doctor when you chat up a woman in a bar. I concede it was a somewhat ambiguous question.
    BTW - I didn't assume that didn't believe them; I assumed that you thought they could be challenged. As in, "Now, Mr. Wright, if that is your real name, when did you last see the deceased?"
  • The Limits of Personal Identities
    And why do you take it as given that I don't believe their self-professed identities? — god must be atheist

    In accordance with the OP question, that's what is being challenged.

    Or identified a gender that doesn’t traditionally match their biology, making it quite clear that we can all make such distinctions, even from an early age — praxis

    Yes, I didn't want to wade into that particular quagmire. Children are usually clear on their own gender identity by age 7 or sooner. But they may be conflicted about declaring that, for fear of ridicule, rejection or punishment. Or be convinced that they must be wrong, because their elders know best. Or try to conform, be what's expected and feel guilty if they fail. For pre-pubescents, the issue is further complicated by the cultural trappings of gender-assignment. Young children imitate their role models. While a an eight-year-old girl who is confident in her role feels fine wearing jeans and playing with trucks, a child who has been designated male may strongly desire to wear dresses and play with dolls, the better to fit the stereotype of the gender with which they identify.
  • The Limits of Personal Identities
    People identify others in particular ways and not always fairly. — praxis

    Any identity assigned by another person should be challenged asap. In the case a child's assigned identity, it takes years for the child to realize whether it actually fits or not. Sometimes a child designated 'stupid' or 'lazy' or 'ugly' or 'clumsy' grows into the assigned character, and doesn't realize that they ought to challenge it. This is less true of assigned gender, but more true of assigned ethnicity and religious denomination.
  • The Limits of Personal Identities
    So yes, you can challenge leaders, trusted people, loved people and feared people, but do be wary of the potential consequences. — god must be atheist

    You can challenge their credentials, their qualifications, their decisions and their motives - but if you don't believe their self-professed identities, how did they ever become leaders, trusted people, loved people and feared people?
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    You reject the efficacy of palliative care. — Andrew4Handel

    No. I reject the claim that quality palliative care is available to all who need it.

    Having a child is forcing someone to suffer. — Andrew4Handel

    If you know it will be born with serious birth defects, yes. If you know it will be addicted, abandoned or abused, yes. In those cases, early abortion is the kinder option. A healthy baby, well cared for and protected, is open to some risks of suffering later in life, just as a volunteer firefighter, hydro maintenance worker or ICU nurse is at risk of suffering and dying from injury or disease; a police officer or soldier is expected to undertake a known risk of being killed or killing, being traumatized or maimed and causing the same to others. Life is a risky business.
    (As it happens, my partner and I chose not to reproduce, but we did raise two children who were already in the world and at risk. I believe they suffered less in our care than might have in other circumstances - but it's also possible they could have fared better. I may have a negative opinion of some people's reproductive choices, but I don't try to force mine on anyone.)
    However, none of these risks are comparable to the known, palpable, inevitable suffering of someone who has bone cancer, begs for the means of escape and being surrounded by jurists who tell him "No, because if we let you die, then some other people whom we don't consider eligible might also choose to die. You don't own your life; we do."
    If the righteous really wanted to reduce the number of human deaths, they would shut down the arms trade.

    If your belief that it is immoral is not objective then what is it other than a statement of personal preference? — Andrew4Handel

    Of course. Everyone's moral position is personal, whether through conviction or convenience.

    The consequences of the legislation have already being manifested in the cases I raised and the history of eugenics and the Nazis etc and judging some life not to be worth living. — Andrew4Handel

    A lot of diverse issues in a little basket. The moral precepts of their vaunted Christianity didn't stop the Nazis any more than it had stopped the inquisition or the conquistadors. It wasn't permissive laws that led to those atrocities; it was very strict laws.
  • The Limits of Personal Identities
    For example I could identify as a Police Officer. Is that problematic? — Andrew4Handel

    No, it is knowingly, deliberately and demonstrably false. If you're pretending to be a police officer (no caps required for occupations) as a practical joke, in a theatrical performance or at a costume party, no problem. If you're doing it in the commission of a crime, serious problem.

    Is it problematic if identify as the worlds greatest painter and just think I am an attractive genius? — Andrew4Handel

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

    do personal identities (which could include religious identities) have a special status and should they be challenged? — Andrew4Handel

    By whom and in what context? If you identify as a police officer and try to arrest someone, they have a right to as for your ID; if you brought a suspect into the police station, the real officers on duty would certainly demand on what authority you did that. But I've never been required to prove parish membership when entering a church, and most people wouldn't be rude enough to question anyone's claim to be Muslim or Catholic. Of course if a minority religion is persecuted, its members would be challenged to prove they didn't belong to that religion, but I wouldn't blame them for lying.

    To practice a profession or trade people should be required to present valid credentials; otherwise, let's just assume they are who- and whatever they say they are, until their true abilities and attributes are revealed. If it does no harm, I don't see why we should make it our business to identify other people.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    A person could vote for or not protest an assisted suicide bill that has negative consequences or is simply objectively immoral. — Andrew4Handel

    "Objectively immoral" is an oxymoron - or at the very least, a subjective proposition. I strongly believe it's immoral to force thousands of people to suffer for one's own inability to predict every possible consequence of every legislation. Others strongly believe it's wrong to end any life for any reason. Most people's moral stand is situational: wrong to kill some people, right to kill others; wrong to kill some species, right to kill others; wrong to kill foetuses, right to kill felons; wrong to let people own potentially lethal drugs, right to let the same people own intentionally lethal weapons... None of those are objective judgments, but some are more internally consistent than others.

    We are always in danger of supporting ideologies and programs that we don't know the full ramifications of. — Andrew4Handel

    Then we must never support any, because it is not in our gift to know the full ramifications of any action, even individual, rational action, and far less, group action on which we never achieve complete accord.

    I don't think we can know whether are values are valid without some kind of arbiter like moral facts that doesn't depend on humans. — Andrew4Handel

    I don't have time to wait for God to enlighten me. So far, I've only heard any of His directives from men, and those directive didn't always make sense.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    I suppose it is to do with allowing people to be released from severe suffering. — Andrew4Handel

    So do I. Having had several beloved pets professionally put down after painful deliberation, and having killed a number of maimed victims of of predators, I very much hope someone will be kind enough to do as much for me. And they should not be punished for that kindness.

    But after palliative care has been explored preferably. — Andrew4Handel

    Explored... if available. Back when my mother was dying, our health-care and social services were still robust enough that she could be brought home, with equipment, supplies, drugs, a visiting nurse and someone to teach us how to take care of her daily needs. It was a harrowing enough experience, even so. Now, after Covid showed us the huge cracks in our elder- and long-term care facilities and stressed our (previously excellent) health-care services to the breaking point, I expect no such help to be available when we need it, even if we had family to do the unskilled part.

    I think my concern is devaluing life. — Andrew4Handel

    I understand that... from the POV of a member of the valued inhabitants of the world. But, look around with both eyes open. So-called civilized governments sentence innocent people to death every day, and send healthy, fit young ones out into battlefields to kill and be killed for no logical reason, and let people starve and freeze to death on streets, and pine away in refugee camps and prisons.... As a species, we have never valued life - not so's it shows in our actions. A few privileged pockets of history can make that lofty claim - yet, still without regard to the quality of their own citizens' lives, let alone the lives of people in subject nations, client nations, 'developing' nations, exploitable nations. Let's not at all consider the lives of other species. So, just what does this valuation of life really amount to? A strongly-held belief of a very few people and a platitude bruited by a majority who don't really care and enjoy the benefit of not caring.

    I think assisted suicide should be argued about on pragmatic or rational grounds but not based ones own personal beliefs. — Andrew4Handel

    Beliefs is what all such debates are based on. There is no pragmatic value in the life of someone who is unable to contribute, a waste of resources, a chore and tribulation to people around him and miserable in his own skin. There is only sentimental, religious or selfish value in keeping them alive a minute longer than they wish to be.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    My position on this has softened today.[/quot

    I'm delighted to hear that. It's none of my business, but I do wonder why.
     — Andrew4Handel
    I still think it could lead to a slippery slope easily. — Andrew4Handel

    Yes; Soylent Green any minute now. But I suspect it won't be the result of legal laxity; there isn't time for a slide down a gentle slope.
    It will the product of overpopulation and migrations putting unbearable pressure on human and natural resources. There will be a great many deaths from all causes: war, famine, pandemic, and weather events. Health services everywhere are already already collapsing. So are economies. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/how-there-will-be-blood-explains-crumbling-global-economy.html and governance, both from an inability to cope with the crises they face https://www.coffeeordie.com/on-the-brink-governments and from hostile takeover https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule
    Totalitarian governments are not famed for providing aid and support for unproductive populations.
    All these factors are converging.
    For all I know, we, too, will soon have a jackbooted, Guns and Dollars type regime, and all my cherished, hard-won civil rights will be gone overnight.
  • Cupids bow
    Sure, but the ancients weren't too fussy about the nationality of the gods and perhaps we shouldn't be either. — Cuthbert

    Well, anyway, the Romans weren't. They not only appropriated the Greek pantheon wholesale, they went on to Ramanize and then Christianize, all the European deities they thought might help them win over the locals.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    A federal lawsuit contains thousands of pages of documents detailing Tennessee's lethal injection protocol.
    A review of those records shows how the state has not followed its own rules since resuming executions in 2018.
    Seven of the 20 executions attempted this year were "visibly problematic," including one attempt at lethal injection that led to an unprecedented three-hour struggle to insert an intravenous (IV) line into an Alabama man,
    Owning a handgun is associated with a dramatically elevated risk of suicide, according to new Stanford research that followed 26 million California residents over a 12-year period.
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm Florida and Texas way out in front of Oregon, Washington D.C., Hawaii, Washington, Maine, Colorado, New Jersey, California, and Vermont. Of course, we don't, in either the high or low suicide rate states know how many of those people are natives, and how went there just to die. (Florida, quite a lot, I would imagine)
    Suicide has been a hidden and unspoken action for centuries. Religious proscriptions and, later, legal penalties kept it underground and secret. ....inaccuracies and general underreporting in the tallying of suicide deaths.....A death is not classified as suicide unless there is unequivocal evidence to do so: “It is likely that suicide may be under reported due to both the social stigma associated with suicide as well as the reluctance of a medical examiner or coroner to make this classification if supporting data are uncertain
    ... like when the family member who find the body destroys their suicide note to avoid the stigma.

    People have always opted out, when they had a choice. All we've done by legalizing it is add the ones who had not had a choice before; who were physically unable to carry it out or forcibly prevented (by confinement, usually) from obtaining the means. And brought some out of the closet that would otherwise have been reported as accidental or natural deaths.

    The problem of rotten lives will not be solved by forbidding a choice to people with rotten lives. As long as society is not willing to alleviate the rottenness of people's lives, they'll keep escaping any way they can.
    And? Will the anti-choice people provide relief for the families, financial help so old people don't end up on the street, palliative care hostels, medication and social services to take care of their needs?
    Pretty much like the anti-choice faction takes care of all the unwanted babies.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    There is a lot more relevant information in the linked article that I will come back to in later posts. — Andrew4Handel

    So, the burden of your argument is that every case of suicide researched and planned by persons of sound mind fail to meet your criteria for good reason?
    The fact they were not yet terminal and helpless points to the premature suicides of people determined to die on terms in countries where that's against the law.
    You're right that I was not thorough enough: didn't find enough spouses who had actually done their partner in, but merely collaborated in a suicide, before killing themselves. So we don't know, except for one, what would have happened to them if they were discovered to have collaborated or conspired in the spouse's death; can't be sure they would have prosecuted and convicted.
    True. I concede, since I'm prepared top ferret out cases whether the spouse did kill the other, then recorded the fact, clearly stating that they were reluctant to face legal consequences and only then killed him or herself.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    I do not think that phrase means what you think it means. — praxis

    I know what it's supposed to mean and is sometimes naively believed to mean in countries that are supposed to be and are sometimes naively believed to be democratic.
    I contend that those beliefs are incorrect, which renders the phrase nothing more than a slogan.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    Palliative care is not torture. — Andrew4Handel
    You keep pretending that's a viable option for everyone in terminal distress.
    In developed countries, cancer patients are relatively well provided for, with good access to palliative care units and hospices, at least in urban centers. Community hospitals and rural areas are, however, less well served, and people living with chronic noncancer diagnoses have much poorer access to specialist palliative care programs.
    And of course, if you add the depredations of covid et al, plus rapidly aging population... it's not looking like an option for everyone.

    Prolonging someone's life is not the definition of torture.

    Not your definition. It is the definition of many a professional torturer.

    His suicide and others like this that have happened can be viewed as political acts. — Andrew4Handel

    Fair enough. Political acts are required to effect political change. If changing archaic laws eventually changes social attitudes, that's all to the good for ex-slaves, children and atypical genders.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    But they may not take the initiative. — Cuthbert

    They're not even allowed to. But, in a sense, they already took the initiative on all our behalf when they petitioned and testified before one court after another to get the law changed. And, as I mentioned before, it was tacitly understood in the health care community that both physicians and nurses occasionally succumbed to a patient's pleas for release, even while assisting was illegal. Taking that risk was initiative enough to convince me.
    The question is: do I have the right to place such an obligation on someone, even if they would be ready to take it on? — Cuthbert
    I don't know about you; I trust them to make a decision they believe to be right.

    For health workers: do they have the right to accept the obligation, when they have a duty to preserve life and not to take it? — Cuthbert
    They may well consider their first duty to the patient, rather than an abstract concept of 'life'. they may consider "do no harm" to include refusing to shove tubes and needles into someone who does not want to undergo a treatment, or who has explicitly refused artificial life support. DNR orders have been in effect for a long time and generally followed - unless the family too charge and countermanded the patient's wishes.
    Nothing about life is as cut-and-dried as the words 'give' 'preserve' and 'take' could begin to encompass.

    And it is outrageous of me to expect someone to end my life when their general and sometimes professional duty would be to hinder me from suicide. — Cuthbert
    And was the authority that laid that "duty" on them more moral, better justified than the person's own case-by-case judgement?
    I used to work at the coroner's office. We had bodies come in from hospitals and nursing homes of people who finally succeeded after many such well-meaning or legally enforced interventions. The agonies they endured just to end their lives demonstrates just how agonizing those lives must have been. I can't believe anyone has a duty to prolong such a life.
  • Cupids bow
    ↪Benkei

    Good thinking! I couldn't see past the revulsion. But then, too, how much good could I organize in the ??decade I may have left?
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    Are you suggesting that a democracy doesn’t require the rule of law? — praxis

    No. I'm stating that all forms of government, in order to be effective, do need the rule of law. Some codes are not to our our taste, but they are nevertheless legal codes that are the rule in nations. Some codes contain unfair, https://www.thoughtco.com/property-rights-of-women-3529578discriminatory https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2010/may.htmand unenforceable laws. (https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decriminalization-sodomy-united-states/2014-11They're still laws - until the code is changed.
    I am further asserting that laws are never fairly and equally applied. The innocent are convicted by mistake, prejudice or callous indifference; law enforcement is lax or overzealous, corrupt or violent; jurisprudence is politically tainted or financially motivated; legislation is partisan or self-serving.
    Rule of law may approach efficacy every now and then, but is never perfect.

    Nixon was impeached in the legislature, but suffered no legal consequences - didn't go to prison, wasn't even indicted - unlike his minions. The DOJ seems to be dragging this Trump business out - maybe hoping he'll die of natural causes before they have to act - even though the worst of his crimes are glaringly obvious, committed on camera, with millions of witnesses.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    But I am not sure that I can place an obligation on anyone else to help me do it. — Cuthbert

    It isn't necessary. There are plenty of people ready to help voluntarily. Many of the strongest advocates of legalizing assisted suicide have been health-care workers who had too watch too many patients suffer through terminal illness that no decent person would allow their pet to endure.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    "And the spouse who can't stand that any longer and helps the patient die, often commits suicide, too," can you cite one case or more. — Andrew4Handel

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/03/12/the-koestler-suicide-pact/0e322224-2438-4b89-8e10-34564a557d67/

    For more than a decade, Dr. Daniel and Katherine Gute of Milwaukee, both approaching 80, had been planning their deaths, should one or both of them be forced to live in a nursing home or need extraordinary medical care. 

    ‘Inseparable’ pair were reportedly ‘determined’ not to go on in life after suffering health issues...[url=http:///home-news/peter-diana-couple-suicide-pact-b1872340.html].Peter White, 72, and his wife Diana, 74,[/url] were found dead in their flat in Altrincham in January this year

    He killed her and made a serious attempt on his own life but called police in desperation 12 hours later when he woke up still alive. He begged paramedics to let him die and admitted from the first 999 call that he had killed Dyanne.

    You seem to be working under the false premise that assisted suicide is only being used on terminally ill persons or will stop their. — Andrew4Handel
    That is the legal position in Canada, yes.

    I was talking about how suicide in general affects others and that it is not just purely autonomous act because it has consequences for others. — Andrew4Handel
    How's that relevant to the assisted suicide law? People were killing themselves when it was illegal, and when it was legal, and whenever they felt it was their only escape from a fate they could not face.
    Of course it affects others. Of course, everything one person does is disapproved of by some other persons. People disagree about all kinds of things, but they keep doing the things they disagree about, and nosy parkers dip their oar in , too.

    The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has stepped up to bankroll the man’s wife in her effort to have the courts stop her husband from using Canada’s assisted-suicide system to take his life.
    .

    The coming of each person into the world affects the world in some way. The way each person lives in the world affects the world, for better or worse. The time and manner of each person's departure from the world affects the world. Nevertheless, we keep doing all three.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    n some societies married couples live with their parents or a parent moves in with a married couple. Society is less individualistic and has stronger notions of duty. Independence from others is not viewed as a good thing. Some types of dependence are seen as positive. — Andrew4Handel

    How does that relate to torturing people too feeble to defend themselves?
    Yes, modern western people are free to and expected to make their decisions, which is why they are also held to account for their decisions. A 40-year-old never gets away with the plea: I was raised in a family of mobsters; it's my heritage."

    Making a cultural issue of degrees of independence doesn't alter the issue of suicide. Cultural attitudes to suicide also vary. In the Old testament, all you had to do to be put out of your misery is "curse god and die" - no punishment, no afterlife. In Islam, suicide in the cause of furthering a national aspiration is not only allowed, but laudable, as it was for Sampson, and as it is for American soldiers. An ancient Roman was expected to fall on his sword, rather than dishonour his family, and of course, we all know about the Japanese tolerance of suicide.

    In the case of Nathan Verhlest in the opening post she was neglected by her parents leading to a need for complete emotional self sufficiency
    but she/he tried to transition to male to win her parents approval which didn't work unethical surgeons experimented on her body to try and make her look as male as possible because surgeons can now apparently do anything to your body that you ask for
    and then society provides the poison for her to exist life after a litany of abuse neglect and medical malpractice.     — Andrew4Handel

    This is a bizarre situation. I have no reason to doubt your veracity, or the existence of unscrupulous and callous people, doing cruel and illegal things.
    But why I should I be made to pay for their sins?
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    No. Kinship groups, for instance, don’t even require a military. — praxis

    They're not exactly governments, either. And they all become a military when need arises. But they still have rules of behaviour, understood by all members.

    In any case, the topic is specifically about democracies. Democracy requires a lot of support in order to effectively function as a democracy. — praxis

    In large groups, yes. But then, so does monarchy, oligarchy and theocracy. A military dictatorship does, too, but the military structure already contains mechanism to carry out those functions. In small numbers, those functions don't require an agency; they can be carried out by individuals. But that doesn't depend on a form of government: a kinship group can be autocratic or democratic or situational.

    I think he was right about that as far as his moronic base goes, but not for the majority of the country. — praxis

    And yet, he's still at large. Rule of law doesn't work any more consistently than deposing totalitarian leaders when they overstep the acceptable limits.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    It means that no one is above the law. — frank

    Where is it written and how and by whom is it enforced?
    It's a feature of democratic arrangements that lack aristocracy or monarchy. — frank
    It's a feature of human organizations.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    Democracy requires supporting institutions to function, such as 'the rule of law'. It's true that those with wealth and power enjoy a privileged position but there are still limits under the rule of law. — praxis

    Every form of government requires supporting institutions: the civil service, the judiciary, the enforcement agencies, the taxation branch, trade and commerce, municipal and road maintenance, shipping and marine traffic.... 'the rule of law' is neither and institution nor an agency: it is an idea. A nebulous one, open to interpretation.
    there are still limits under the rule of law. — praxis

    There are limits under every kind of legal system. In most, obligations of each tier of the ruling classes are also laid out. Human societies all, without exception, operate under a rule of law...
    ... except when they're collapsing or breaking down; then there is brief period of chaos and lawlessness, until a new order is established and formulates its own legal code.
  • Cupids bow
    you're visited by the Greek God Eros. — Benj96

    Eros (also Cupid) is the little boy. Aphrodite (also Venus) is the goddess of love. She sends him to shoot people with his little arrow to make them fall in passionate [erotic] love with some specified other person.

    What will you choose my dear cupid? — Benj96

    Those are two crappy choices! But, not being a Trump, I guess the former is the less bad option.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    So why offer assisted suicide when you don't know what underlying issues or conditions a person may have and when you may not have explored all options and diagnoses? — Andrew4Handel

    I haven't. As far as I know, no Canadian doctor under the new law does. And it's not as if compassionate caregivers haven't been assisting terminal patients all along - it's just they had to do it in secret or be punished by the self-righteous authorities.

    If he didn't have relatives to do this they wouldn't have known his wish because of his increasing communication issues over the years. — Andrew4Handel

    Hence the need for a living will. Relatives very often do the opposite of what the patient wants.

    I think you can create a cultural that doesn't value life/longevity. — Andrew4Handel

    Sure, and that's coming, when overstressed societies, besieged with one calamitous event after another, can no longer support their increasingly aged and infirm populations. But it won't be because I've opted out.
    The values of this society haven't changed. I and a large minority never shared the Abrahamic religions' values: they were just foisted on us. When we became the majority, we finally shook them off.
    But your values haven't changed because of that, and we're not forcing our choices on you.

    There is extensive forms of end of life palliative care that try to reduce suffering to the minimum — Andrew4Handel

    Forms, yes - mainly pain relieving drugs, which are effective to some finite degree for some finite length of time, and sedation, which is not very much like living. Available beds, nowhere near as many are required. Elder care and long-term care facilities are already in crisis
    current elderly care systems worldwide are already unable to address the soaring demand from fast growing numbers of older people, even in higher-income countries. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60463-3/fulltext
    which would be somewhat lessened if everyone could choose. But they already can't: far too many old people are crammed into overloaded, understaffed, poorly run - and often horrific - facilities. Out of sight, but still a huge drain on the health-care system.

    I think autonomy does not make sense if you are going to kill yourself. You can't express autonomy once you are dead. — Andrew4Handel

    I'll settle for until. Of-bloody-course no rights or freedoms continue beyond death. Not even in heaven, which, from all I've heard, is an absolute dictatorship.

    Have you got an argument for autonomy? We don't chose to be born, we don't chose our parents, our religious upbringing, schools etc. — Andrew4Handel

    ...until we attain the age of majority, whereupon we choose our studies, work, friends, lovers, homes, lifestyles, purchases, government representatives, churches, hobbies, entertainments, clothing, modes of transport, even down to the herbs in our kitchen window.
    Everyone who lives in a society is bound by laws - and can choose to break those laws and risk punishment. The more restrictions lawmakers impose on citizens' personal lives - whom you may marry, where you may live, what institutes of learning you may attend, what you may read, what you may smoke, which water fountain you may drink from - the more oppressive that society is and the more law-breakers it has to deal with, and then the criminal justice system is as overburdened as the health care system.

    I don't think we can have consistent autonomy without undermining many process in life including creating children. — Andrew4Handel

    Oh, yes, and forcing people to create children they don't want and can't support, but the forbidding society won't, either: more burden for the social services.

    If a man or woman has young children or even older children killing themselves can create a burden for them, for surviving relatives and friends and even lead to another suicide through grief and loss. — Andrew4Handel

    Also conversely, a lingering illness can - does - create burdens of entrapment, helpless pity, self-sacrifice, guilt, resentment and material hardship for the family. The terminally ill parent was going to die anyway, only the children didn't first go through a long period of waiting, watching them suffer. And the spouse who can't stand that any longer and helps the patient die, often commits suicide, too, rather than go to prison.

    Animal flesh is subject to the vagaries of nature; disease, injury, malfunction, debilitation and dementia. Being in this world is dangerous and ultimately fatal. All endings are inevitable; some are more gruesome and protracted than others. I just want to be allowed to make my ending no more awful than it has to be.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    The mental health services should be there to help improve a mentally ill persons life. — Andrew4Handel

    Of course.
    They should in no way sanctioning suicide or rationalising it. — Andrew4Handel
    They are staffed by people and people have their own ideas about what they 'should'. That's autonomy.

    But they have been compromised. — Andrew4Handel

    They have changed. Everything changes.

    They found people are more likely to commit suicide after seeing a mental health professional. — Andrew4Handel

    Which "they" is this that have found? And where did "they" find it? This does not appear to me a cause-effect relation. It doesn't seem to me unreasonable that troubled people try to get help, and only when it fails to provide the relief they seek do they choose the final option.

    From my experiences the services can leave you feeling more hopeless. — Andrew4Handel

    Of course health care services could be improved - not only in mental health, but all areas - if a society devoted enough resources to it. (Or refrained from driving so many of its members to despair.)
    Forbidding yet another expression of personal volition doesn't improve them. Mental illness was not more effectively treated when anti-suicide laws were universal than they are now.
  • Extreme Philosophy
    Do you consider any philosophical position extreme and with disturbing or bizarre consequence? — Andrew4Handel

    Yes, and no.
    Yes to the first half: I consider some philosophical positions extreme, some absurd, some outlandish and some just wrong. That's an opinion, nothing more.
    No to the second: I do not think a philosophy has disturbing or bizarre consequences. They're just thought-experiments, the dance of one human mind with its ideas.

    If a philosopher formulates a theological or political policy on which to organize a society, it's still only a proposal. When a powerful enough faction subscribes to the philosophy and takes up the policy as its agenda, only then does it have consequences.
    Given human nature, they're nearly all bizarre.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    This seems like a win for terrorism to me that people can terrorise us into losing the will to live. — Andrew4Handel

    Yes. They can also murder and maim, enslave, torture, rape and imprison us. No anti-suicide law ever stopped a terrorist, an assassin, a revolutionary, a dictator or a plain old criminal.

    Despite having had suicidal feelings over the years I don't want the state to aid in my death because since prior attempts I have found some enjoyment in life

    Then don't ask for help. And if somebody offers, refuse.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    I don't think assisted suicide reflects autonomy because it requires someone else to assist in your death — Andrew4Handel

    Only in the final stages of illness, when the patient is incapable of doing it alone. And that's the only time that assistance is legally available. Therefore, many of us plan our exit strategy while we are still physically able. The problem with that approach, of course, is that we die sooner than we want to, so as to escape being forced to endure months or years of pain and to spare our loved ones months or years of hardship - which, incidentally, also causes some relatives and caregivers to take pity on a patient and help them illegally, risking prison themselves.
    Nobody is forced to choose suicide; nobody is forced to assist; it's entirely voluntary. Quite often, all the assistance a patient needs is not to deprived of the means to do it themselves, but that, too, is illegal under theocratic jurisprudence. That's the difference in pro- and anti- policy: the use of force and threat of punishment.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    I'm not sure which kind of liberalism you're referring to. I was using the word in the American sense. American liberals do fervently want to impose their view on others. — frank

    No, they want to liberate everyone from the oppression of others. The hallmark of American progressive politics is the striking down of conservative laws and limitation set on the power of the ruling class.

    If slavery is wrong, it's wrong for everyone. — frank

    More like "In a nation based on holding "these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Therefore, everyone should be free.
    (Also, the suffragette movement, and the abolitionist movement and the temperance movement and, as previously noted, the union movement were all pretty well organized. Revolutions, too, at the beginning, but they get out of hand.)

    I agree that rule of law evolved from earlier forms of government, but the phrase specifically means a society in which no one is above the law.

    No, laws were always laws, whether formulated by a king or a chief or a prelate or a council of elders. And the law is never applied equally to rulers and ruled; in fact there are often sections that are entirely different, both in the letter of the law and in its execution, for sub-groups of people. Sometimes there are specific exemptions; sometimes it's a systemic variance of enforcement.
    There is no actual "rule of law"; that's just a picturesque phrase; rule is done by rulers, laws are enforced by the armed agents of the rulers. Once a constitution is written, there is a known framework for how laws are made and applied - which framework in not adhered-to by all administrations - which officially limit the powers of the ruling class and even the monarch - but unofficially, the elite are nearly always better able to escape its consequences. Except, once every couple of generations, the ruled get fed up and punish them all.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    rule of law and monarchy are directly opposed concepts. — frank

    Not at all! The very oldest written legal code was decreed by Hammurabi, king of Babylon. Monarchs don't generally make arbitrary decisions over civic organization - when they try, they're usually deposed or assassinated. They operate within a system of accepted principles and values, just as theocrats, democrats and bureaucrats do.
    The phrase "rule of law" as is generally used in modern western political parlance is assumed to refer to a legal system enacted by a congress or parliament, because that's the system we're used to. But laws are enforces in every kind of political system. Authoritarian systems usually have more laws than liberal ones and a lot more of them pertain to the citizen's [moral] private life.

    liberalism isn't really about consensus — frank
    It's about the principle of personal autonomy and civic co-operation. In practice, it seeks consensus, in preference to imposing one person's or faction's decisions on everyone else. Which conservatives very much do.

    For the liberal, if the choice is between living morally and dying, they choose death. The conservative puts life first. Or at least that's one way to look at it. — frank

    Then how come conservative governments the world over build up bigger armies, spend more money on weapons, start more wars and execute more felons?
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    Conservatives are usually excellent organizers. I assume it's because they're usually older, and their cause is associated with religion and traditional values. — frank

    It's more likely because, at any age, they are believers in Law and Order - that is, top-down governance, chain of command, bosshood (they prefer to call it leadership): a pyramid structure of power. Which, of course, tends toward some form of monarchy. Liberals are loosely organized, constantly shifting power relations, leadership and policy: it seeks consensus (mostly in vain). Which, of course, tends toward anarchy. A functional democracy, whether it's a trade union, bridge club or nation-state, has a structure based on some shared principles set out in a constitution; its leadership is chosen from among the members, rather than a ruling class and its policies are designed to respond to the needs of the polity.

    Any system can work, so long as the governed believe in it and support it.
  • Democracy, where does it really start?
    Where it began doesn't really matter to people who are alive now. What they want is a functional - rather than a nominal democracy, but they don't know how to bring it about.
    Flawed electoral process is very much part of the problem.
    Any of the proportional representation systems would be better than first-past-the-post, but this is meaningless in a two-party system. How to make room for more points of view, more factions, more vested interests.... You can't. as long as all the power is held by the elite that's been holding it for decades, if not centuries.
  • Is it ethical for technological automation to be stunted, in order to preserve jobs?
    I don't know how to respond because I don't know where you see a problem in the sequence of events. — Athena

    You don't need to respond. I have a different perspective on the cause-effect chain, that's all.
  • Is it ethical for technological automation to be stunted, in order to preserve jobs?
    How good is your knowledge of history? — Athena

    Good enough to have a pretty firm grasp on the sequence of events. Not good enough to follow your line of deduction from 4th c BCE Athens to 20th c America.
  • Tarot cards. A valuable tool or mere hocus-pocus?
    I find both the Tarot and astrology interesting as providing a kind of vocabulary or system for thinking about aspects of human experience and personality. — bert1

    All divination does that. And the stories of Native North Americans shamans, and the icons of Eastern Orthodoxy. They are meaningful as the beholder makes them.
  • Tarot cards. A valuable tool or mere hocus-pocus?
    as often in interpreting them, one is lead to new or novel combinations of thought, new points or reference or forms of framing something that may decidedly make the orignal question more redundant, instead revealing new insights into aspects of experience you had not considered to be relevant. — Benj96

    Or, you could just lie on your back and stare at clouds for the same result. The difference is, clouds don't charge a fee.
  • Tarot cards. A valuable tool or mere hocus-pocus?
    I believe tarot cards do the same. In this way perhaps random chance is compensated for, because all you could ever draw is a card that is relevant to some principle embodied by all the components - every card pertaining to one facet of the same thing. — Benj96

    But not necessarily you, and not necessarily now, and not necessarily relating to the question you want answered.
  • Why are you here?
    Why see philosophy as a separate domain to those enquiries? — Benj96

    That's it! It's more inclusive than any other heading. More kinds of interesting question can be asked.
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