Content warning: Death, sadness
The other day I saw one of the ways in which things are tragically broken. Broken in such a way that it seems better to sacrifice maybe the most important thing, because the alternative is currently worse. I hate this.
New Zealand is set to have an election and two referenda this year, one of which is a referendum on voluntary euthanasia. I was talking with my parents, and jokingly asked if they would take the standard left wing positions in the referenda. I was pretty surprised when one of my parents (who is a doctor and often sees old and dying people) said that they would probably vote against legalising voluntary euthanasia. When I asked why, they explained that they would prefer to have better funding to palliative and other end-of-life care; with proper resources almost no-one would be in a position where euthanasia was a good option. I am sure they know how awful the suffering at the end of life can be, but they believe it doesn’t have to be this way.
I think I will vote for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. With the way things currently are people can be kept alive for 6 months in terrible suffering, which seems basically exactly the same as torturing them for that time and then killing them. I think if given the choice between death now, or 6 months of torture immediately followed by death, pretty much everyone would choose the former.
And this is fucking unacceptable. People don’t need to live their final few months in suffering; their quality of life may not always be excellent, but it is unconscionable that currently it is so bad that people see it as not worth living.
I have tricky and maybe inconsistent views about how to weigh up human lives, but a human life seems incredibly valuable, maybe more valuable than any non-conscious thing in the universe. As Nate Soares puts it: “There may well come a day when humanity would tear apart a thousand suns in order to prevent a single untimely death.”
It is disgusting that we are currently forced to choose between effectively torturing people for months before they die, or allowing one of the most beautiful, valuable, sacred things in the universe to be extinguished prematurely.