It’s going to be interesting to track the development of, both, the right to die and its concomitant, the responsibility to die. Old age doesn’t just become physically unendurable, it gets to be economically unaffordable, too.
The darkness is increasingly going to fall at our behest. Choosing the moment will be straightforward enough. Humans live in the future. Our zest for now resides in our expectation of what lies in store for us next. We’ll know when we want to go: no next, no point. Pass the dose, doctor.
Here’s a new poem by Fleur Adcock in this week’s Spectator:
Charon
Where is Dr Shipman when we need him
to ferry us across the fatal stream
and land us gently in Elysium?
Shipman, boatman, ferryman – whatever
the craft he plies to help us cross the river –
we seem to have been waiting here forever.
How did we get the timetable so wrong?
Things are becoming vague, and we’re not strong.
Life was OK, but it went on far too long.
When we’ve forgotten how to keep afloat,
Scoop us up, Doctor, in your kindly boat,
And carry us across the final moat.
“Responsibility to die”? This should only ever be understood as a self-imposed responsibility or ethic. I don’t believe anyone has the right to suggest or impose dying on anyone else. Society certainly doesn’t. At the same time, the bill payer (society) certainly has the right to cut back health care budgets, when the money runs out. We are not able to stand on our own two feet anymore, not even in these ultra-personal matters. Society deciding when it is responsible for me to die? No way! Speaking personally, I will do my damnedest to decide for myself how and when… Read more »
First of all, I’ve got to admire Fleur Adcock for using Dr Shipman as her image of the Gay Reaper – you’ve got balls, Ms. Adcock! I can only expand on what I said before on this subject. If ‘Society’ – if I ever meet that chap I’m going to tell him it’s HIS turn to die! – decides we all have to live on at any cost just because it can’t bear the thought of mortality, it’s society’s responsibility to find the resources to limit our suffering while we continue past our die-by date for the benefit of its… Read more »