You will die, but read this first. And since life’s highway is known for its fatal accidents, please pull over to read. If Death’s the cop, you don’t want the citation.
It was sometime in the late 1950s. I was a teenager on a summer construction job, working among men who smoked, drank, and cursed, all guys determined to display their machismo in some manner. Frequently, I heard one ask another, “Can you lend me a smoke?” It was a common question, and it still runs through the language because I heard it from a stranger I encountered as I walked out of the pharmacy just this past week. “Sorry, I don’t smoke” is my only response nowadays, but in my youth I said, “You know, those things are gonna kill you.” I might have been young and inexperienced, but I knew Death carried many scythes and that one of them was made from tobacco.
Operating as I did naively on some Messiah complex—Was I the Greta Thunberg of smoking?—I had tried and failed to get my parents and others to stop smoking. Aside from my aversion to the smell of cigarettes, I had been convinced that it was harmful after I saw in junior high a film about the danger of smoking graphically revealed by a contrast between the lungs of a deceased smoker and the lungs of a nonsmoker, the former blackened like some over-grilled burger. The image of those diseased lungs that the assembly-hall film burned into my brain remains as a rather vivid memory these many decades later. I associate smoking not only with raspy voices, coughing spells, and wrinkled skin, but also with blackened lungs and Death. But just as I am not alone today in knowing that smoking is hazardous, so apparently, I was not alone then. Even my older co-worker who asked “to borrow” cigarettes knew that smoking was not just a possible cause of cancer, but a probable one as well. To my statement “those are gonna kill you,” he replied, “Well, we’re all going to die. Mis’well enjoy myself while I can. It’s just another ‘nail’ in my coffin.”
As all know, smoking isn’t the sole bringer of Death. if not by smoking, then people certainly die by some other means. But most of us adopt the attitude of centenarian comedian George Burns: “I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides I can’t die now; I’m booked.” Or, in response to a question about death, George said he planned to be somewhere else when it happened. My smoker co-worker probably assumed the lethality of chain smoking was something that happened to others. If incurable lung cancer was in his future, he reasoned, it was in his very distant future and certainly not during his vital present. By the way, George Burns, bless his soul, is dead.
The ultimate circumstance demands our reluctant attention. Each of us moves ineluctably toward Death. Some drive to meet it unintentionally through a detrimental lifestyle, say, by smoking or drinking or overeating or overdosing. Have I listed all life’s offramps here? No, others get caught up in the traffic of terminal illness on life’s highway between Being and Nonbeing. We can slow down, but both those who pause and those who hurry get to the same and ultimate destination.
To understand our relationship with Death, we could adopt Freud’s ideas of a drive toward death, Todtriebe (Todestrieb), and its complement, the drive toward pleasure, Eros. Freud seems to have reduced the human psyche to two fundamental motivations. If we do so adopt his ideas, then we might ask ourselves which of these two drives dominates our lives. Is your very driving down life’s highway a distraction from thinking about your ultimate destination? Then Eros is your vehicle, and you live in the fast lane of distractions. The problem with Eros is that pleasures fail to please after a while, so we become the disillusioned and worn out characters in the Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.” As the lyrics go, “They didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off.” But I suppose it doesn’t matter if your vehicle is Eros or Todtriebe, because you are still headed toward Death. And speaking of driving toward Death…
Canada is one of just a few countries that permits “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). Under ostensibly strict guidelines, doctors and nurse practitioners may administer lethal drug combinations to a mentally competent person willing to sign all the necessary forms. About 10,000 Canadians sign those forms each year, most because they believe their deaths to be imminent or their suffering to be unbearable. But now Canada is considering euthanasia for some with mental disorders, such as depression. Where are we going here, and how fast are we traveling?
Canadians 18 or older may apply for MAID. Now, one might argue that an eighteen-year-old though possessed of reason might lack maturity necessary for such a decision just as one might reasonably argue that a pre-teen or even a teen might lack the maturity for a sex change. With regard to both sex change and MAID, one should know that though the former is permanent, the latter is definitely MORE PERMANENT.
Someone I know directed my attention to the story about MAID written by Yuan Yi Zhu for The Spectator (online at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanising-the-poor- Accessed August 19, 2022). * It’s the tale of Todtriebe in Canada as it has evolved over the last decade. Zhu makes a number of points and offers some anecdotes about euthanized Canadians which, unfortunately, lack the specificity any of us might desire, such as names, locations, and dates. Nevertheless, if what Zhu writes has just an iota of truth, then all Canadians should look out the windows of their life vehicles to see how the ethical landscape has changed along the highway of life:
“Despite the Canadian government’s insistence that assisted suicide is all about individual autonomy, it has also kept an eye on its fiscal advantages. Even before Bill C-7 entered into force, the country’s Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report about the cost savings it would create: whereas the old MAID regime saved $86.9 million per year – a ‘net cost reduction’, in the sterile words of the report – Bill C-7 would create additional net savings of $62 million per year. Healthcare, particularly for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case’. And, of course, those who have to rely wholly on government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance.”
And I cannot leave the piece without quoting this:
“Next year, the floodgates will open even further when those suffering from mental illness …become eligible [for MAID]…There is…talk of mature minors’ access to euthanasia too – just think of the lifetime savings.”
There it is, the progressive utilitarian’s perfect solution. Makes me think of Jonathan Swift’s Juvenalian satire “A Modest Proposal.” You know, you Canadians might consider some real life version of Soylent Green, what with all those people convinced to sign the appropriate papers. You Canadians can solve two problems simultaneously: 1) Unburden the health care system that cannot offer palliative care and 2) Increase the food supply during a time of world shortages. Is the ultimate bottom line based on a bottom line? Is there an argument for euthanasia not centered on economics?
That εὐθανασία, euthanatos, or “a good or easy death” isn’t a new concept is demonstrable in the dialogue of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In short, the suffering one says, “Better to die than to suffer so.” Why suffer interminably when dying offers an easy out? Other ancient Greek playwrights and philosophers also broached the subject, and I have no doubt that the dilemma of continuing an unpleasant existence or dying voluntarily has always been a problem for conscious social beings, that is, for humans and their closest hominid relatives like the Neandert(h)als. We might believe the dilemma engendered by the prospect of burdensome health care is a plague peculiar to our times, but it seems to have predated historical cultures. I would not, however, assume that those who struggled with decisions about life and death prior to the rise of “modern humans” invoked the “Canadian Solution.”
What about those Neanderthals or Neandertals? you ask. Surely, they couldn’t care for the sick, the feeble-minded, and the elderly in a subsistence culture. Surely, they didn’t have extended care caves. Whatever did they do for the enfeebled In times of drought or over-hunting when scarce resources would easily exacerbate an already tough existence. And yet…
Unlike Canadians bent on unburdening their health care system through euthanasia, Neandert(h)als left evidence of extended care. Rendu, et al. (2013) reported an instance of care for an elderly decrepit man at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. ** It seems that sophisticated and knowledgeable Canadians take the utilitarian shortcut whereas the unsophisticated “ignorant cavemen” exhibited prolonged compassion.
Would you consider Canadians to be an ethical and moral people? Certainly, many of them belong to a religion and many obey laws and act with socially approved manners—disregard the hockey fights, of course. They have laws and social values. AND—here’s the “Big And”—they have socialized health care that shows the world how compassionate they are as a “people.” How is that we associate ethics and morality with history and not with prehistory? Maybe all those ancient myths about ethical and moral problems derived from Indo-European, African, Asian, American, and Australian origins hark back to an even older age, a time when stone tools marked the height of consciousness and people survived by hunting and gathering. Maybe ethical action is written in human DNA. In what other context could we interpret the care for the decrepit old man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints? Are we to think that French Canadians are less compassionate than French Neandert(h)als? Are today’s French Canadians less willing to sacrifice the time and resources of the young for the good of the elderly and sickly? Did those ancient cavemen not have the Canadian Solution in the club they carried? Boink!
This euthanasia stuff has my head spinning. It makes me wonder about the nature of government and the individuals who submit themselves to its authority. Born in the idea of peace and order, governments can “do good” for individuals and groups, but the inevitable burgeoning of any officialdom is hazardous to those same individuals and groups because its utility takes precedence over compassion even when it acts in the name of compassion.
Let’s define compassion. It’s more than saying some Clintonian “I feel your pain.” We’ve seen too much of such compassion in the elaborate lifestyles of a Pope Alexander VI, AKA the Borgia pope, to the current Pope and the American President who live behind walls at the Vatican and on a Delaware beach while complaining about walling out migrants. We’ve seen too much of such compassion from Canadian and American politicians who in “serving the people” somehow become inordinately rich AKA President Obama, who is worth tens of millions and having not one, but two expensive homes on beaches. Feeling your pain? Concerned that the health care system is burdened by all those people who not only want to use it but need to use it? Big compassion turns out to be woefully little compassion. Big empathy becomes a question of convenience. Just don’t show them the details. The utilitarian system will provide the best outcome for the most people—which doesn’t include those suffering from excessive poverty, terminal illness, and now even depression.
Ultimately, no utilitarian construct can substitute for one-on-one compassion and sacrifice. Yet, there are those who believe that in setting a national health care system standard that provides for an ever-easier access to euthanasia, they have demonstrated their love for their fellow citizens while, of course, saving big bucks.
Canada isn’t the only nation driving toward death, of course, but it serves as both a model and a warning about utility and life. Those French Neandert(h)als could not possibly have had an easy time caring for that decrepit old man but they somehow demonstrated that they could comfort someone approaching the ultimate destination. What, then, did they do for those with problems less traumatic than terminal incapacity? Were there depressed Neandert(h)als over the age of 18 who wished to end their lives and who the tribe accommodated with rocks and clubs?
And while we’re mentioning rocks and clubs as tools of euthanasia, shouldn’t we speak of our modern tools, those powerhouse poisonous mixtures that enable the euthanized to die in some easy and “dignified way.” Or should we say with Dylan Thomas,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I have to end this with the story of my paternal grandmother. She had breast cancer in the 1960s. Before she died she told me that I couldn’t imagine the pain she had. I asked, “Grandma, why don’t you take morphine or some pain medicine?” Her response? "I don’t want anything that dulls my senses and robs me of complete consciousness.” Obviously, Grandma was strong enough to “rage against the dying of the light.”
Of course, not everyone is that strong-willed. But for those who are not, for those who see their suffering as unbearable, is utility sanctioned by the government the most ethical course of action? Decide this issue now because whether you are a Canadian or not, that decision most likely lies at every offramp you pass on the highway of your life. Permit me to distort the words of John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in saying that when the “bell tolls for thee,” you’ll be passing through a government toll booth. If you don’t have the coins, the government will issue you a tax-funded EasyPass.
*Zhu, Yuan Yi. 30 April 2022. Why is Canada euthanizing the poor? The Spectator.
**Rendu, William, Cedric Beauval, Isabelle Crevecoeur, and Bruno Maureille. 16 Dec. 2013. Evidence supporting an intentional Neanderthal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. PNAS. 111 (1) 81-86 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316780110 Accessed August, 20, 2022. There is also a report by Alejandro Bonmati of such care for the elderly as long ago as 500,000 years.
It was sometime in the late 1950s. I was a teenager on a summer construction job, working among men who smoked, drank, and cursed, all guys determined to display their machismo in some manner. Frequently, I heard one ask another, “Can you lend me a smoke?” It was a common question, and it still runs through the language because I heard it from a stranger I encountered as I walked out of the pharmacy just this past week. “Sorry, I don’t smoke” is my only response nowadays, but in my youth I said, “You know, those things are gonna kill you.” I might have been young and inexperienced, but I knew Death carried many scythes and that one of them was made from tobacco.
Operating as I did naively on some Messiah complex—Was I the Greta Thunberg of smoking?—I had tried and failed to get my parents and others to stop smoking. Aside from my aversion to the smell of cigarettes, I had been convinced that it was harmful after I saw in junior high a film about the danger of smoking graphically revealed by a contrast between the lungs of a deceased smoker and the lungs of a nonsmoker, the former blackened like some over-grilled burger. The image of those diseased lungs that the assembly-hall film burned into my brain remains as a rather vivid memory these many decades later. I associate smoking not only with raspy voices, coughing spells, and wrinkled skin, but also with blackened lungs and Death. But just as I am not alone today in knowing that smoking is hazardous, so apparently, I was not alone then. Even my older co-worker who asked “to borrow” cigarettes knew that smoking was not just a possible cause of cancer, but a probable one as well. To my statement “those are gonna kill you,” he replied, “Well, we’re all going to die. Mis’well enjoy myself while I can. It’s just another ‘nail’ in my coffin.”
As all know, smoking isn’t the sole bringer of Death. if not by smoking, then people certainly die by some other means. But most of us adopt the attitude of centenarian comedian George Burns: “I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides I can’t die now; I’m booked.” Or, in response to a question about death, George said he planned to be somewhere else when it happened. My smoker co-worker probably assumed the lethality of chain smoking was something that happened to others. If incurable lung cancer was in his future, he reasoned, it was in his very distant future and certainly not during his vital present. By the way, George Burns, bless his soul, is dead.
The ultimate circumstance demands our reluctant attention. Each of us moves ineluctably toward Death. Some drive to meet it unintentionally through a detrimental lifestyle, say, by smoking or drinking or overeating or overdosing. Have I listed all life’s offramps here? No, others get caught up in the traffic of terminal illness on life’s highway between Being and Nonbeing. We can slow down, but both those who pause and those who hurry get to the same and ultimate destination.
To understand our relationship with Death, we could adopt Freud’s ideas of a drive toward death, Todtriebe (Todestrieb), and its complement, the drive toward pleasure, Eros. Freud seems to have reduced the human psyche to two fundamental motivations. If we do so adopt his ideas, then we might ask ourselves which of these two drives dominates our lives. Is your very driving down life’s highway a distraction from thinking about your ultimate destination? Then Eros is your vehicle, and you live in the fast lane of distractions. The problem with Eros is that pleasures fail to please after a while, so we become the disillusioned and worn out characters in the Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.” As the lyrics go, “They didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off.” But I suppose it doesn’t matter if your vehicle is Eros or Todtriebe, because you are still headed toward Death. And speaking of driving toward Death…
Canada is one of just a few countries that permits “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). Under ostensibly strict guidelines, doctors and nurse practitioners may administer lethal drug combinations to a mentally competent person willing to sign all the necessary forms. About 10,000 Canadians sign those forms each year, most because they believe their deaths to be imminent or their suffering to be unbearable. But now Canada is considering euthanasia for some with mental disorders, such as depression. Where are we going here, and how fast are we traveling?
Canadians 18 or older may apply for MAID. Now, one might argue that an eighteen-year-old though possessed of reason might lack maturity necessary for such a decision just as one might reasonably argue that a pre-teen or even a teen might lack the maturity for a sex change. With regard to both sex change and MAID, one should know that though the former is permanent, the latter is definitely MORE PERMANENT.
Someone I know directed my attention to the story about MAID written by Yuan Yi Zhu for The Spectator (online at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanising-the-poor- Accessed August 19, 2022). * It’s the tale of Todtriebe in Canada as it has evolved over the last decade. Zhu makes a number of points and offers some anecdotes about euthanized Canadians which, unfortunately, lack the specificity any of us might desire, such as names, locations, and dates. Nevertheless, if what Zhu writes has just an iota of truth, then all Canadians should look out the windows of their life vehicles to see how the ethical landscape has changed along the highway of life:
“Despite the Canadian government’s insistence that assisted suicide is all about individual autonomy, it has also kept an eye on its fiscal advantages. Even before Bill C-7 entered into force, the country’s Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report about the cost savings it would create: whereas the old MAID regime saved $86.9 million per year – a ‘net cost reduction’, in the sterile words of the report – Bill C-7 would create additional net savings of $62 million per year. Healthcare, particularly for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case’. And, of course, those who have to rely wholly on government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance.”
And I cannot leave the piece without quoting this:
“Next year, the floodgates will open even further when those suffering from mental illness …become eligible [for MAID]…There is…talk of mature minors’ access to euthanasia too – just think of the lifetime savings.”
There it is, the progressive utilitarian’s perfect solution. Makes me think of Jonathan Swift’s Juvenalian satire “A Modest Proposal.” You know, you Canadians might consider some real life version of Soylent Green, what with all those people convinced to sign the appropriate papers. You Canadians can solve two problems simultaneously: 1) Unburden the health care system that cannot offer palliative care and 2) Increase the food supply during a time of world shortages. Is the ultimate bottom line based on a bottom line? Is there an argument for euthanasia not centered on economics?
That εὐθανασία, euthanatos, or “a good or easy death” isn’t a new concept is demonstrable in the dialogue of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In short, the suffering one says, “Better to die than to suffer so.” Why suffer interminably when dying offers an easy out? Other ancient Greek playwrights and philosophers also broached the subject, and I have no doubt that the dilemma of continuing an unpleasant existence or dying voluntarily has always been a problem for conscious social beings, that is, for humans and their closest hominid relatives like the Neandert(h)als. We might believe the dilemma engendered by the prospect of burdensome health care is a plague peculiar to our times, but it seems to have predated historical cultures. I would not, however, assume that those who struggled with decisions about life and death prior to the rise of “modern humans” invoked the “Canadian Solution.”
What about those Neanderthals or Neandertals? you ask. Surely, they couldn’t care for the sick, the feeble-minded, and the elderly in a subsistence culture. Surely, they didn’t have extended care caves. Whatever did they do for the enfeebled In times of drought or over-hunting when scarce resources would easily exacerbate an already tough existence. And yet…
Unlike Canadians bent on unburdening their health care system through euthanasia, Neandert(h)als left evidence of extended care. Rendu, et al. (2013) reported an instance of care for an elderly decrepit man at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. ** It seems that sophisticated and knowledgeable Canadians take the utilitarian shortcut whereas the unsophisticated “ignorant cavemen” exhibited prolonged compassion.
Would you consider Canadians to be an ethical and moral people? Certainly, many of them belong to a religion and many obey laws and act with socially approved manners—disregard the hockey fights, of course. They have laws and social values. AND—here’s the “Big And”—they have socialized health care that shows the world how compassionate they are as a “people.” How is that we associate ethics and morality with history and not with prehistory? Maybe all those ancient myths about ethical and moral problems derived from Indo-European, African, Asian, American, and Australian origins hark back to an even older age, a time when stone tools marked the height of consciousness and people survived by hunting and gathering. Maybe ethical action is written in human DNA. In what other context could we interpret the care for the decrepit old man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints? Are we to think that French Canadians are less compassionate than French Neandert(h)als? Are today’s French Canadians less willing to sacrifice the time and resources of the young for the good of the elderly and sickly? Did those ancient cavemen not have the Canadian Solution in the club they carried? Boink!
This euthanasia stuff has my head spinning. It makes me wonder about the nature of government and the individuals who submit themselves to its authority. Born in the idea of peace and order, governments can “do good” for individuals and groups, but the inevitable burgeoning of any officialdom is hazardous to those same individuals and groups because its utility takes precedence over compassion even when it acts in the name of compassion.
Let’s define compassion. It’s more than saying some Clintonian “I feel your pain.” We’ve seen too much of such compassion in the elaborate lifestyles of a Pope Alexander VI, AKA the Borgia pope, to the current Pope and the American President who live behind walls at the Vatican and on a Delaware beach while complaining about walling out migrants. We’ve seen too much of such compassion from Canadian and American politicians who in “serving the people” somehow become inordinately rich AKA President Obama, who is worth tens of millions and having not one, but two expensive homes on beaches. Feeling your pain? Concerned that the health care system is burdened by all those people who not only want to use it but need to use it? Big compassion turns out to be woefully little compassion. Big empathy becomes a question of convenience. Just don’t show them the details. The utilitarian system will provide the best outcome for the most people—which doesn’t include those suffering from excessive poverty, terminal illness, and now even depression.
Ultimately, no utilitarian construct can substitute for one-on-one compassion and sacrifice. Yet, there are those who believe that in setting a national health care system standard that provides for an ever-easier access to euthanasia, they have demonstrated their love for their fellow citizens while, of course, saving big bucks.
Canada isn’t the only nation driving toward death, of course, but it serves as both a model and a warning about utility and life. Those French Neandert(h)als could not possibly have had an easy time caring for that decrepit old man but they somehow demonstrated that they could comfort someone approaching the ultimate destination. What, then, did they do for those with problems less traumatic than terminal incapacity? Were there depressed Neandert(h)als over the age of 18 who wished to end their lives and who the tribe accommodated with rocks and clubs?
And while we’re mentioning rocks and clubs as tools of euthanasia, shouldn’t we speak of our modern tools, those powerhouse poisonous mixtures that enable the euthanized to die in some easy and “dignified way.” Or should we say with Dylan Thomas,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I have to end this with the story of my paternal grandmother. She had breast cancer in the 1960s. Before she died she told me that I couldn’t imagine the pain she had. I asked, “Grandma, why don’t you take morphine or some pain medicine?” Her response? "I don’t want anything that dulls my senses and robs me of complete consciousness.” Obviously, Grandma was strong enough to “rage against the dying of the light.”
Of course, not everyone is that strong-willed. But for those who are not, for those who see their suffering as unbearable, is utility sanctioned by the government the most ethical course of action? Decide this issue now because whether you are a Canadian or not, that decision most likely lies at every offramp you pass on the highway of your life. Permit me to distort the words of John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in saying that when the “bell tolls for thee,” you’ll be passing through a government toll booth. If you don’t have the coins, the government will issue you a tax-funded EasyPass.
*Zhu, Yuan Yi. 30 April 2022. Why is Canada euthanizing the poor? The Spectator.
**Rendu, William, Cedric Beauval, Isabelle Crevecoeur, and Bruno Maureille. 16 Dec. 2013. Evidence supporting an intentional Neanderthal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. PNAS. 111 (1) 81-86 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316780110 Accessed August, 20, 2022. There is also a report by Alejandro Bonmati of such care for the elderly as long ago as 500,000 years.
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