Voluntary Dying

Copied from the Suicide thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chanakya (Post 13787662) Not to take away even slightly from the concerns raised in this thread. But I wanted to touch on the other side to suicide, if I may call it that. Like I said in the Euthanasia thread, I'm firmly of the opinion that if an adult of sound mind decides, on cool rational thought, that they wish to exit life, then not only should they not be prevented from doing this by law, but every effort should be made to make the process easy (as in painless) for them. With adequate safeguards, of course: in terms of making sure others don't encourage someone to off themselves to further their own agenda, financial or otherwise; in terms of ruling out mental illness; in terms of making sure this isn't an impulsive decision and that the subject might change their mind in a while; or maybe a decision under the influence of drugs or alcohol, etc. That is, such a person would need to be properly vetted by both law enforcement as well as mental health professionals. Let me emphasize that this isn't the kind of taking of one's life that's largely been discussed here: things like mental illness, drugs, someone finding themselves in some desperate situation where it is the situation itself that is prompting the suicide, etc. I kind of think there might be another category of people who might want to go painlessly to death on their own terms: and while this may include people with terminal disease, or some very painful condition, but I don't mean limited to such reasons, that is, this would include cases where no reason is produced at all, other than the subject wants this. (Discussion around euthanasia in cases of terminal illness is probably best carried on in the thread already existing.) Like I said, this is not to take away from the very valid concerns raised in this thread. And it occurs to me, as I type this, that should this angle, that I'm trying to bring in, attract comments and a larger conversation here, then that will end up derailing this thread; so what I'll do is start a new thread right after I post this message here, with this post copied there. If people are interested, then I'd like to initiate a discussion on voluntary dying --- the legal aspects, moral/ethical aspects, the economic angle, all of that. Not that I myself have much to contribute to such a discussion, as far as I can see, beyond simply initiating the discussion. (In this proposed discussion, let's not get into the means of it, the available techniques if you will, for obvious reasons. I don't mean this discussion as encouragement to people to actually take their lives, or anything like that. Just a discussion around whether an environment that is sympathetic to and supportive of considered, voluntary dying makes sense, and what such an environment might look like.) eta: I'm not even sure if what I'm suggesting is even a thing. That is, I'm thinking of "this" type of voluntary dying as a separate kind of category to the sort this thread is about, this current thread; but is that thinking, that opinion, even valid? That itself might be a thing to discuss, that people with some experience and knowledge of this sort of thing might weigh in on. I kind of think it is, but it could be I'm mistaken in thinking that. In any case, I take strong exception to the negativity expressed by some posters in this thread around suicides, by terming it "selfish", and such other terms. I don't see why people shouldn't have the option of a dignified exit from life on their own terms, provided ... well, provided lots of things, to prevent misuse/misapplication of such a provision.

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