Alucard
Wizard
- Feb 8, 2019
- 606
Die Peacefully is a Human Right
We are not objects, we are human beings. Our lives do not belong to anyone, nor do they belong to society or to State. No-one, ever, can claim to oblige us to live for someone, for society or for State if we do not wish to live for ourselves. Painless suicide is our right. Let us hasten to conquer this right for our dignity not to be flouted any more.
Let us tackle as the very emblem of our fight for freedom a thought-provoking extract from Kant's What is the Enlightenment ?, as it encapsulates the very tenets of our philosophy.
What is the Enlightenment ? Man's coming of age, his achieving majority, his renouncing the minority for which he is responsible.
By minority, we mean his inability to use his understanding without anyone's help and assistance ; this minority for which he alone is responsible not so much because he is lacking in understanding but because he is not brave enough to decide to use it without someone's authority upon him.
Sapere aude ! Be brave enough to use your own understanding : such is the Enlightenment's spirit and motto.
Laziness and cowardice are the two causes which account for the fact that a great number of men and women decide to vegetate in minority, leaving it to others to rule over them.
How convenient it is to remain in a state of minority !
If at my disposal, I have a book, a doctor, a director that act in place of my own understanding, why should I complain and exert myself !?
I need not think ! As long as I can pay !
Others will think for me.
Those tutors have been clever enough to show their cattle that straying away from their enclosure is painful and dangerous.
Yet, that is not so dangerous as falling once or twice might teach them a lesson in the end, but they are brainwashed into shrinking from walking by themselves and they thereby opt for minority as a natural state : theirs.
Let us achieve majority, let us not be afraid to think for ourselves, let us use our reason without anyone's authority, let us make our own choices. Let us not let those tutors make decisions for us !
If we consider that our lives do not agree with our sense of dignity, let us not let any tutor decide for us and prevent us from dying peacefully. Let us throw off the yoke of this state of minority, no matter how seducing minority may seem ; to decide to die when we want to, we must enjoy the right to access the suicidal kit : the right to painful suicide is a consequence of the Enlightenment. Thus, this Kant text is worth reading over and over again.
Hence, is it not legitimate that one should, as soon as one is 18, access suicidal kits from the pharmacist's ? Those would come along with recommendations as to how to use them.
The person that wants to terminate his life peacefully would just have to go to the pharmacist's (no need to undergo a psychological expertise any more) ; he or she would just have to fill in a form and sign it, and the pharmacist would keep a record of his purchase. A post mortem would be the best bulwark against poisoning. Let it not be said that those kits would make poisoning easier : some berries and mushrooms do the job far better !
Those possible drifts and other questionings will be solved if one takes the necessary time to prepare for it and legislate.
To make sure that someone healthy does not want to die on an impulse, one should see to it, within two or three weeks, that his decison is sensible : this waiting period would become a law.
No need to say that those kits should not be left lying about at children's disposal…
for the right to painless suicide goes hand in hand with majority ; before he turns 18, the individual is under someone's legal responsibily, all the more so as teenage is such an unsteady period ; only those minors enduring pain -both physically and psychologically- will have to turn to their tutors and doctors for such a decision.
Awareness campaigns will help people become aware of this scourge and the freedom to end it peacefully. Philosophy will be taught to future doctors so that they may become humanists who do not look upon their patients as objects or mere bodies but as beings.
On an individual scale, it will still be possible to deter someone from committing suicide (Camus : « a human being must be prevented »), but on a social scale, it will no longer be compulsory to deter someone from committing suicide or keeping someone artificially alive. On a social scale, painful suicide will be a right, for our life is ours.
The means to achieve a painful death do exist, but the will to provide them is still wanting.
Let us get over our fear of death by making painless death accessible for all !
The right to suicide will not settle all the biological and social issues ; it will enable us not to be made biologically and socially made to live. It will enable a person to discard a life that fouls his sense of dignity.
Life will cease to be a rape as we will be able to part with it.
With the legalisation of painless death, there will come the Dawn of a civilization that truly honours the Enlightenment's spirit.
Jean Liberté, Manifesto for a right to painless suicide
We are not objects, we are human beings. Our lives do not belong to anyone, nor do they belong to society or to State. No-one, ever, can claim to oblige us to live for someone, for society or for State if we do not wish to live for ourselves. Painless suicide is our right. Let us hasten to conquer this right for our dignity not to be flouted any more.
Let us tackle as the very emblem of our fight for freedom a thought-provoking extract from Kant's What is the Enlightenment ?, as it encapsulates the very tenets of our philosophy.
What is the Enlightenment ? Man's coming of age, his achieving majority, his renouncing the minority for which he is responsible.
By minority, we mean his inability to use his understanding without anyone's help and assistance ; this minority for which he alone is responsible not so much because he is lacking in understanding but because he is not brave enough to decide to use it without someone's authority upon him.
Sapere aude ! Be brave enough to use your own understanding : such is the Enlightenment's spirit and motto.
Laziness and cowardice are the two causes which account for the fact that a great number of men and women decide to vegetate in minority, leaving it to others to rule over them.
How convenient it is to remain in a state of minority !
If at my disposal, I have a book, a doctor, a director that act in place of my own understanding, why should I complain and exert myself !?
I need not think ! As long as I can pay !
Others will think for me.
Those tutors have been clever enough to show their cattle that straying away from their enclosure is painful and dangerous.
Yet, that is not so dangerous as falling once or twice might teach them a lesson in the end, but they are brainwashed into shrinking from walking by themselves and they thereby opt for minority as a natural state : theirs.
Let us achieve majority, let us not be afraid to think for ourselves, let us use our reason without anyone's authority, let us make our own choices. Let us not let those tutors make decisions for us !
If we consider that our lives do not agree with our sense of dignity, let us not let any tutor decide for us and prevent us from dying peacefully. Let us throw off the yoke of this state of minority, no matter how seducing minority may seem ; to decide to die when we want to, we must enjoy the right to access the suicidal kit : the right to painful suicide is a consequence of the Enlightenment. Thus, this Kant text is worth reading over and over again.
Hence, is it not legitimate that one should, as soon as one is 18, access suicidal kits from the pharmacist's ? Those would come along with recommendations as to how to use them.
The person that wants to terminate his life peacefully would just have to go to the pharmacist's (no need to undergo a psychological expertise any more) ; he or she would just have to fill in a form and sign it, and the pharmacist would keep a record of his purchase. A post mortem would be the best bulwark against poisoning. Let it not be said that those kits would make poisoning easier : some berries and mushrooms do the job far better !
Those possible drifts and other questionings will be solved if one takes the necessary time to prepare for it and legislate.
To make sure that someone healthy does not want to die on an impulse, one should see to it, within two or three weeks, that his decison is sensible : this waiting period would become a law.
No need to say that those kits should not be left lying about at children's disposal…
for the right to painless suicide goes hand in hand with majority ; before he turns 18, the individual is under someone's legal responsibily, all the more so as teenage is such an unsteady period ; only those minors enduring pain -both physically and psychologically- will have to turn to their tutors and doctors for such a decision.
Awareness campaigns will help people become aware of this scourge and the freedom to end it peacefully. Philosophy will be taught to future doctors so that they may become humanists who do not look upon their patients as objects or mere bodies but as beings.
On an individual scale, it will still be possible to deter someone from committing suicide (Camus : « a human being must be prevented »), but on a social scale, it will no longer be compulsory to deter someone from committing suicide or keeping someone artificially alive. On a social scale, painful suicide will be a right, for our life is ours.
The means to achieve a painful death do exist, but the will to provide them is still wanting.
Let us get over our fear of death by making painless death accessible for all !
The right to suicide will not settle all the biological and social issues ; it will enable us not to be made biologically and socially made to live. It will enable a person to discard a life that fouls his sense of dignity.
Life will cease to be a rape as we will be able to part with it.
With the legalisation of painless death, there will come the Dawn of a civilization that truly honours the Enlightenment's spirit.
Jean Liberté, Manifesto for a right to painless suicide
