Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Friday, November 07, 2008 3:40:29 PM
You may have heard by now that here in Washington, we just joined our Oregonian neighbors in making suicide a democratic value. I must admit that I can’t quite make the stretch to see the dignity of opting out and cashing in my chips through a state subsidized program, but they call it “death with dignity.”
Yes, with the superior wisdom of our postmodern years, we rejected a societal value, over 2000 years old, of discouraging suicide. I heard that in Oregon, they rejected a request from one man for surgery, but suggested they would be glad to “kill him off.” He complained. They caved. Surgery worked, and he is still walking around. But, in parts of Europe now, they don’t even ask “the patients” anymore if they are ready to depart…of course you understand only euphemisms are allowed when we overrule any value or guidance passed down through the generations… they just close the curtains, shut the eyelids, and terminate you. I must admit they have their reasons—it is cheaper for them, you were too old, and putting you out of your misery was the humane thing to do.
These examples from Oregon and Europe illustrate two points about what happens when you welcome the government into your final curtain call. Dignity slips, slides, and glides into a humane death, like after the family horse breaks his leg and grandfather calls the vet—so the vet can put a bullet through his head. And, as William Gass writes in The Doomed in Their Sinking:
Nowadays the significance of a suicide for the suicide and the significance of that suicide for society are seldom the same. If according to the social workers’ comforting cliché, they are often a cry for help, they’re just as frequently a solemn vow of silence.
A long time ago, I fastened on the idea of “raging against the darkness of the night,” rejecting the idea suicide was anything more than an early exit from the drama of life. As for dignity, Webster says it is “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed; high rank, office, or position; a legal title of nobility or honor.”
I always thought you earned dignity, you earned it by doing an affirmative act, and when it comes to ending it all, a death with dignity was providing an example for others, performing some remarkable act—bravery, perseverance against the odds, not taking yourself out of the game before the umpire called you out—like Socrates refusing an offer from friends to help him escape the hemlock; Thomas Moore refusing to buckle to the dictates of King Henry on a matter of religious conviction; and average Americans who despite their pain, soldier on with grace, without complaint, a ready smile and time for anyone who needs help, like the young boy with the fatal disease raising money for research to help others after him or Tony Snow (the former White House Press Secretary) calmly accepting his fate with a smile on his face, gratitude in his heart for life and for enough notice allowing him time to order things before moving on.
Dignity suggests a reasoned action and suicide a decision under fear, compulsion, or confusion…an absence of reason.