Albert Camus once said that the only real philosophical problem was whether or not to commit suicide. He was right. Everything beyond that is just hashing out details. The problems with qualia, ethics, all the nooks and crannies of epistemology and how we can know what we know, metaphysics, logic… all of that can only come after you’ve made the decision that life is worth living. All of it only matters if you’ve decided to wake up tomorrow. It is, after all, something of a quandary why so many people do decide to do that. Life is sad and full of suffering and nothing ever seems to go right and we all know that sooner or later we have to die anyway. So, in a sense, why put it off? Just jump off a bridge and get it over with. What are we all waiting around for? What is it, exactly, about your existence of go to work come home go to sleep go to work come home go to sleep go to work come home go to sleep go to work come home go to sleep that is so compelling. Why do you think it matters? What do you imagine you’re accomplishing here? Are the Netflix shows you manage to squeeze in to the above schedule now and again really worth the price of admission to planet earth?
Debatable.
Let’s be completely real for half a second here.
Most of us aren’t accomplishing too much and the world wouldn’t miss us if we were gone. For a few of us, frankly, it really might be better off if we weren’t here.
Is that too harsh?
Maybe. Is it true though?
Once upon a time people justified their existence by recourse to God. Doing so went something like this:
God, Our Father in Heaven, had made the world and each of us individually, and he in his infinite wisdom must have done so for some good purpose. The fact that that purpose is opaque to us doesn’t much matter, we trust that it exists. Moreover, God has made each of us in his own image and therefore to damage that image would be a great sin, akin perhaps to blasphemy. Our individual lives might not seem so important but, like yeast in a barrel of pressed grapes, our day to day tasks and menial existence of eating and reproducing is perhaps making a mystical wine only God himself can see.
And besides, Preacher says you’ll go to hell if you off yourself.
Hell doesn’t seem better, does it?
So, for a long time the lid was kept on suicide. You know, in those segments of society where it was even possible. Perhaps counterintuitively it has traditionally only been the upper classes that have had such an inclination. At least, so I have been told. On the whole anyway. The thinking goes that if you are poor, worried about where your next meal is going to come from, you have something to do. You have a daily mission. Your stomach drives you and you don’t really have the time to worry about things like the meaning of life or grander purpose. You’re also less of a risk for suicide if you’re sort of stupid. For, of course, similar reasons. Sub 90 IQ individuals experience existential dread about as often as deer or marmosets do. Stupid poor people will die from a lot of things, accidents, fights, drugs, and so on, sure. But they’re fairly protected from suicide. If you’re reasonably clever and have most of your basic needs met though, watch out. You are a prime candidate for suicide. You’ve nothing to do and all the brain power in the world to question whether or not this is okay.
And is it okay?
Nobody knows.
God used to know, we thought, but now we’ve decided he doesn’t, if he exists at all that is. So now we’re not sure. Maybe we just need pills. Maybe we need therapy. Maybe our social circle isn’t sufficiently supportive or maybe things would turn around if we had a better income. We don’t know. Ah but wouldn’t it be awesome if there was someone who did know? Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone we could ask? An authority on the matter? Should I kill myself? Yes or no? Should I die?
What we wouldn’t give to have someone who knew better answer that question.
I’ve written before that ours is a world in which people never grow up. Philosophically speaking we don’t have ethics, we don’t have morals, we don’t have truths. Instead we have authority and recourse to it.
That’s all.
It starts young. Three, four years old we start to raise our hands to ask if we can have a drink. Can I go to the bathroom? Can I please go and relieve myself? Oh, I sit here, and not there? Okay. I’m being too loud? My behavior isn’t acceptable?
Of course, some of that is necessary. Children have to be socialized. They have to be taught the general rules and norms of society that will make them bearable to be around as adults. But you’re supposed to grow out of that though. And modern people never do.
From preschool we progress to elementary, and then middle, and the high. If we have the resources we then proceed to college, and from there perhaps on to graduate studies. Almost all of us then leave academia and enter the workforce, almost certainly joining a medium to large sized corporation. There you will find, to your comfort, the classroom setting you were raised in recreated, yet again. Desks and assigned seating and a specified time of day when you’re allowed to take lunch. Some people continue needing to log their bathroom breaks. Isn’t that comfy? Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.
The specifics may be slightly different but the gist is the same the whole way through. All your life. Instead of a teacher or a professor you get a boss or a manager or an HR representative. All of them setting rules. Boundaries. Norms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Dress this way. Be at this place at this time. Say this. Don’t say that. And if you color within the lines provided you really will be okay. Really. That’s the great part. Year over year your salary will go up, you’ll have a house, healthcare, dinners at the new restaurant downtown. And what you have to do and not do to keep those things is very clearly spelled out. Often in a literal manual. An “employee handbook” they call it. The best part is that if you ever have a doubt or a question you can just send an email to whomever is currently occupying the role of your overseer and ask and they will promptly tell you what it is you ought to do.
No ambiguity.
A white and black society.
Yes or no.
What does the handbook say?
It was only a matter of time before this bureaucratic mode of existence got extended to everything. Even to matters of life and death.
Last year in Canada 3.3% of all deaths were medically assisted. That means they were people who were alive that doctors, with their full consent of course, purposefully gave poison. What we used to call suicide. Or, you know, murder. Hey? Why not both? Management says we’re not supposed to call it that anymore though. “Suicide” isn’t an approved term in the employee handbook. Currently we are to refer to it as “Medical Assistance In Dying.” MAID for short. And doesn’t that sound better? It’s just assistance. We’re just helping. You know, like maids. It’s all doubleplusgood.
3.3%. Think about that. 3 people out of a 100 going out by suicide. That’s… well… that’s something.
When Canada started MAID it was just supposed to be for those who were terminally ill. You know, cancer patients facing months of agonizing demise who were instead hoping for a nice little shot to just make them fall asleep and never wake up again. That’s how it was sold to the public. Slippery slopes are always sold that way. In 2019 though the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that giving MAID only to those with a “reasonable foreseeability of natural death” was unconstitutional. Discrimination I guess? You have to let everyone get poisoned equally. So, of course, now the law has been opened up to just about anybody suffering from just about anything. People who are too poor to live, for example. Or people with too much anxiety, or people who are depressed.
As of March 17, 2021, anyone wishing to receive medical assistance with their suicide must meet only the following criteria:
Be 18 years of age or older and have decision-making capacity.
Be eligible for publicly funded health care services. (Hooray Public Healthcare System!)
Make a voluntary request that is not the result of external pressure.
Give informed consent to receive MAID, meaning that the person has consented to receiving MAID after they have received all information needed to make this decision.
Have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability (excluding a mental illness until March 17, 2023).
Be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability.
Have enduring and intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated under conditions the person considers acceptable. (Including psychological suffering seems to negate the March 2023 provision above).
Lot of bullet points but nothing of substance, in my opinion. All of the criteria provided are subjective. Not a single objective measurement amongst them. Even if we were to agree that poisoning someone in a hospital were morally justifiable under certain conditions (it’s isn’t), all the conditions given are infinitely malleable and open to interpretation. All up to conditions "the person considers acceptable.” And beyond that who decides what fulfills such a loaded criteria as the word “intolerable”? Or who decides what makes an illness “serious”? Who defines when it’s in an “advanced state”?
You already know the answer.
Teacher does.
Same as she always has. Since the day you were born.
If the only serious philosophical question is whether or not one ought to commit suicide then how does our society answer?
Well…
“Teacher says it’s okay.”
Great article. Have you read Lasch? One of my favorite books of all time is his "Haven in a Heartless World", the basic premise is that society has largely abandoned personal responsibility, religion, or family as the source of expertise and authority, and everything is moving toward "experts" and managers making all personal decisions for everyone. And this is exactly what you get - It's OK to kill yourself now.
This concept of MAID is so profoundly troubling, I barely know where to place it in my psyche. I read an account of a family gathering around their "clinically-depressed" daughter to be with her as she was lethally injected; I've read about suicide "pods" engineered to make death painless and hygenic (no mess! how thoughtful!); and now, your excellent essay.
I think I've closed off some part of myself to prevent myself from utter despair and grief at this morality-free and divinity-less ideology that has hatched. There's just too much other stuff to despair about these days. When I'm ready, I'll wail.
Thank you for writing this, Yoshi. I may not seem grateful, but I am...