Sir Edward Downes, 85, one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, and his wife, Joan, 74, who was ill and dying, assumed sovereignty over their own mortal beings as their ultimate right when they chose recently to end their lives together via assisted suicide. But they had to leave their UK homeland, where such suicide is not legal, to find that sovereignty in a Switzerland clinic.
Albert Camus wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Controversy abounds in the wake of the Downes’ suicide, but serious philosophical consideration isn’t getting much play. It should, because the question speaks directly to the most elemental choice we face everyday: to be or not to be … in a thousand little and big ways … and to face those choices with a modicum of free will.
But what free will is left when the very concept of a private self is being obliterated by the obsessive ubiquity of reality television and so-called social networking? When the rights of self are increasingly determined to be less than those of the rights of society – when we can barely think for ourselves without consulting the Internet or a pundit, much less act for ourselves in any way that reflects true individual freedom?
The question of suicide is not to be taken lightly. It is a question for adult contemplation and debate. But which of us is so morally and intellectually superior that we deserve the right to restrict other rational and mentally sound adults from intelligently, purposefully, and freely ending their own lives if they so choose?
People make choices every day that shorten the length and quality of their human experiences – from what they eat, to how much they drink, to how much exercise they take. Is such behavior not just a slower form of suicide?
For some, death is not perceived as a fearsome ending, but rather a new beginning – a portal through which to transition to a higher level in one’s spiritual journey or enter heaven. Kahlil Gibran wrote, “For what is it to die … and what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and see God unencumbered.”
For some individuals, choosing death is not so much about choosing to die as it is choosing how to live. In an age where near-daily doctor visits are de rigueur and the details of which are related ad infinitum, if not ad nauseam, to anyone within listening range — some people are craving a return to a time when a body’s decay and journey toward death was met with discretion and dignity.
Would it really be so morally, legally, or spiritually egregious to permit individuals to choose against the all-too-common scenario of death and dying that involves running fearfully from one medical office to another, shuttling confusedly between conflicting diagnoses, difficult treatments, and sometimes indifferent doctors –until the spirit has been depleted of all joy and the body has been reduced to nothing more than staying, barely, alive?
I doubt any of us would be so cruel as to insist on hastening death for an individual who, though slowly dying of illness or old age, wants nothing more than to live to see another day.
But is it not equally cruel to insist on prolonging life for that individual who has soundly and profoundly arrived at the decision that he or she wants nothing more than to die?