I couldn’t agree less with David Brooks’s reflections on euthanasia in this Atlantic article.
In the macabre phallophagic episode, both participants were really deranged, and should have been institutionalized. It had nothing whatsoever to do with euthanasia. That would only be brought in by a polemicist.
But the author’s exalted extolling of the sanctity and “dignity” of human life was polemics too. Nothing to do with the suffering and compassion that are the only things that matter in the question of euthanasia, but appealing instead to the supernatural dogma of creeds (which can be used to justify anything and the opposite of anything).
The mention of biology and evolution was also stunningly superficial. Yes, evolution is the source of the selfish-genetic indifference to the treatment and fate of strangers or competitors, but also the source of parental and familial and social empathy, and even a sense of fairness. And in all social species, not just human. Â
And when we turn to the human culture that spawned Holy Writ and holy wars and racism and slavery and sexism and nationalism and pogroms and genocide and capitalism, there’s not much empathy to be found there either; more the opposite. We give our token charitable tax write-offs to the poor and sick while we keep and spend incomparably more on ourselves than we could possibly need. And when others suffer, we want to deny them relief from that too, sanctimoniously pleading respect for the “dignity” of human life.
Human life? And I haven’t even mentioned the unspeakably monstrous cruelty with which we treat sentient nonhuman life. (And that too is blessed by our Holy Writ.)
Bravo to Canada if they put an end to any of that.