SUICIDE: A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT MALIGNED

Two celebrity suicides have been exploited for clicks by U.S. media outlets recently. The sap which has flowed from the keyboards of so-called journalists about these deaths has been more saccharine than Grade A maple syrup. Why are cultures based in monotheist traditions so primitive about suicide? Why do radical Muslims see suicide as a justifiable weapon against innocent victims? Weren't acclaimed Christian martyrs, who placed themselves in harm's way for "faith", really suicidal?

Well, yes, there is the God thing. Those traditions raise us to believe that we are slaves of God by way of being its/his/her/their/ze/hir creations.  This God-Master begrudges slaves their right to end their suffering under any circumstances. The penalties for escaping mortality at will entail afterlife punishments of various kinds.

When you grow up beyond this childish subservience to an unknown and unsubstantiated master of your fate, you are faced with the legal-psychiatric-health establishment. Despite that establishment's population by agnostics and atheists galore, just the expression of suicidal intent qualifies even the most lucidly rational person a reservation in an institution. Mind you, the same establishment cares little about the unpredictably homicidal schizophrenics and psychopaths in your neighborhood. If it did, it wouldn't have readily agreed to tear down all the state-sponsored mental hospitals decades ago. 

Suicide can be the ultimate personal choice of individual existence. Existence creeps up on us all one cell division after another without any volition. No choice there. Reproductive rights actually mean the freedom to determine the existence of another human being whether you are physically, intellectually, economically or ethically capable of raising that human being properly. Suicide is an individual choice for oneself, whether made irrationally or made rationally. It is a choice which effects the existence of the person making it. Making another's suicide all about you is narcissism. 

The traditional place suicide has held in Eastern Asian societies with deep Buddhist traditions reflects the difference between Western religions and Buddhist thought. Westerners relentlessly try to classify Buddhism as religion. This belies the stubborn resistance of Westerners to abandon tribal tradition for individualism. In Buddhism, one's life is one's own. That life is surrounded by a complex cosmos of layers of consciousness, and deities as well as demons. But that life belongs to the Buddhist thinker., a traveler through, and hopefully a student of, cosmic consciousness. 

The Buddhist journey may well end in the suicide of the physical individual. That suicide can be considered honorable, even admirable. But ultimately, it is an individual choice to end an individual journey. To the practicing Buddhist, the journey, not its end, is what matters.

I come to the issue of suicide as a recovering Roman Catholic, an agnostic, a retired psychiatric nurse, a student of Buddhist thought and a person with disabling chronic disease. That ticks a lot of the boxes on the subject. My views on suicide in U.S. culture are largely reactionary against the attitude and power of the medical establishment which exploits suffering for profit. The amount of exploitation of vegetative states far exceeds that establishment's commitment to save functional human lives through readily available mental health services. 

Suicide occurs more frequently among the relatively young and the relatively old. Obviously, suicide by a person not yet operating with a mature brain can be a tragedy to be prevented if possible. Such suicides are often escapes born of confused desperation, not mature rationality. However, suicide among the old and infirm could be a mercy facilitated, rather than condemned, by a truly intelligent and compassionate society. Refusing to personally facilitate another's suicide is an individual choice. Judging someone else's wish to avoid the suffering of disease and advanced age is ignorant at best. Punishing someone old or infirm for attempting suicide or preventing them from doing so is sadistic. And that ignorance and sadism are rife in U.S. society today.

Assisted suicide is gradually edging its way into the ethical awareness of educated Americans.  However, the media have largely exploited the subject from the point of view of the religious objectors. Legislators have allowed themselves to be bullied by religious absolutists. Doctors have displayed general cowardice on the subject. Their conflict of interest is obvious. Keeping people alive through advanced life support is the cash cow of medical centers. 

There may come a time when human lives of unproductive billions or trillions will become devalued by technology and overpopulation to the point that suicide may well be seen as a political and economic solution globally. The morality or immorality of suicide at that point would be irrelevant, as it always becomes when human beings are faced with a threat to survival of the powerful.

Unfortunately, there are thousands with limited resources for whom assisted suicide would be a desired mercy today. Rather than being treated with kindness, they have to live out their suffering without mercy or take matters into their own hands, often with unpredictable results. Those with wealth and power can already opt for a comfortable end by traveling with assistance to a more compassionate part of the world. That reality is neither moral nor compassionate. It displays the most basic lack of equality in global human rights.