Post a controversial opinion

I had been scared to post my most actually controversial opinion: I'm still working out what I think of this but it seems deeply problematic and discriminatory to permit assisted suicide only in cases of a "grievous and irremediable medical condition". I feel like it should either be legal for all mentally competent adults or illegal for all mentally competent adults.

Agreed, and it should be the former imo

Xp. Might be a Charter challenge in that. Section 15(1). Not sure if Bev Mc CJC and the gang would be into it.

alcoholism isnt a disease

tell that to your liver

My partner almost tells me she wants to die every day, usually at some point when she is having a shit time. She doesn't really want to die, she just gets depressed about living in a broken body (she has a pretty nasty rare form of MS). Talk of making assisted suicide easier is not a good thing imo. In the long term term it can only lead to easing the path to another T4 program "those not deemed worthy of life".

All of the least painful and most successful methods of suicide are put far, far out of normal people's reach. Widespread assisted suicide would not only help those who seek to end their lives, but mean that the results would be less traumatic for everyone involved - there would be fewer public suicides, loved ones would not have to cope with corpse discovery, you would know that the person involved got to go peacefully, etc etc.

we should mainly look at addiction as a developmental disorder arising from unsatisfactory care in childhood.

hmmm. Adult native americans who encountered alcohol for the first time during initial contact with settlers of European origin very often displayed all the behaviors of acute alcohol addiction very quickly. Does this mean you think they were raised 'unsatisfactorily', and the alcohol-addictive behavior only erupted when the substance became available? Seems like a weird theory to account for that well-attested historic phenomenon.

i think we could do better as a society if it was accepted that everyone would be euthanized by default at 50, maybe 60

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I don't disagree with the proposition that mentally competent adults can choose suicide. But you will inevitably get into questions of who is mentally competent, who gets to rule on competency, etc. To be flippant, Miracle on 34th Street territory. Someone will test the boundaries, and hard cases make bad law.

To be nonflippant, I have a developmentally disabled child. Most of the time we're focused on Now and its challenges. However, some completely premature, completely non-constructive worries inevitably haunt us. For example: his delays are profound and will probably last into adolescence and possibly into adulthood. At that point, his cognitive and intellectual delays will start to have moral implications. Will he understand dating, sex, or sexual consent? Will he understand voting? Might he try to buy a gun? Will he understand suicide?

If at age 18 he tells me (in sign) that he hates his life and wants to die, do I say yes? If not then, when? 25? 30? If 30, why not 29 or 31?

parents pick the units at birth

What I don't understand is why the fuck most humans want to force people to keep living even when they clearly don't want to.

As far as I can tell, the answer to this is that most people think that wanting to die is an unhealthy cognitive distortion that people can learn to move past and go on to live productive, enjoyable lives. However, many people cease to believe this if the suicidal person in question is disabled or ill. In this case, wanting to die becomes a much more justifiable desire than if someone 'only' lost a job or loved one or just did not enjoy life etc. I have a hard time seeing a justification for this sort of assisted suicide policy that does not value the lives of the disabled differently than the lives of the able-bodied, which I find troubling.

tbf the study of people who were successful in their suicide attempts to determine whether they would make the same choice again has yet to gather any good data

Plenty of people have made multiple attempts tho

Pochettino has taken spurs as far as he can and decay is already settling in

sry puffin that was meant as an xp and you raise an important point in a way that i cannot

a minority, iirc xxp

xp mh that is a very difficult study to control. without looking for any data at all, i would guess that one of the biggest reasons anyone has to forgo committing suicide is that it will hurt people who care about them, but the idea is so taboo that it is unthinkable for most to even have the discussion with said people to try to come to a mutual understanding.

we should mainly look at addiction as a developmental disorder arising from unsatisfactory care in childhood.

hmmm. Adult native americans who encountered alcohol for the first time during initial contact with settlers of European origin very often displayed all the behaviors of acute alcohol addiction very quickly. Does this mean you think they were raised 'unsatisfactorily', and the alcohol-addictive behavior only erupted when the substance became available? Seems like a weird theory to account for that well-attested historic phenomenon.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

I said "mainky" because I don't attribute all addicting to those factors just that I believe the widespread public health issue of addiction in our society is greatly / primarily the product of this.

The introduction of alcohol to a society that didn't have it at the same time as a cataclysmic process of colonisation, displacement, and cultural genocide is too sui generis an example to extrapolate from imo

Damn autocorrect

aimless do you have sources for native americans first contact with alcohol

Was wondering about how "well-attested" that was as well.

xp mh that is a very difficult study to control. without looking for any data at all, .
--home organ

um...he was joking

no worries, home organ. Sorry to hit the conversation with more heaviness than was warranted at that time.

Adults with intellectual disabilities (them what used to be called retarded adults) are a gray area precisely because well-intentioned ppl are (quite rightly) trying actively to give them more say in their own affairs. Let them make choices, express preferences, experience consequences, take risks - in a gradual and regulated way.

It's still a long way off, but it's a strong likelihood that we'll face some tough judgment calls about my son's ability to handle a sleepover, summer camp, an unchaperoned date, a college dorm, a job. Those decisions can't be based on his chronological age (currently several years behind) but on an educated guess about what he can handle.

What about when it comes to having sex, signing a lease, getting married, enlisting in the army? I'm all for letting him leave the nest, but I'm not sure when I'd be ready to "let" him to sign up for suicide.

Yeah, you raise valid questions about even my condition of "mentally competent".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazine/the-last-day-of-her-life.html?_r=1

xxxp sry i left off wink emoticon

oh and puffin: i did not mean to imply you expressed too much "heaviness" at all. i truly do not know how to address what you're very generous to discuss.

aimless do you have sources

If you would like scholarly references, then I can't accommodate you, because I am not a scholar. I read whatever interests me, about a book a week, and I've been doing it for decades. I don't keep the texts and I don't take notes. I seek no more than to gratify my curiosity about the world. I've read a variety of source material that include firsthand narratives by whites -- mostly engaged in the fur trade -- who were in early contact with native north americans. but I can't cite them for you chapter and verse.

I had to pull my son out of school today, he saved the worst for the last day of term - he physically assaulted his teacher and became unmanageable. Sometimes I think after I am gone, I dread to think what will become of him in this current set-up, never mind one where voluntary or otherwise liquidation starts becoming the norm.

puffin, you have my sympathies. when your child passes the threshold of legal majority (18) you'll be faced with the thorny decision of whether to seek legal guardianship or conservatorship. in our daughter's case that decision was not in question. it had to be done. so we weren't forced to weigh the delicately balanced opposing sides of that question, as you may need to. good luck.

aimless: please append "i think i read something written by a racist fur trader once but i can't really remember" to your future statements about how "very often" oppressed people "displayed all the behaviors" genocidal colonialist attributed to them.

Westward ho, me organ

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/7/26/1374833496398/Stagecoach-001.jpg

now I am curious if you find that "unsatisfactory care in childhood" should be construed as a non-racist theory for the origins of alcohol addiction among contemporary native american populations?

I like to think twas being unprepared to meet paddy what done it

poch out

most people think that wanting to die is an unhealthy cognitive distortion

The average punter has no clue how excruciating living with mental disorders can be. And for some, there's no more cure than there is for end-stage chronic diseases.

now I am curious if you find that "unsatisfactory care in childhood" should be construed as a non-racist theory for the origins of alcohol addiction among contemporary native american populations?

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

i live in canada. first nations people here account for about 4% of the population of the country, and first nations children make up 50% of children in care below the age of 14. first nations children's advocates have attributed this to the high rates of poverty among first nations people - and social services tendency to equate this poverty with neglect - as well as high substance abuse rates in caregivers that can be seen the legacy of the trauma caused by residential schools and the sixties scoop.

did a quick google and, although youre not a scholar, here is an interesting paper on the subjec of the overrepresentation of first nations children in canada's child welfare system (it is 11 years old so not totally up to date) https://francais.mcgill.ca/files/crcf/2004-Overrepresentation_Aboriginal_Children.pdf

i would suggest that being taken into care, for whatever reason, is not an optimal childhood experience.

beyoncé knowles is as boring as coldplay

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all of Mick Jagger's vocal performances are tied for 'Mick Jagger's worst vocal performance'

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is ilx ready to talk about birth tourism

the vast majority of people on earth don't want to fight to make the world a better place. they just want to be be comfortable and not be starving. and watch every episode of Friends again on Netflix. okay, i was projecting with that last part...

That last one seems pretty obvious to me

I'd go further to say that the majority prefer freedom from decisions to freedom. Not many of us really care enough about minority viewpoints to fight for them. Martin Niemöller's lament will never lose relevance.

Also, having only seen the discussion of Friends on The Good Place, even season 8?