I’ve got a question for you all. Please comment! As much as I believe there’s plenty of options for your life other than suicide, for some people it’s the only option. Whether they’re right or wrong is not my point. My point is, when we think our pets are suffering too much, we go to our vetss and they put our animals down, after exhausting all options. Sometimes they may put them down anyway no matter what! Because they realise we’re not liking the suffering we have to watch every day. So. Why is it wrong not to kill a person for reason of suffering, but the same “wrongdoing” is ok to do to animals? To me it’s an absurd thing, and I want to know why animals are allowed to be euthanised but we aren’t, be it assisted or unassisted?
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Because people are selfish and would rather have the people they “love” around a little bit longer and have them suffer rather than themselves suffer through a “loss”
But that’s just my opinion.
I agree with foresaken1. I hate seeing people say that suicide is a selfish act. Perhaps it is in the sense that the person who takes their own life wants release from the physical/mental/emotional pain that they’re in and find suicide is the only way. But to want someone to continue suffering so that others won’t have to deal with the loss is also very selfish.
We are created beings just like the animals but so much more we are given. We are given reason, intelligence, communication to reach out across the world, thumbs to create our own devices and a spirit. All put here by the same creator but so much more was given to man. Free will was also given to believe in him or not and to take our life but to whom much is given much is required. We will be held to account whereas the animals which were put here for our purposes won’t. The pain and suffering we go through can either shape us or destroy us. It is all about choice.
May I chime in: In a healthy world, not a single person would commit suicide. None ever has to. Unfortunately, our world is very, very ill and we are all a symptom of it.
People choose to be selfish and try to take our right to death away. Why, because suicide of any person creates, metaphysically speaking, and imo, an enormous rift in the fabric of space. It is an act of such profound suffering that its effects are felt by almost everyone, on some level – even people who never knew the victim. It reverberates and sends an alarm into our very core.
In the 1800s there lived a famous dog that was suffering and tried to take its own life by drowning itself in water. This disturbed people so they tried to stop it, without actually helping it resolve its suffering. It succeeded in the end. Google it.
Humans do not know how to deal with these feelings, so they would rather shut them down and blame us for being weak, i.e. “You are selfish.”
Getting back to the question: animals can be euthanized because there don’t seem to be many cataclysmic precedents in recent history to impress a majority that it’s a “bad thing.”
In theory we could repeat some “bad things,” and maybe straighten up and flight right just afterward. Maybe we could have one day of cultural cleansing, where people gather at town square and toss every bad book and piece of “bad” art onto a bonfire.
In particular one precedent for human euthanasia was called Eugenics. Eugenics got a little out of hand in America and other places in the 19th and 20th centuries. So people think of Eugenics as a slippery slope.
My opinion is that by 2050 persistent pollution will be double what it is today, most peaks will have crested and be in decline (obvious enough to be reported in mainstream) societies will soften their stigma to willful exits. Net deaths in excess of a billion per decade will mostly be the good old fashioned ways, but death will be everywhere so people will be neutral or in favor of suicide.
There are economical reasons as well for as to why the government will not allow assisted or unassisted suicide. The pharmaceutical industry needs consumers to buy its products. It needs depressed and other mentally ill people to remain alive so they may continue to leech money off of them and make profits. It also needs its standard consumers whom will benefit the economy through other means of spending such as food and other basic resources needed to keep a person alive. Not to mention other gizmos and whatsits that people purchase and especially taxes. To allow people to kill themselves would result in major loss of profits.
I think the primary difference between euthanizing pets is that the pet’s animal family is not going to sue.
Most families won’t take responsibility for pushing the button, or physiologically can’t push it, that would end their loved ones life and would expect a third party to do it for them.
Most of us couldn’t push the button for our pets and the Vets are kind enough to do this for us.
With the current physiological attitudes and expectations we have about life it would be unfair to ask another human to push the button for us.
Our current attitudes on Life are messed up. On the one hand it’s Life above all else, even and especially suffering, an on the other hand Life is disposable all depending on the conditions, usually how close we are and how visible to the Life in question.
Personally I think evolution needs us to believe Life is scared
And one can only laugh or cry at the irony of almost all our religious traditions are rooted in the knowledge that life is suffering.
@left22 – Good point, I agree that (aside from polital problems) money is a huge factor.
I was surprised to learn that rule of thumb for cost of end of life care (last 6 months) is about half of the lifetime cost of healthcare. We like to promote consumption in all aspects of life (we get huge bills for everything) so it seems more than likely that there’d be some special interests in keeping patients alive, if that’s also keeping some gravy train chugging.
I think you’re right about pets too. They are less represented and owners don’t always have tens of thousands of dollars for pets’ final 6 months’ end of life care.
@coitus
I grew up during a time when it was generally believed it was just a matter of time when we would cure cancer and the like. Not many people believe that today…
In my more cynical moments I know that curing cancer is not in our best economic or population interests.
I’m not surprised that more and more charity dollars are focus on dealing with the care of those afflicted and not so much on cure anymore. It’s a better growth business.
Do you ever wonder about the movies, most of them, were the person will do anything, even cause the destruction of hundreds of lives just for that extra hour of life…
I’m watching J.J. Abrams TV show Revolution and other then the two young adults and computer geek every main character is a mass murder! The heroes and villains! Each willing to kill billions in order to, stay in power and continue a life they hate, save the life of a single loved one or revenge. All claiming the, “I had no choice†as they make their choice.
The “needs of the one outweighs the needs of the many†and today 9 out of 10 movies created today reinforce that “no choice†bull shit justification.
But let someone who is suffering die that we cannot accept.
Killing yourself when you are going to die a terrible physical death is not a good analogy to taking your dog up to be put down because they are in pain and are going to die a painful death anyway. I’ve had to do that, to sign my name on what amounted to my dog’s death warrant. I know it was the right thing but I assure you it was a very hard thing to do. It’s a stain on me I can never wash out.
I’m not pro or anti suicide…I’m just saying it’s more complicated than that and trying to simplify it is a lie. I know that if I actually do it I will quite possibly destroy my mother and my brother and have it deeply affect a number of other people. What is really sad is that sometimes I hurt so much that I know it probably will come to my doing it anyway. I guess I just feel like if you do it…make damned sure it’s the right thing and you’ve exhausted everything else.
Correction…I meant that its not a good analogy when in other cases of suicide. I’m so adhd I always make grammatical errors that screw up what I’m trying to say…ack.
Oh yes left22 I’m totally with ya there. That the heroes are villans is implied in part by “to the victors go the spoils of war,” that the victors write history.
I’m getting off topic now, but yes it’s amazing that a “hero” will bludgeon or shoot someone then go back to playing cards. Truth is stranger than fiction though, America was founded on genocide of about 100 million native North Americans.
White men would ride in open rail cars, gunning down huge herds of Buffalo to starve native Americans. Recently in Iraq no one really knows how many Iraquis were killed ~1M because we don’t do body counts. It’s definitely ultraviolent I myself am a Gulf War Vet but it is really horrific to see this psychopathy glorified too.
When you become aware of them the contradictions on how we value life is nothing short of mystifying.
Our words and sentiments don’t even come close to the crap we do.
I am a vet of the first Gulf War where we “freed†Kuwait Oil and then stood by to watch hundreds of thousands die.
Got a parade though…
@allreadygone13
Having to sign the papers for my own pet was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do and I doubt very much I would have been able to actually give the injection.
Euthanasia is complicated, its one thing making the choice for yourself but in the scenario the person suffering usually isn’t capable of making the choice or signing that paper and someone else would have to decide. I was devastated having to make the decision for my cat and never want to have to make the choice for a family member.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian was arrested for helping his patients commit suicide. I disagree though – just as there is a right to life, there is a right to death, and today’s society horribly violates it.
Hey I totally agree with almost all of you! However, I disagree somewhat with my third commenter. It’s ok for them to say that we have more to give than do animals, so we must suffer just because of that? Or am I wrong somewhere? We all have opinions, but please don’t tell me that it’s ok to make someone suffer just because they’re of higher form than an animal.
And I also must mention, how can it be ok to kill something that hasn’t got much reasoning, but not a human who has more reasoning and intelect? so if a “disabled” person was presented to you, would you kill them? I think the “we were created for more than what an animal was created for”, idea is terribly violating to people’s rights.
My last thing is that I might be totally wrong. Just wanted to put some perspectives out there…
Why does it strike a nerve to put down a dog? Is the dog any different than the cow or the pig. Go visit a slaughter house and see how efficiently they kill these animals so we can eat our steaks, hamburger or bacon. Is the dog a better animal than the cow? No not better just that a dog is man’s best friend as the old cliche goes. Death is all around us and it is part of the cycle of life but humans are called to a higher purpose. We were given so much more and we have free will to use what we were given to help or to destroy. Was Jeffrey Dahmer created to do the atrocities he did? No, he was shaped by the repeated unkind acts upon him as a child that taught him that life was meaningless and hatred enough to eat people. But he had free will to choose that path? A pit bull has the capacity to be vicious and kill people but that is brought out by people treating this animal in such a way to teach it to do this. What is the difference. Choice versus instinct. By the way. I love dogs and have one sleeping in my bed. 🙂