I feel instructing people to do things goes into the action category.

exactly. that’s how US law works. in England, the state has much broader powers to arrest you depending on your speech. Like for example, the first statement I made

“i believe all [plural form of random ethnic slur] should be brutally murdered”

a very similar post on twitter got someone sentenced to 2 years in jail over in England just a few months ago. let search around and find the direct quote…

i found it

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it”

My interpretation is that this is a belief. He didn’t explicitly instruct anyone to do anything. He said, in other words - “if people set fire to all the muslim immigrants, i wouldn’t care” or basically “i would be happy with people setting fire to all muslim imimgrants”

in England, that’s a crime. in the US, you have to be much more explicit. You have to

a) specifically instruct people to do something “everyone, attack that person in the red hat”

b) hold the belief that your statement has a real chance to followed. so for example, if you right now say “hey kava, beat your wife” you almost certainly could not be charged in the US because a reasonable person would not immediately beat their wife because of a statement like that

c) it has to be immediate - so you have to say something and it happen in the very near future. so if you write “let’s stab all the [ethnic slurs]” and then someone reads that 3 months into the future- you can’t be held liable.

So I believe the US laws, in this case, are so much better than English laws.

The US does a lot of shit wrong. So many things. But on speech? I think best in the world.

edit: there’s more on this topic if you’re interested: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

I appreciate the personal anecdote. I believe in cases like the one you detailed, assisted suicide is not only morally justified but I think perhaps even obligatory. It does sound horrific and I can only imagine how horrific it feels to be that person going through that period of time.

When I say duty to live, I’m more speaking to those who are not terminally ill. Another user brought up a good point where what we need to do is look at the death % rates and see how they shifted. For example, if 20% of people now die from assisted suicide, do 20% less people die from cancer and other similar diseases? Then assisted suicide is for all intents and purposes relegated to terminally ill patients.

If the number, however, is let’s say 15% less people die from cancer, that would imply 5% more people are dying because of assisted suicide than would have otherwise died. This is the part I’m scared of.

Again, I appreciate your comment. It must have been a profound thing to witness. For good and for bad.

things not in the physical realm should have consequences not in the physical realm

I mean, it depends. I think the current laws in the US are more or less fine.

For example, if I send you a death threat through an online message, it should be equivalent to me sending you a death threat in any other fashion.

So I’m not a total absolutist, but I am a strong free-speech proponent.

I think saying something like “i believe all [plural form of random ethnic slur] should be brutally murdered” is an expression of a belief. it’s a horrific belief, yes, but it’s a belief. I think it constitutes as free speech and therefore the government cannot prosecute

however let’s say I’m a musician at a concert and i see a guy in the crowd and point and yell to the crowd “hey everybody, attack that [singular form of ethnic slur] and rip his [religious apparel] off” - that isn’t a belief. that is an incitement to violence.

that should be a crime.

in England, both the first and the 2nd are crimes. here in the US, it’s only the 2nd

yeah it’s a weird time. over in England during the anti-immigrant riots some people got sent to jail for inciting violence for some twitter messages. If you actually read the messages and compare it to the rhetoric coming out of many people about this CEO, many people would be sent to jail if we were following the same standard.

obviously the US is not England and we have free speech protections- but people really should exercise caution

Never say anything you aren’t willing to stand behind. Because it won’t go away. And with authoritarian regimes coming to power… you gotta be cognizant of the potential consequences

But generally, I agree with you. The further we get away from groupthink the better we are for it. When we self-censor out of fear of disapproval we are perpetuating the cycle and making it more likely the next person doesn’t speak their mind.

Just because everyone believes something is right, does not mean it is. The majority has been wrong in the past and it will be wrong in the future.

am i mistaken? are we on a website for discussion in a thread about the topic of conversation or are we in a hospice ward for terminal cancer patients?

i haven’t made a single reply to someone unsolicited in this thread. again, you have nothing meaningful to say so you default to vague pearl clutching.

i will absolutely speak about abortion to someone if the topic of conversation is abortion. i will tell someone how i feel- if it is solicited. i support abortion, personally. i spent a good hour arguing with some religious people at an anti-abortion booth on my campus when i was in college.

Those just glorify the military industrial complex

watching a soldier’s legs get blown up by a drone with 3 dead soldiers around him pick up his rifle and shoot himself in the head isn’t really what I would call a show of glory

i feel privileged to be able to see war footage. this hasn’t really been possible for most of human history. you can look and see the brutality of war and what it really means to “die for your country”

i don’t agree with censoring war videos. i’m glad that reddit abstains from this. i’m certain they will be banning it in the future. in think in near future we will not get any media outside of a giant firewall much like China

ok please enlighten me Freud. can you show me where I implied that my opinion should be law and what my biases are? besides the potential ones I mentioned such as potential religious indoctrination from growing up catholic and the fact that i may think differently should i be in that position. what other ones are impacting my thinking?

MAID is the ultimate expression of bodily autonomy

shooting yourself in the head is the ultimate expression of bodily autonomy.

an institutionalized system of euthanasia is something else entirely. you are requesting that the government/healthcare institution kill you.

Except you are not. You haven’t actually discussed MAID itself other than saying it generally makes you feel icky

i’ve written near a dozen comments about this at this point. i haven’t mentioned eugenics once except to make the comparison of the progressive appearance in the 1900s. you write yet don’t read

Can you explain why you’re against MAID without referring to eugenics or any other historical issue?

read any of my dozen comments where i discuss this with people who actually address the conversation instead of nitpick on some imaginary offense. my primary concerns are two fold

1. a system of institutionalized killing is necessarily bound to our institutions. it does not take much imagination to come up with scenarios where there are perverse incentives for the people involved to encourage or coerce people into agreeing to being euthanized. ever heard “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”? it’s because everything is bound up in profit-seeking and exploitation. whatever we bring into our society will be infected by this. are you prepared for there to be private healthcare practices (aka private businesses) encouraging people to kill themselves for financial gain?

2. this is an ideological shift from “treating life as sacred” to “treating life as expendable” and that will come with consequences down the road. i believe when we as a society stop viewing life as sacred this will inevitably have knock-off effects down the road that result in a lack of human dignity. everything we do this decade determines what we will do in the next decade. you destigmatize something now and you shift the bounds of acceptable conversation in the future. we are playing with fire here so I think it’s wise to tread carefully

First off, using the word “execution” is pretty loaded. I just wanted to put that out there, especially because you’re, “not trying to tell anyone they’re wrong.”

well that’s one of the things i take issue with. the ideological approach we take to this. we start using nice sound names and acronyms - euphemisms- and it can sort of hide what we are doing. the words we use matter. unrelated tangent- they’ve done a study in the US. you ask people whether or not they support a “death tax” and a majority will say of course not. you ask them whether they support an “inheritance tax” and all of a sudden support is flipped. do you see what I mean? the language matters.

and the fact that everyone that we are coming up with these acronyms like “MAID” (which is new to me, by the way. I’ve only ever heard doctor assisted suicide up until this point) i think shows that as a society we are trying to avoid some of the conversation about this. euphemisms disguise what we are really doing and they disguise what we really feel. this may be for good intentions (empathy or what have you) but road to hell is paved with good intentions

It’s not just on the individual who is making this decision, but health care professionals who use their professional opinion on the mental state of the individual. If a person is suicidal, generally a mental health care professional is involved.

and doctors in the past have cleared the compulsory sterilization of individuals in Canada (and many other places). i have immediate family members who are doctors. some of the beliefs they hold would offend many in this thread. just because they went through medical school and trained and have above average intelligence- does not mean they will necessarily be on the right side of history.

I think these are all good reasons to be skeptical, but I also don’t think they’re reasons to completely prevent access.

i understand this. someone is suffering in pain in a way that life is unlivable. they are terminal so they are going to die anyway. I would not be able to deny them death if they is what they wanted. I wouldn’t. So I’m not even saying we shouldn’t have this policy. I just think if we do implement it, it needs to be limited to those types of cases specifically. Once we start moving into people who aren’t terminal and people who are suffering from mental health exclusively, I think we would have opened a box we can’t close.

especially because you’re, “not trying to tell anyone they’re wrong.”

i’m honest to God just trying to look into this at a deeper level. I try to be civil, I try to be empathetic with those who have suffering loved ones (I have also had suffering loved ones, in fact I have some going through something right now). I’m amazed at the level of response I’ve gotten to my off-hand comment. I’ve never gotten a fraction of the response on any lemmy comment I’ve written before.

I fear we are not ready as a society for this. that this may open the door for horrific consequences further down the road.

my tip is just to greet people loudly with a smile. say good morning, talk about weather, whatever

i’ve found that most people will do as you say. just try and look away and go about their day. some people can even look mean with a face that is not inviting at all.

but if you say hi in a friendly way one day, they look at you surprised a mutter something back.

the next time you see them, they have a smile on their face and they greet you more warmly.

really this is the thing about human connection. someone has to bridge that gap. and it’s not hard to do

It’s not like these perverse incentives don’t exist without MAID

sure but it doesn’t take too much imagination to come up with some dystopian futures where human life is not treated with the sanctity that we are used to

i think maybe that’s my key objection here. it uncorks this wine bottle that cannot be resealed. we are forever fundamentally changing our relationship with death and destigmatizing the act of snuffing out a life.

i think it’s something most people have not really put much thought into the long term implications of this ideological shift

… by comparing eugenics and MAID

Definition of compare: To consider or describe as similar, equal, or analogous; liken.

Nowhere did I say eugenics is similar, equal or analogous to euthanasia. You can go ahead and read the comments again, you won’t find it.

What we are comparing is the societal perception of eugenics in the early 1900s and the perception of euthanasia now.

Why did you specifically pick eugenics as an example only to then say it isn’t like MAID?

To make the point that just because something seems progressive on its face doesn’t necessarily mean it will stand the test of time. It is an example. I think it’s a good example because of how relatively horrible eugenics seems today relative to how positively it was seen in the past. Perhaps you could find other examples, I’d be happy to hear them.

All I’m saying about euthanasia/assisted suicide/whatever acronym you wanna give it- is that it must be judged on its own merits outside of groupthink. That’s what I’m attempting to do here, discuss the idea on its own merits. I think that’s what you actually have an issue with, not the feigned pearl clutching about some comparison.

I’m not comparing eugenics with euthanasia. I’m comparing the perception of what “progressive” meant back then to right now.

The point I’m trying to make is that just because something is considered progressive today does not mean it won’t be considered barbaric tomorrow. This is why I don’t immediately support something just because it appears to have a veneer of idealism. I think it through carefully.

And what do companies have to do with it?

We live in capitalist countries. Anything and everything will have money involved. Even public healthcare involves money changing hands with private contractors and such. There is no way to get around this fact. And wherever money changes hands it creates the potential for perverse incentives that we are possibly opening the door wide open for.

What I am getting at is that the length of the life has very little to do with its quality.

I see what you’re saying. I think if somebody cannot sustain life by themselves in a practical sense, then it’s a different scenario. For example someone being born in the scenario you outlined would not live without intervention. However, we are talking about the inverse. A body that would otherwise survive (at least for the near future) and we are artificially ending it.

It feels wrong to me in both scenarios. A sort of symmetry in a way.

but if someone doesn’t want to live anymore, why is it anyone’s business but their own?

I think here I need to separate two groups of people. 1) somebody who has a terminal illness and is in pain. I think in these scenarios, I am more open to the idea. 2) people who are depressed or in some sort of chronic pain who otherwise could live a full life

In the 2nd scenario, I think that suicidal thoughts is a mental illness. It’s not something healthy adjusted people think, even when they are in pain. By indulging in their desire, we are doing them a disservice. Like I brought up before, I made the analogy to addiction.

When someone is addicted, they make the conscious decision to use a drug. It’s their body, it’s their choice. They have the autonomy to do whatever they like- even if that choice is going to kill them. For example with fentanyl leading to an eventual overdose.

I think we, as a society, need to take care of these people. We need to provide them treatment and get them off the drugs. The solution isn’t just to put them in a box and give them a ton of drugs so they can use until they die. To me, it feels like we’re throwing away their human dignity in the name of individualism. We should take care of each other, not indulge each other’s worst thoughts and actions.

This is what makes me feel wrong about this.

same as the logic behind thinking abortions are wrong

I don’t consider a fetus a human life so I don’t see it as wrong. I’m not even religious, I’d say I’m “culturally Christian” sort of like most Jews I’ve met are “culturally Jewish”

The way I view it- you’re gonna be dead for the rest of eternity. Any amount of suffering you are going through now is temporary. You will eventually die.

Of course, I know it’s easy to say that when you’re not suffering in pain like your grandfather may be. So like I said, I’m not judging and I’m holding reservations on this until I’ve thought more about it.

Really, to be frank, I think people already have the option to kill themselves. They have always had that option. What I really disagree with is giving our institutions the ability to kill people. I don’t trust our healthcare systems, I don’t trust our government, and I don’t trust all the middlemen in between. They could pressure people who don’t need to do or they could rush judgements.

Typically, not friends. I’ll greet them and make small talk.

I walk my dog multiple times a day at similar hours and other neighbors do as well. So I’ll run into the same people regularly. We’ll talk a little bit. Sometimes I’ll talk a few minutes, sometimes it’s just a greeting.

I have asked on two occasions in 3 years for a neighbor to take out the dog. So generally no, but it has happened

As long as it’s something only the person themselves can authorize, either at the time or ahead of time via end-of-life planning

So let’s imagine an individual. They go through a period of 1 or 2 years where they are in pain and suicidal. They go through all the checks and procedures that we put in place and doctors clear them for execution. They end up dead.

What if that individual were going through a slump of 2 years and afterwards they would have passed through that life phase and could have been happy and had a positive experience with life again.

How could we know? This is the issue I have. It’s sort of like selling fentanyl to addicts. Yeah, it’s their body their choice. Yeah, they know the risks of overdose. But they’re addicted. They aren’t necessarily acting rationally.

I’m not trying to tell anyone they’re wrong. To be honest, I don’t really know how I feel about this in general, I’m just laying out my thoughts.

idea in theory, but rather because people were nowhere near responsible enough to administer such a program in practical application

What I find interesting is that nowadays we see eugenics in a bad light. Back then most progressive liberals endorsed it. But the Catholic church- condemned the idea of eugenics. It was seen as an affront to God’s creation. Us artificially manipulating something that should not be manipulated.

I agree with your statement above. I don’t trust our institutions. I believe people will fall through the cracks and will get killed unnecessarily. Suicide is a permanent thing that you can not undo. It’s a similar reason I have misgivings about capital punishment.