Yes, I judge that rise to be terrible, in many different ways--and AVI goes over a lot of that, including the "life not worthy of life" (I'm not as polite as he is) aspects.
An unexamined assumption is that you have the right to kill yourself. There's proof of that where, exactly?
The Daily Mail weighed in with an article that includes the news that "Last year, Dr Jennifer Gaudiani, who treats eating disorders, stoked controversy by prescribing lethal doses to three patients with anorexia nervosa". Granted, I understand that the disorder was hard to treat, but disposing of the difficult patients isn't what I'd call a cure either, no matter what it does to your numbers.
And along those lines, one of the arguments I've heard for "gender affirmation" treatment is that the dysphoric feel suicidal. When the hormones and surgeries don't give the relief intended, and the patients still feel suicidal, will doctors suggest "MAID service" to "bury their mistakes?"
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy" -- John 10:10a
ReplyDelete"An unexamined assumption is that you have the right to kill yourself."
ReplyDeleteExamine it, then. Our entire concept of rights is based on the idea that you own yourself. If you cannot do whatever you wish, to yourself, you do not own yourself.
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ReplyDelete"You did not make yourself."
ReplyDeleteNo; my parents did. Are you suggesting that they own me instead?
"You seem to think that all rights are a subset of property rights."
No, but the only logical progression which can provide a rational basis for any human rights has to start with self-ownership. Because I am not and cannot be owned, I own myself. Therefore I can decide how to use myself. Therefore I own the fruits of the labor performed by my(self - my body and mind). Therefore I can protect myself and the property I've owned by using my body and mind. Therefore I can own the implements needed to protect myself. Etc etc etc.
God? God has shown precious little interest, in my opinion, and at any rate cannot testify in any human proceeding as to his wishes for what he supposedly created.
BTW, the Declaration didn't say God, it said "their Creator." You can read that as God, if you wish, but I don't and there's a reason they didn't say it that way.
"No, but the only logical progression which can provide a rational basis for any human rights has to start with self-ownership."
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't strike me as true; in fact, it strikes me as incoherent. To whit:
"Because I am not and cannot be owned, I own myself."
To say that 'a cannot be owned' means that a cannot have a relationship Y where Y defines 'ownership of a.' That means there cannot be an relationship aYa, because there cannot be any relationship xYa.
You're asserting that the rejection of a Y relationship defines a Y relationship. That's not logical.
But logical positivism was never the source of these rights claims anyway. They were rooted in ideas about divine endowments (call the divine how you like); or about natural rights, which through the Middle Ages were tempered by ideas about divine laws that governed natural laws; or they were contractual relationships between parties who didn't 'own' each other. One famous example: Barons had a right to trial by jury because they won it at swords' point from King John, who accepted it as a contractual term for ending the war; it was later extended to all free men, and then to all men and all women.
The concept of rights doesn't go much further back than that. The Greeks didn't talk about rights but about virtues. The Romans had an idea of the rights of citizens that didn't extend to anyone else, and which was purely contractual. We see a similar idea among those living today who want to talk about 'rights' in terms of the things the government grants you in return for your loyalty; but that is already itself a violation of the American tradition, which is rooted in the Medieval and Enlightenment ones.
What it isn't, though, is a subset of property rights. You don't 'own' yourself; nobody owns you. A person isn't the kind of thing that can be owned by a person. That approach wouldn't be much good anyway, as actual property rights are frequently limited by mere legislation: almost every state will tell you what you can and can't do with the things that you own, in almost innumerable ways, without even a constitutional amendment. They don't even bother with laws, mostly these days; they'll just have a bureaucracy issue one more regulation about what you're allowed to do with the the 'things you own.'