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It very much sounds as though you believe there isn't any medical condition which can override someone's agency, even temporarily.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Once again I'd like to thank Dan for being reasonable.
With that out of the way, a confession or two.
Obviously, I've got personal stake in this issue. When I was fifteen, one of my two sisters went nuts. She's been in and out of mental institutions ever since. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, the works.
For Christmas this year, my other little sister drank a bottle of vodka on the 23rd and chased it with a bottle of Ambien. She was found, just barely, in time. She stopped breathing in the ambulance, though. Close call.
Myself, I've got a decent case of what is jokingly referred to among my relatives as the *lastname* melancholy. It makes taking care of my physical disease properly all but impossible, which keeps a neat little feedback loop going. I honestly think I'm at least a decade removed from having felt true happiness; the closest I've come has been a dull sense of satisfaction. But at this point it doesn't really matter.
I was dealt a less then spectacular hand, and I've managed to piss away any opportunities that came my way. My sisters are not functioning adults, my father is a non functioning alcoholic, and my mother is a functioning alcoholic. I can not seek "help" because I can not afford to give up my fifty hour a week job, that I could easily be replaced in.
I've been around the mental health system for a long time, and not as a patient. I've been on the outside, and I've seen how the patients are looked at. How they are talked about. By their doctors, their nurses, any person who hears the word "mental."
That is not going to happen to me.
Some days I wake up and I feel so bad that I wonder if this is the day the diabetes finishes me off. But I get up and go to the job I hate and eat people's s**t all the live long day, because if I don't do that for my family then no one else will.
But it's hard, and I'm tired. And someday, probably when one piece of my body or another has given out, I'm going to have had enough. And I will check out, and get some rest. And my feelings, my thought processes in coming to that decision, will not be rendered invalid because death and sadness makes some people feel icky.
A shrink does not know my life, or what I deem to be important or not, or what paths and successes in life have been squeezed shut for me. Neither do any of you. So by all means, save the poor bastard who thinks that a spaceship is going to swing by and grab his exiting soul. But please drop the arrogance inherent in the assertion that no one ever really wants to die.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Right. Because you're arrogant enough that you think it's easy for you (or many other Smart People) to know better than other people what's best for them.
I get that.
No, that's how you interpret it. It is just as easy or perhaps more so to interpret "Dan is arrogant enough to assume he understands the mind better than psychology and neuroscience, and has ideologically concluded that X"
Sometimes it is easy and better and ultimately necessary that certain people know better for you than what you do. If you are brought into the ER, it is the doctors who decide your care for you. Are they arrogant? Is it the height of autonomy-murdering hubris that they would put you under the knife without your consent? Since, much like acute physical trauma, mental disorder, dementia, and catatonic states are an inconvenient biological reality for our species (which cannot be handwaved away with bad interpretations of mental states), this often happens to people who are otherwise "conscious" but must still be "imprisoned" for care or personal management.
So you're indicating that insane people are effectively unconscious, and so it's okay to treat them without consent?
Except they're not. They're literally conscious. So I guess this is a metaphor?
No. It's a comparison that also notes you likely differentiate between acting on someone's behalf when they are unconscious versus when they are conscious. They are literally conscious but they can also be catatonic. Someone can be in a catatonic state where they are effectively unable to care for themselves. They can also be demented due to age or illness.
If my grandmother has dementia and she is living in an assisted care facility, and she sits up one day and decides that she wants to go visit her husband (who has been dead for six years) and walks out the front door still thinking she is in her hometown, according to your theory on self agency so far, it is morally wrong for anyone around her to stop her or force her to stay in the assisted living home. She might go wander into traffic or get lost. She does not have the agency to care for herself. Your theory so far says to me that even given the undeniable reality of dementia that nobody is allowed to keep her in the assisted living home if she says she wants to leave, she is just allowed to walk out into the street.
Can you confirm this for me?
quote:If you like.
Parkour, you didn't answer my earlier question for Rakeesh, right? Do you think all forms of suicide should be illegal/prohibited? Including, e.g. someone with an illness that causes crippling, agonizing physical pain?
No. I am perfectly fine with and completely encourage right-to-die where a person of sound mind can consent to assistance with euthanasia. My position is actually the same as sam one (surprise) based on the idea that we already allow suicide but because of some stubborn convictions against it we only allow it in agonizing ways, so we are in a total cop-out position today which makes it doubly unethical not to allow people to acquire medical assistance in euthanasia given the medical authority in question does not see any mental disorder at play.
quote:I don't see the point, no. Either they did the crime in question or not.
Have you seen what a trial is like when the accused is literally unable to understand the charges against them or why they are in court because of mental illness?
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Something fascinating to me: more than once people, mostly Dan and Tittles or Shigs or whoever has remarked on the 'arrogance' of believing it is possible for someone not to be in possession of their own agency due to illness.
Well, alright. Possibly that *is* arrogant. There's certainly a case to be made for that claim. But on the other hand, these assertions absolutely require a belief that one knows when or if at all one's agency is still intact and exists, or could be considered gone. There isn't enormous arrogance there as well? Both sides are claiming to have, or at least wish to base serious policy on, an idea or belief about what free will really is and when it should be protected and to what extent.
So please, let's not hear anymore about high-handed arrogance, because it goes both ways.
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Exactly the point I was working on. If my position is arrogant, arrogance is a good thing that is created by not being uninformed or unwilling to accept certain realities of mental disorder that exist whether or not we would like them to, or whether or not they are convenient to an idealistic view of constant positive autonomy and self-rule.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I don't see the point, no. Either they did the crime in question or not.
So, do you believe that all crimes should be measured by the result?
Are all of these the same?
•Premeditated murder for profit.
•A crime of passion where the perp walks in on their spouse in the act of infidelity and kills both parties.
•An unintentional death due to a car accident, where the driver fell asleep behind the wheel.
•An unintentional death due to a car accident, where the driver was drunk behind the wheel.
•A death caused by someone in the middle of a psychotic break who thought they were defending themselves against evil space aliens.
Because in each of these examples, someone dies, and someone "did the crime in question". Surely one's intent should be considered when society decides the appropriate consequence for its citizens.
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I feel it's more arrogant to be on the outside looking in and have that certitude, then it is to be on the inside looking in and have the same.
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quote:Originally posted by Tittles: I feel it's more arrogant to be on the outside looking in and have that certitude, then it is to be on the inside looking in and have the same.
Only if you're right-and bear in mind, you're *not* just talking about yourself, you're suggesting a system be adopted for everyone. If you're right (and speaking of arrogance, you've asserted an opinion that seems to indicate you're always right, an absolutist position), then yes, some arrogant outsider is speaking to you within and telling you how things are.
If you're wrong, then it could be akin to an outsider seeing someone blindfolded and trapped at the bottom of a pit, casting about (ineffectually, in many cases) for ways to help them out of it. The certainty you're expressing is the arrogant part.
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Saving someone from their self-destructive behavior is a fact of living in a family and a community rather than in a vacuum. We band together to help loved ones fight alcoholism or drug abuse and intervene when it looks like they're losing control. They're rarely just harming themselves with their behavior. The same with suicide. If someone has attempted suicide, they need to be saved from their own destructive urges until they can regain control of themselves. Someone committing suicide is in fact hurting many people, not just himself. The effects of a suicide are almost always devastating for surviving family members and friends. It's not just a matter of letting someone choose to do with themselves what they want. It's an effort to prevent great harm to that person and the community around them.
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It is true that a lot of suicide hurts others but if someone wants to kill themselves for reasons which ultimately involve a sound mind and sound judgment, the suffering of others does not factor into it, it is still their own life.
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Under what circumstances can a minor consent meaningfully to ending their own lives? The only cases that could present themselves are verifiable terminal and agonizing illness, and even that would be tough for a medical body to sign off on as they would for an adult.
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No, I mean parents...should a parent of a minor be able to commit suicide and it be considered "still their own life".
Someone very close to me's mother has attempted suicide many times, including when they were a minor, and I'm hard pressed to think of something more selfish or detestable.
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It probably would be, were it a decision made in calmly reasoned rational (if selfish) desire.
To speak plainly, to call that selfish and detestable-assuming the attempts fit the broad pattern of what is usually true of suicide attempts (mental illness, short-term huge stress, or incredible pain, so on and so forth)-to call it those things stands in pretty stark contrast to some of the other remarks you've made about suicide and associating it with mental illness.
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Fair to say. I'm afraid my objectivity is a bit lacking when I see a loved one in pain, and further I lack those circumstances you mentioned, but as a parent myself, I could not envision myself putting my children through what my loved one went through.
My loved one's mother suffered terrible abuses at the hands of her parents and the fact that she is alive now is miraculous, although she suffers from myriad of mental illnesses which make it impossible for her to be a part of my loved one's life.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: No, I mean parents...should a parent of a minor be able to commit suicide and it be considered "still their own life".
Well what is the parent doing for the child to be provided for if it is still under their care?
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