It's a combination of religious mores and financial interests. Suicide/assisted suicide is highly frowned upon in Christianity, which is ingrained in the American culture, so that's one thing. As for financial interests: a hospital can easily make more money from postponing an elderly person's death by 6 months than they could have from all other medical bills that that person incurred in their lifetime.* And considering that this is a highly emotional issue for a lot of people, it's quite easy to sway them against legalizing suicide.
*My brother works in oncology. He was telling me how they wheel in 80+ year old patients into a multi-million dollar machine to treat their cancer with radiation therapy.
If I was in my 80s with one foot in the grave, I'd rather enjoy a month of a fairly normal living than 6 months of being blasted with radiation and poisoned by chemo therapy. Fuck that shit.
Also, if I'm so messed up from Alzheimer's that I can't even remember my own goddamn name, I'd rather be dead.
Sometimes, it feels like I am just biding my time until the day I'll die. If I were in a situation where I am in constant need, or suffering, poverty or had poor quality of life, I think a means to painlessly push the quit game button could be a blessing to leave this world gracefully.
Death is not such a bad thing when you think about it, it's just an endless sleep that you never wake up from. It is hard on others cause it reminds them of their own mortality and traumatizes them emotionally as they miss your presence. So if at some point, life becomes miserable and I do not have anyone depending on me, I might prefer being chemically put to sleep.
I had a small operation once where I was put under anesthesia. One moment I was awake, the next moment I woke up on the operating table, and the time inbetween was just blank. I thought to myself "this must be what death's like".
It would be nice if they develop a vaccine gun or something that you could apply yourself in privacy. That can easily turn into an assassination weapon though.
I think the tension of being aware of one's mortality and the fear that comes with it becomes greater as one ages and people need something to keep them busy like children or grandchildren or hobbies to keep them from overthinking or becoming conscious about it. They also turn to religion and prayer to soothe their fears and anxieties. So it becomes mentally/emotionally taxing and also your body starts to ache and becomes frail.
So if I don't have anything that keeps me going or occupied, after some point, my life at old age might feel like desperately hanging on to the edge of a cliff, and I might just want to let go.
Why is there such a negative connotation attached to ending one's own life? What would happen if people committed suicide en masse? Would it throw other people into terror or hysteria?
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