Comments on You choose your dignity, I'll choose mine

Go to Azur's Musings & Missives - Add a comment - Go to You choose your dignity, I'll choose mine

Dylanvalente, thanks for your comment regarding my take on dignity.

Mind you the dignity in both the situations that I referred to was that we did not detain them. Even though they were unaware at the end, their dignity would have been offended had we detained them in some kind of half-life. The key was to dignify their wishes. To my mind that is the key in the Schiavo case.

Of course no one wants people to feel forced to go and to feel guilty about being a burden but the truth is that many people actually don't want to be a burden and they hate the idea of being dependent. They are all or nothing people and relying on others and the idea of it is a torture.

Now here is the slippery slope as I see it.
My concern is that as a result of the current case others will end up dictating that people hang on well beyond when people want to hang on. Why should someone who wants to go have to linger if it is clear that's what they want?
Equally I am concerned that people who try to respect the wishes of those who want to go will be villified. Anyone who cares for someone so incapacitated has enough on their plate without having extra pressures imposed on them. It is selfish of others to try and tell them what they should do. In my situation it would have been intolerable to have people tell us what to do. Our only concern was to respect the wishes and dignity of our loved one. People must be left to do that.

You say, "I am rather worried that many people are predisposed to define dignity too much in physical, and a bit vain, terms." This is what outsiders who have no idea of the realities are doing in telling people to hang on. They reveal no understanding of the INDIGNITIES.
A lot has been said recently by people who have no understanding of the indignities that people must face day after day.

Dylan, you say: In the cases you note, the choice is a no-brainer: the person has no quality of life left, and his or her body is not capable of even living on its own (without machines), so it is OK to let go."

From what I read and understand, which is all any of us can do, the Schiavo case is a no-brainer and has been for some years. I think it stinks that people have misappropriated it.

Thanks for your comments

posted by Azur on March 29, 2005 at 9:57 AM | link to this | reply

Oh, and P.S. about your words on giving dignity by giving care --

I meant it when I said you are so right about that.

You dignify the other person and yourself by helping him or her.

I don't think everyone realizes just how true that is.

posted by Dyl_Pickle on March 28, 2005 at 6:47 PM | link to this | reply

"And besides giving that kind of care is a way of giving dignity to the individual, their situation and even to the carer."

This is so right that it is, like, wow! I'm not kidding.

Now to address the difference of opinion in this context of dignity:

I do not accuse you of treating the person you care for without dignity --

I am rather worried that many people are predisposed to define dignity too much in physical, and a bit vain, terms.

Not you, but others -- the people who would say, if they became dependent on someone to feed them, that they felt so undignified --

a person who has to shit in a bag might feel, or be pressured to feel (again, not by you) undignified for his incapacity.

In the cases you note, the choice is a no-brainer: the person has no quality of life left, and his or her body is not capable of even living on its own (without machines), so it is OK to let go.

I am saying that I strongly suspect that pro-assisted suicide laws and norms will slide down the slippery slope into a norm of encouraging people to end their lives well before their condition meets the obvious terms of the cases used to justify such laws.

I am not usually enamored of slippery-slope arguments, but I see the slippery slope very clearly in this case.

Part of it is because I fear that the American frontier mentality -- the self-made man myth, the rugged individualist, this culture of ours in which asking for and receiving help is almost always seen as a sign of weakness (i.e. an indignity) will encourage people not to "be a burden" by sticking around when they are largely dependent.

I am not interested in vigorously regulating, at the state or federal level, cases of assisted suicide -- but I do think it's wise to exercise more caution in permitting the practice given the perils.

Comments on You choose your dignity, I'll choose mine

Excellent post and I can see where it comes from

MayB