A manifesto for the right to painless suicide / Synthesis
Preamble
- It is not a question of encouraging suicide but of defending the right to own one's life.
- We are only truly in control of our life, if we can calmly put an end to it when we decide to.
- Life is not a duty : living a life by constraint and not by personal decision is not in accordance with the human dignity.
Chapter 1 - Fighting the absurd : For living to become a deliberate choice
- We did not choose to be born. Life, at the start, is never a choice but a constraint: it is imposed on us.
- In addition, we did not choose our body (genes, etc.) and our original social environment (economic, social and cultural capital).
- Contingency => we could not have existed or existed otherwise, nothing ethically justifies being born and being the way we are.
- Absurd => life only has the meaning we give to it. Building a world in which human dignity is respected is therefore our responsibility.
- Not having concrete control over one's body and one's life amounts to undergoing an “existential rape”. Not living by personal decision but with the fear of suffering by committing suicide is to live by constraint. Only the painless suicide right makes it possible to be a consenting living being.
- Do not repeat the existential absurd with a social absurd = since we have not chosen to be born, let us choose to have a gentle death.
Chapter 2 - The possibility of painless suicide : an incentive to live
- Not being able to calmly end your life when you decide to do so, is to be condemned to live. Limiting access to peaceful death methods, constitutes existential sequestration.
- Paradoxically, knowing that we can, at any time, commit suicide without pain and without fear of failure allows us to appropriate our life and thus instills in us a feeling of freedom which prompts us to live.
- « To commit suicide is not to choose death, but the moment of death. »(André Comte-Sponville). We are mortal : not anticipating death (so that it is peaceful and serene) amounts to denying mortality, not assuming the human condition.
- Death is nothing (see Epicurus), because the dead no longer suffer. On the other hand, the dying can suffer because they are still alive. We must therefore distinguish the fear of death, irrational, from the fear of dying, rational.
- Only the possibility of painless suicide can allow us without lies to overcome the fear of dying, to be both lucid and happy.
Chapter 3 - Living and dying in accordance with your dignity : refusing to suffer excessively
- All human beings are equally worthy (whatever their biological, psychological or social characteristics), all human beings deserve the same respect.
- Universal income and the right to suicide, allow people to work and live by personal decision. => 1 / Working to survive is to living as a slave. 2 / Whether you work or not, you deserve to live and die with dignity.
- One can fall a prey to intolerable suffering at any time : it is therefore prudent to have one's "suicide pill" to be able to escape excessive pain.
- Every human being who dies deserves a peaceful suicide, in accordance with his dignity (whatever his reasons for committing suicide).
- Every human beings have different existential experiences : I am not in others’ places, I can’t know what others feel. Thus, I can’t define for others "good" and "bad" reasons for committing suicide: it is up to everyone to judge for themselves.
- Every human being deserves to be able to escape quickly, serenely and peacefully from excessive suffering not in accordance with his dignity which he does not wish to endure.
Chapter 4 - Against the fallacies of religious fundamentalism
- We are not things or creatures but human beings: our life belongs neither to God, nor to the State, nor to society, it belongs only to us.
- The biblical injunction “thou shall not kill” prohibits abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide at the time : the Pro-Life ideology, by respecting this command to the letter whatever the consequences in terms of suffering, is dogmatic and fanatic.
- If God creates and rules the world, even "evil" makes sense, which justifies all the horrors that human beings endure.
- The religious idea that we deserve the misfortunes that come to us helps to endure suffering: this, from a religious perspective, is no longer arbitrary but has a meaning.
- "I am the absolute source" (Merleau-Ponty): it is not God who makes the world be, but myself, as a consciousness. I am the one by whom it happens that there is a world.
- Therefore, ethically, human beings are the source of values : good is what human beings want (to be respected as freedom) and evil is what human beings do not want ( be objectified, humiliated, tortured, etc.).
Chapter 5 - Against the guilt of suicide
- Feeling guilty about suicide contributes to locking people up in life and can therefore encourage suicide (just as locking us up in a room, makes us want to get out).
- Locking someone who wishes to die in the deprecative identity of "suicidal" is both reifying and malicious (one who is defined as "suicidal" will risk committing suicide to fit the definition given to him).
- Those who wish to die, ashamed of being a "suicidal person", also risk fleeing shame through sadism (doing evil to assume their guilt ...) and / or masochism (punishing themselves for being the ones they are).
- "I am not what I am" (Sartre). My psychological, biological or social characteristics do not define me: I am only a human being. Desiring to die, does not make me a "suicidal culprit".
- Montaigne, against Pascal, shows that suicide is neither cowardly nor guilty : my life belongs to me and to die peacefully is nothing to condemn.
- One can legitimately refuse a reality which one judges not to be in conformity with our dignity.
Chapter 6 - Against the logic of permanent entertainment which leads us to deny mortality...
- The state and society encourage us to live as if we were never going to die.
- It is out of interest and to confirm their supremacy over us that the state and society prevent us from accessing the methods of peaceful death. 1 / For instrumentalists, we are manpower to exploit and make profitable by all means. 2 / The State, to keep us in its power, cannot let us peacefully take leave of existence when we want it (otherwise our life no longer belongs to it ...).
- Because of the economic logic of competition and the absence of universal income, one does not work by deliberate choice, to improve the human condition, but only to survive and to enrich oneself, but one does not survive and you only get rich by overshadowing your competitors.
- Without the right to painless suicide socially organized, the human being who wishes to die lives an experience of dereliction: society does not help him to end his life gently and without risk of failure, he is left to himself .
- (See Blaise Pascal): we turn away from the problem of our mortality and thus refuse to draw the consequences which are the anticipation and the organization of death (so that the latter is no longer a source of suffering and becomes even a good time in life).
- Quality of life is better than quantity.
Chapter 7 - Socially organize the right to painless suicide
- Become "major" in the sense of the Enlightenment (cf. Kant): become the master of your life, decide for yourself whether you want to live or not.
- Make suicide kits available to all legally adult humans.
- Impose a waiting period to be certain that the person is committing suicide by deliberate choice and not by impulse or under pressure from others. Apply all necessary security measures to prevent any abuse.
Conclusion
- We are not things, we are human beings ... Our life belongs to us.
- The "existential claustrophobes", who need not to feel trapped in existence to be happy, deserve that their right to have their lives respected.
Epicurus II, Letter to Menoeceus on the serenity regarding the human condition / Full version
Videos
Epicurus II : Letter to Menoeceus (On the Serenity regarding the Human Condition)
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"The Right to Die Peacefully is a Human Right" - by Jean Liberté (Manifesto)
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Bibliography / Methods of suicide
Peaceful Pill Handbook 2020
Dr Philip Nitschke, Dr Fiona Stewart Summary : Co-authored by a physician and a lawyer, the July 2020 edition of the Peaceful Pill Handbook is the leading self-help, assisted suicide guide book that enables people who are seriously ill as well as seniors to undertake informed planning around their end of life choices. Written in easy-to-understand lay language, The Peaceful Pill Handbook explains assisted suicide methods that are reliable and peaceful. This new edition has been written at the time of the pandemic, and includes two new chapters discussing a) how the virus may affect one's ability to have control over one's death and b) the implications of the virus for one's advance directives. The Peaceful Pill Handbook covers 14 assisted suicide topics including: useful drugs such as the barbiturates (including administration, testing and shelf life), traditional prescription drugs, poisons and other substances including the lethal inorganic salts, the use of gases (such as nitrogen, argon and helium), devices such as the carbon monoxide generator, the R2D Debreather and the Sarco euthanasia capsule that was unveiled at Venice Design in 2019. Associated legal issues are also discussed. Finally, the Swiss assisted dying service - Pegasos Swiss Association - is explained in detail including what to expect, family considerations and costs. All strategies are rated according to their Peacefulness, Reliability and, where appropriate, Accessibility using Exit's unique RPA Test. FINAL EXIT NETWORK calls the The Peaceful Pill Handbook "a comprehensive reference describing practical methods of self-deliverance, including analysis of advantages and shortcomings of each. The electronic version describes new developments and provides updated contacts. Final Exit Network recommends that its members and clients consult The Peaceful Pill Handbook as a unique and valuable source of information". |
Five Last Acts – The Exit Path (2015 edition): The arts and science of rational suicide in the face of unbearable, unrelievable suffering
Chris Docker Summary : With 844 pages, it is the most extensive volume in print on the subject, meticulously researched and scientifically substantiated. No method of self-euthanasia can be perfect, in spite of what some claim. What this book does is give you the best evidence and advice available and backs it up with scientific references that you can check for yourself. • 104 pages on use of inert gas (nitrogen, helium). • 205 pages on drugs. • Hundreds more pages on voluntary refusal of food and liquid • 100 illustrations and ‘how-to’ diagrams. • 7 tables and more than 1000 references. • The low-down on 'fringe' methods as well as precautions, social, legal and ethical concerns, tips and checklists • Peer-reviewed evidence and examination of alternative theories. |
Final Exit 2020: Self-Deliverance and Assisted Dying for the Terminally and Degeneratively Ill
Derek Humphry Summary : This new version of the famous guide "Final Exit" has been called a suicide handbook, yet readers will find that it is powerfully addressed to terminally and hopelessly ill adults who have fought for life and no longer wish to suffer. It’s the thinking persons bible to self-deliverance and assisted dying to achieve a peaceful end within the family when pain has become unbearable. When first published in 1991 it was a best-seller on the New York Times book list for 18 weeks. Now it’s updated for 2020 for end of life choices. Death with dignity requires more than knowledge for drugs and inert gases. Thus this book outlines family involvement, the laws on helping another to die, insurance, hospice and Advance Directives (aka Living Wills). It deals with the latest ‘how-to’ bring life to a peaceful end using with drugs or inert gas. The helium and nitrogen techniques of self-deliverance are updated and newly illustrated. Death by self-starvation (VSED) is discussed as an option for personal euthanasia. “Final Exit” argues that there is no need for a ‘Dr.Death’ such as Jack Kevorkian was, because personal, thoughtful final options are now available . Read this book to find out how. |