General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel - Rahm's brother comes under fire for ethics on view of people over 75, no value [View all]Ampersand Unicode
(503 posts)My body, myself. Death happens no matter what; why shouldn't a person have the choice to snip the threads of fate when they choose instead of waiting for "natural causes" or "God" to take them?
Do you feel this way about abortion also? That's the only other bodily-autonomy issue I can think of that is so controversial.
I'm 18. I contribute zilch creatively or to the economy (and more and more, the two are looking mutually exclusive). I will probably never contribute anything either way. I could go on again about how liberal-arts majors don't do anything but make burgers for minimum wage. Much as I think it should be raised, even if you made six figures flipping burgers, you're still nothing but a lowly burger flipper. Who wants to be condemned to a life of menial shift work? I don't. Sadly, I probably will be, because I can't do math and the only good-paying jobs other than high-priced call girl or professional assassin are STEM jobs. There's no money in writing; there's no money in art; there's no money in music; there's no money in whatever it is I do when I'm looking up boring shit to write a term paper (I believe this is called academic research). Basically there's no money in anything that doesn't involve high-skilled math courses and an almost entirely left-brain number-processing capability.
I have already made the choice to die because my life is worth nothing. I'm basically what you might consider "occupationally disabled," as in, I'm not sans limbs or hearing voices or rubbing shit on the walls, but neither can I do much of anything that would earn me enough money to make end's meet. All I can do is write an A paper on comparisons between the populist and ill-fated Gracchi brothers in ancient Rome and John and Bobby Kennedy for a history class. Know how many sesterces that earned me? Zero. Know how many I was able to give to the economy for it? Zero. Big fat nulla.
The college's career center has already said to me that they don't like to deal with humanities students because they are so hard to find jobs and internships for. I got the bum's rush because nobody wants them. The advice I got from a career counselor was to switch to a STEM major. I said I can't, for the life of me, do math. Her response was to print out an application to Macy's with a smug, "They're hiring for the holidays. Maybe it'll turn into a permanent job."
TL;DR: Emanuel is right. Why should anyone be forced to live a meaningless life if they know, and are ashamed of the fact, that they "contribute nothing"? I say bring on the death panels because I want to be the first to sign up!