Last Vegas: the city where you go to die
Last Vegas: the city where you go to die
The “Safe Death” Fallacy
Some say that “euthanasia is a human right” and should be exercised safely. I dare to ask:
The right to be killed or the right to kill yourself? What right are you talking about? Who is pressing the button? You? Your doctor? Your wife? Your mayor? Safeguards from what? From life? Have a safe death? What does it even mean? Please answer, I’m dumb and curious, thank you.
The Price of Utility: Eliminating the Burden
Call it what you wish, it is still murder. Then we should ask ourselves if we are okay with murder. We have so many painkillers now that I find the grounds for this highly debatable.
Otherwise, the government would be happy to eliminate a cow they can no longer milk; the family too, one less burden. Then there is the sick person themselves, so egoistic to continue living when you can just stop consuming valuable resources.
Pandora’s Box and the Checkmate of Life
We always begin with extreme examples, then we democratize it, making it a free-for-all. Once you open Pandora’s box, it is almost impossible to close it.
So yes, the old way of dying is perhaps uncivilized and unpredictable, but it is probably the only natural frontier we have not trimmed and domesticated yet, perhaps the only remaining frontier of authenticity. We ask ourselves the ultimate question, but when you know the exact day and time of your death, that is an admission of your abdication to try and answer that question; it is an admission of powerlessness.
Finally, why reserve this just for old age? What about when you lose your job or end up begging on the street? When life gives you checkmate, why wait? For that matter, why be born at all? What is the justification for such a radical waste of resources? Being born just to be put to death with the government’s blessing? Why not simplify things and just not be born at all?
Personal Responsibility vs. Collective Guilt
It is always optional until it becomes mandatory. I agree totally: it is an individual right, but why not exercise it with full personal responsibility?
Why implicate the rest of us in your decision? Do it the old-fashioned way. Do not demand society’s blessing for your self-murder. You are the only one responsible, and asking to be assisted is a cowardly position that implies society is okay with it and finds it acceptable. Once you do that, society will eventually use it as a tool.
I understand the motivations, but no, I disagree. Do whatever you wish with your own life, but do not dump the responsibility on us as a whole. Actually, yes, I would allow it, and I would even allow a real business to be made out of it, but do not wrap it in anything other than business. There is no morality in the self-murder of a human being. The only government involvement should be a total liberalization of the practice: no questions asked, because nobody cares anyway, and nobody even wants to know why. This is for those who want a clean self-death.
The Dystopia of “Last Vegas”
I can even imagine a Las Vegas version for the dying. Something like Chicago, but without the thrill of Russian roulette. You could even choose your ending: the funny ones might opt for a clean guillotining, others might choose magic mushrooms, and others some other crazy way to go out with some panache.
Fuck yeah... we were conceived in coitus, so why not have one last go when we are being deconceived?
Call it “Last Vegas,” playing with your life in a real Russian roulette, why not? Two thrills at the same time. Why not even have a completely lawless town there? Since everyone there is working toward the exact same goal, which is to die, no murder would actually be considered murder, but rather a helping hand.
Hey, the name’s Boom Boom. I auction off the right to kill. Sure, the dead guy won’t get to spend the cash, but he can sell the right to be assisted to the highest bidder. Whoever pays the most gets to help pull the trigger, or even execute them like in the movies. We’ve even got an anti-aircraft gun here; we guarantee a death in 1/100th of a second in one big splash!
Imagine: the paradise of mass suicide assistants, the absolute paradise for any crackhead, any nut, any pervert, and any sadist.
The Great Devaluation of Humanity
If we call help with murder “a right,” we degrade humanity to the rank of an injured horse. On a false premise of misplaced empathy, we normalize the abjection of self-murder with the veneer of civilization. Just as we did with sex by establishing pornography as normal, we normalize murder by calling it “safeguarded.”
All of this is considered one of the heaviest sins against humanity, yet we are blind to any spiritual or moral elevation. We learn to live, and one day we must learn to die, and there is no possible cheat for this experience, which belongs to the experience of living itself. By learning to die, we learn to cherish life and appreciate the moment, since there is no easy escape.
We sanitized and removed the taste of human life and turned it into a poor, tasteless, empty shell. The last life juice we had was in the tragedy, unpredictability, and ultimate call for life and meaning included in a “traditional death.”
By sanitizing death into assisted industrial murder, we removed the last mystery and beauty of life itself.
Why the fuck do we have to turn it all into a supermarket parking lot??? What the fuck is wrong with you???