> it rejects all that I hold sacred and true:<p>* that the preservation of human life is our highest moral ideal;<p>* that a principal purpose of government is as a protector of life;<p>* that those who fight to stay alive in the face of terminal disease are powerful uplifters of the human experience.<p>This is deranged or juvenile. Seeking to celebrate the suffering of others to satisfy moral whims. Hard to tell which.
I see the author’s point. His friend’s suicide affected him greatly. However I think this is somewhat a selfish point of view. His friend based on his description sounds like they were truly suffering, and he is upset about how that made him feel.<p>I don’t know, maybe im reading it the wrong way.
This author is a ghoul who would rather Frances have lived trapped in neverending pain than have exercised the tiniest degree of autonomy, just for the sake of his half-baked aesthetic preferences. I'd rather have a worst enemy than a "friend" like this.
It’s certainly an emotionally and ethically challenging subject, but at the same time there a Godwin’s law vibe about declaring things you disagree with “steps that lead to to dystopia”. That’s not a mindset that lends itself to compassion.
From this and other threads I am faced with the conclusion that Hacker News is shockingly pro-suicide. I want to present an alternative viewpoint, one which I thought was obvious, accepted and mainstream but which I am dismayed to find absent from these comments:<p>Suicide is the fatal symptom of a treatable disease. Death by suicide is no less tragic--and no more noble--than death by endocarditis, diabetic ketoacidosis, or a traffic collision.<p>If a loved one is killed by endocarditis, we do not criticize mourners' "somewhat a selfish point of view". If a loved one dies of acute diabetic ketoacidosis, we do not say "Did the author consider the fact that his friend was living in their own, personal dystopia?"<p>I cannot understand the mindset that views suicidal depression as unique among--or even absent from!--the set of deaths by disease. I find all these defenses of suicide to be perplexing and, frankly, revolting.<p>Suicide is not the conquest of autonomy over pain, but of pain over autonomy.
A tangential question...<p>If someone is suffering from an incurable mental illness, and they want to commit suicide to absolve themselves from the pain and suffering, should we just be like "Ok, go do it" and be totally fine with it?<p>I don't know the answer, but my inkling is that is not the position that I would take.<p>Does that make me selfish?