Sunday 17 March 2013

Hemlock Society

Shouldn't killing yourself be legalised, irrespective of whether you suffer from an incurable disease or not, whether you are terminally old or not? After all its your life! If you think the opportunity cost of living is too much for you to bear, isn't it better for you to be non-living ( Though I'm not sure whether you become "non-living" after death) ? This argument can be countered in the following melodramatic, filmy way: You have no right to take your life since you are not the one who created it? ( I'm not sure what exactly "creation" implies here, and when ''exactly" are you created? Is it at the moment that the first sperm penetrates the first layer of the ovum, or when the XX & XY chromosomes combine themselves to form a new DNA combination, or when the heart of the foetus beats for the first time )
I was in a convent school where the nuns used to describe the above phenomenon as "miraculous". Sister would say ''out of those millions of sperms, one was chosen and you were born" much before that joke in 3 idiots. That you should consider life a precious gift, given that many 13 year old girls had displayed 'wrist-cutting' tendencies in school. To look into the lines of your hand and see how special you are because the intricacies of your palm are unique to you and you alone.
But you might not think that way. You might be fed up or tired or simply bored of your life like the protagonist in "Veronica Decides to Die". I don't understand why killing yourself is a crime. Some wise man had once said this before he died, " Now I'm ready for the next great adventure, Death". Many great people knew the exact time of their death much before it actually came. There was the great Mathematician, Ramanuja who had calculated the exact timing of his death, there was Swami Vivekananda who knew that he was sitting for his last meditation. These people died young and if they knew they were dying and  did nothing about it, was it not voluntary? There are western musicians and idols who had innovated new ways of making themselves "non-living".
I am not arguing in favour of hemlock societies around the world.
Just a thought. I have watched a Bengali movie of the same name. It had the usual cliched ending. But started off in quite an interesting way.

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