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Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!ittvax!swatt
From: swatt@ittvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: More thoughts
Message-ID: <779@ittvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 10:38:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: ittvax.779
Posted: Mon Jun 13 10:38:40 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jun-83 02:28:17 EDT
Lines: 40


"Moral right" clearly depends on what system of ethics you're talking
about.  The vast majority of western ethical systems have condemned
suicide.  This has been true from Plato to the present day with a few
exceptions.  Eastern systems have not been so universal.  I am
generally ignorant of eastern religions, but in Shintoist/Buddhist
Japan, suicide was not only a right; in some circumstances it was a
duty.

In the practical sense, people have the "moral right" to do anything
they please that society is either unable or unwilling to effectively
prohibit.  If you thought someone were suicidal, would you have them
committed, or forcibly prevent them in some other way? You can't dodge
this question unless you want to limit your notions of "moral right" to
cover only your own life.

If your concern is for the immortal soul of suicides, then you must
believe they meet the judgment of a wisdom greater than yours.  If your
concern is for the happiness of people during their temporal lives,
then you have to show that your proposed methods to reduce suicide
aren't worse than the problem (such as the example given earlier of
attempted suicide being a capital crime).  Personally, I know of no way
through the laws to reduce suicides that isn't several times more
horrible.

People who fail at suicide probably need help, not judgment.  People
who succeed are beyond either.

There is a prayer that goes something like:

	Lord give me the strength to change those things that need changing,
	and the serenity to accept those things I cannot change,
	and the wisdom to know the difference.

We go much to far today toward believing that everthing can be improved
if only we spend enough money on the problem, or put the "right people"
in charge.  It unfortunately isn't so (sez me).  The author of that
prayer understood something many people today do not.

	- Alan S. Watt