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Euthanasia (peacefully pass away by oneself)
zxd posted on 01/30/2004
Maya asked me the English word for it and also to comment on this subject. I happened to have done a study on euthanasia about 6-7 years ago. I can't recall our findings then at this very moment, but here is my personal opinion on the subject. I think we should view this issue from a broader perspective. In that sense, it is similar or along with several other debates, such as abortion and capital punishment. It's an issue of how we can become more humane. Here the traditional political or idelogical difference does not apply well in the sense that the righ and the left groups are pushing for different things but they really are based on the same concern: how to be more humane. Of course we would like to be more humane and extend our sympathy to a larger circle. But there is always the exceptions or the bad cases that tend to stop us from being more generous. Pregnant victims of rapes, serious or insane killers, and possibly ill-intended doctors or family members or even health-insurance or gov. who may abuse the application of euthanasia make us rethink and debate. In the end, more detailed laws and regulations may be established to let us be able to be more generous and humane or more reasonable but the lawyer cost may have to go up. Anyway, I'm not sure why Maya is so interested in this topic, and it seems to me that she is more and more interested in philosophical than literature issues now, including her concerns about women giving birth, euthanasia, etc.

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璋d锛� 璇绘垜璇诲緱杩欐牱浠旂粏
#1 鐜涢泤 posted on 01/30/2004

我的确更关心精神的东西，倒不光是哲学，空谈哲学没有意思。

写字很累，如果光是写字，今天写了，明天就过时，那为什么要写呢？倒不如天天作作白日梦。我希望过几年，有人读我写的，还觉得有些意思才好。

当下的时代什么东西耐久啊？衣服穿几次就不想再穿了，电影看过一遍，就不想再看第二遍，歌也是这样，流行歌曲能让我听上5遍的还真不多呢。什么都消逝得快，什么都在快速地后退，让人心里空空的，什么也抓不住。

这几篇小文完全是滥竽充数，连CND里的牛虻都闻出味道来是平平淡淡的。关于死亡，怎么死，我有好多的话要说。我一直赞同安乐死，太多的人活在世上太苦，还是快快超生他们吧。

听到jeff bush 在佛州对那个植物人的抢救，这个伪君子! 装得好像很有人味，可他的哥哥却每天都在杀人。本来是由于这个写的，不想再次卷入是非圈，我累得很 , 所以避开这个起因。

令胡提到英国的那个杀人医生，并不知道详细的案情，所以不好说什么，我也懒得追究细节。但是我好像有些同情医生，一定是他们见到太多哀求安乐死的病人，心一软就帮了他们的忙，反而自己陷入法律圈套，不能自拔。要我是医生，心一定是这样软的，他们哀求一次，我就给他们麻药了，真不忍心看见人受痛苦。

唉，读到这样的新闻，心里不舒服。

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Re: Euthanasia (peacefully pass away by oneself)
#2 xw posted on 01/31/2004

Sometimes I feel British Gentleman's idea is quite sublime. Here I
type some thoughts about Capital punishment. --xw

===

Although truth and justice may be the most powerful impulses to show moral courage, there are others. Compassion is one of these. Tentatively it can be suggested that this is the main influence upon those who urge the abolition of capital punishment.

It is recognition of compassion’s part that leads the upholders of capital punishment to accuse the abolitionists of sentimentality in being more sorry for the murderer than for his victim. This is nonsense but with it some organs of the popular Press played upon the emotions of their readers so successfully that many candidates for Parliament were afraid to support abolition for fear of losing votes and the result was the muddle-headed Homicide Act of 1957 which made murder with robbery a capital crime and allowed the poisoner to escape the gallows. That illogical qualification shows how flimsy is the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder.

The poisoner always works on a calculated plan of action and therefore is able to consider whether or not his taking another’s life is worth the risk of his own; the violent thief is usually at the mercy of an instant emotion. The only arguable plea for capital punishment is the right of society to retribution in this world with the prospect of life in another, but since what used to seem to the great majority of civilized humanity the assurance of another life beyond the grave has come to seem to more and more people less certain, a feeling for the value of human life has become deeper and more widespread.

This may seem a paradoxical claim to make at a time when mankind is so much preoccupied with weapons of destruction. Nevertheless, it is a claim that can be sustained and if compassion animates those who urge the abolition of the death penalty it is not a sentimental compassion for the mental agony inflicted upon a condemned man but a dread of destroying the miracle of life.

When in the eighteenth century offences against the law that today would not earn a month in prison were punished with the death penalty, the severity of the penal code had no serious effect on the prevalence of crime. When it made no difference to the fate of a highwayman whether he had killed his victim or merely robbed him of a fes pieces of silver, there were no more murders then than there were when men like Sir Francis Burdett succeeded in lightening the excessive severity of the penal laws. In those days the sacredness of life on earth was not greatly regarded because a life in the world to come was taken for granted except by a comparatively small minority of philosophers.

Nor was the long-drawn ordeal of the condemned cell inflicted either upon the condemned man or his gaolers once upon a time. Those who believe in capital punishment may have arguments for its retention, but surely no reasonable argument can be found for retention of the sickening mumbo-jumbo that accompanies it from the moment that the judge dons the black cap with what looks like a pen-wiper balanced on the top of his wig, to the reading of the burial service over the condemned man before his is dead. Moreover, it was more merciful to launch the condemned man into eternity twenty-four hours after he was sentenced that to keep him shivering on the brink of that dread gulf for nearly three weeks.

Hanging is an atrociously archaic way of killing a human being and the self-satisfied modernity of the electric chair is just as atrocious. The administration of a strong sleeping draught to the condemned man every night from which one night he does not awake, seems a more civilized alternative to our present barbarous procedure, if capital punishment through the influence of backward minds be retained.

Compton MACKENZIE – On Moral Courage

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Capital Punishment
#3 Fengzi posted on 01/31/2004

Capital punishment is yet another hotly contested issue today. Many arguments have been advanced for and against it. In addition to human rights considerations, the opponents of capital punishment contend that capital punishment is not necessary since the purposes of the criminal justice system, incapacitation, rehabilitation, deference and retribution, can all be well accomplished without death penalty. Imprisonment, they argue, is sufficient to incapacitate an evil doer. Capital punishment deprives the convicted of the opportunity to rehabilitate and to become a member of the society (notwithstanding research findings that American rehabilitative programs over the past few decades have invariably failed). In addition, there is no indication that capital punishment serves to deter future criminals—an argument often made by the advocators of capital punishment. This seems to be supported by the Chinese observation that “death will not intimidate those who are not afraid to death”. The only justification for death penalty, therefore, appears to be retributive in nature: the society has a need to express its outrage or disapproval over certain conducts.
Capital punishment in its practice has a lot of problems too. Studies have shown that in the United States, death penalty has not been fairly administered. For instance, black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants for the same kind of crime. There is no effective mechanism to prevent an overly zealous prosecutor from abusing his discretion and even sacrificing the innocent in order to get a conviction. Also, the judicial review on death conviction is very costly and often takes close to ten years before a death row inmate runs out of all appeal revenues.
Capital punishment has been challenged on several grounds. The most commonly used legal argument, which so far has failed to persuade the Supreme Court, is that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution against “unusual and cruel punishment”.
Death penalty proponents believe capital punishment is part of the American criminal system and even part of her culture. They often point to the statistics showing correlation between low crime rate and death sentence. In addition, they also argue that imprisonment is wasteful as those jailed hard-core criminals are supported by tax dollars.
It is a tough question that defies uniformed solutions. My position on the issue has flipped and flopped over time. It can be very personal too. A few years ago, I was a staunch opponent of capital punishment. However, my view was changed after a very close friend of my family was brutally murdered by a group of monsters. I couldn’t imagine a punishment short of death would bring justice to her.
A couple of years ago, I visited a maximum security prison in New England, where the most abominable human beings are kept. That is the most depressing place I have ever been. Their response to the visitors, hysteric shrieks, chilling cackling, and sickening screams, were reminiscent of wild wolves or animals who are only humanoids at most. Many inmates were in shackles, 23 hours a day. Their only “recreation” hour—which had to be earned-- was to be spent in a cage, where they can breathe some fresh air, with their hands still cuffed from the back. For those who vegetate their life away like that, death is no doubt much more humane and merciful than lifelong confinement.

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Re: Euthanasia (peacefully pass away by oneself)
#4 adagio posted on 02/02/2004

xw wrote:

Sometimes I feel British Gentleman's idea is quite sublime.

我也有同感。向来喜欢英国人的性格。含蓄，内敛，冷静，庄重。冷的表面下却有对人性，对人文精神最深沉的关切。桑塔亚那曾有一篇essay谈英国人的性格，写得很好，说英国人在关键时刻只需廖廖数语，就能让内心世界感到清澈见底，在人类所面临的困境中是一种稳定而神圣的奇观。相形之下，德国人易狂热走极端，法国人又太浪漫不够成熟。当然，英国人的缺点是拘谨呆板了些，但也出了莎士比亚。：）

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zxd
#1 鐜涢泤
#2 xw
#3 Fengzi
#4 adagio