Here's a comment I posted yesterday, well, this morning as the clock goes. The context is that Scott Sumner writes about the politics of right-to-die laws (they seem correlated with right-to-marijuana laws) and the low level of support for them among younger people, who usually lean towards making more things legal he speculates that "Perhaps if you are 30 years old then you can still envision a better future." and so will be less likely to see assisted suicide as being possibly the least bad option.
I wrote from my present point of view:
I’m 63 and can still envisage a better future. But fast forward 25-30 more years and that will change. Judging by what happened in previous generations of my family, I shall already be dying, peacefully, in slow motion. Talk of “saving” or “taking” my life will be, well, misplaced. The question will simply be whether it is mine in fact or just in name.
I long ago chose what I would live off and where I would live. Later, I chose who would live with me. We chose when to engender children and live for them. I shall choose when to stop living off my work and start living off my savings. I’ll also choose how hard I try to keep myself healthy, so I’ll have imprecise control over how much longer I live. But my first degree was in mathematics, and I don’t like such imprecision, nor will it do anyone else much good. So assuming I suffer no unforeseen illness, I still want to make one last choice. Tell me, will this life be truly mine, to hold or discard?
