We shouldn’t focus on assisted dying, but rather help others find value in life
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Version 0 of 1. What’s a life worth, and to whom? Professor Stephen Hawking has said once more that he would consider ending his life if he felt he could no longer make a contribution to the world; and although it’s obvious that he means by the world his loved ones as well as the theoretical physics community, it does seem a high bar to set. Not many of us are much use to the world as a whole; almost everyone has a job in which they could be replaced without too much strain and that may nowadays disappear without warning. Related: Stephen Hawking: 'I would consider assisted suicide' The idea that life has an intrinsic value seems both essential to a civilised society and an absurd delusion. Value, after all, seems a subjective quality. That is not to say that it does not exist: but it is always value to someone. Value requires a valuer, so it would appear that if no one values you, you have no value. And why not, in that case, die? The answer that you have value to yourself, even if no one else cares, doesn’t seem psychologically realistic. It is one of the clearest symptoms of depression that you feel other people have no use for you but if this feeling is justified it is also one of the most powerful drivers of depression and suicidal despair. People who claim to survive on the strength of their own self-esteem are exceptional and if they’re telling the whole truth they are probably psychopaths as well. The traditional Christian answer to the question of where value is found has been God – the being who, when you have no earthly use, finds you valuable, and possibly even useful as well. Without God, as Nietzsche saw, people who have no earthly uses are no earthly use – and even the quickest glance through the headlines will show you this is the way the world goes. A trivial but very telling example cropped up on the Daily Mail website earlier this week, with a story about the suffering of British holidaymakers whose Greek island was invaded by squalid “migrants” fleeing from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan. These people slept on cardboard in the open air where holidaymakers could see them. Although the piece was widely disparaged, I feel it did in a way accurately express the thrust of British refugee policy at the moment: those who are no use to the economy can stay away and die, preferably somewhere we can’t see or smell them. OK, so perhaps people are only valuable within their own societies. After all, we don’t expect Syrians to weep over the fate of British pensioners. And for most of the 20th century it seemed that society could replace God as the guarantor of value. That was one of the premises of the welfare state. But the welfare state and, indeed, society, have increasingly gone the way of God, as something optional and rather eccentric in which to believe – certainly not anything that will punish you if you doubt its existence. So why should Stephen Hawking stay alive if he ever reaches the point where neither he nor those who love him see any point in his continued existence? Although this looks like a question that only he can answer, it turns out that he cannot answer it alone. No one could. At the risk of sounding like a French philosopher of the 1950s, one is led to the conclusion that we shouldn’t be worrying about assisted dying, but about assisting each other to stay alive. This isn’t a matter of exhortations, or of high-mindedness but of simple practical gestures and quotidian emotional support. Just possibly Auden was entirely realistic when claimed that we must love one another or die. • You can contact Samaritans on jo@samaritans or 08457 909090 |