-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You

-A.S. Byatt, Possession

This is the essay I wrote for my application to Chungdahm Learning in Korea for a teaching position. There were five or six topics, and I chose this.It’s necessarily short and extremely limited because of word count; a brief look at the issue of euthanasia.

#5 Explain and defend your position on euthanasia

Euthanasia is one of the most difficult and complex moral issues of our 21^st century society. In an age when medical treatment can both sustain a life far beyond the body shutting down, and deliver death with unparalleled speed and painlessness, what we define as life and death, and the rights involved with both, has grown ever more important.

Post-modernist society is all about the so-called “quality of life.” Yet it is not circumstances or even physical functionality which defines life. The brain of a newborn child can process only the most basic things, yet it can kick, scream, move and cry. The brain of a parapalegic is fully functioning, yet his or her body is often fully paralyzed, unable to move or speak. We cannot pick and choose the physical processes which define “life” –– people in different stages and conditions of life will always possess some of those functionalities and characteristics but not others. Are we to term some of them as “living” but not others?

It is not physical characteristics – a heartbeat, blood flowing, motion etc. – that set apart a human organism as “living”. Instead, I would define life as consciousness – the basic existence of an individual awareness. Whether you choose to call it a soul or a mind or something else, it is this spark which makes a particular human being individual and unique – and thus alive. And that individual life is inherently sacred.

“Quality of life” is the idea that some lives are “better” and therefore more valuable, while other lives are “worse,” and therefore less valuable. This leads quickly to moral acceptance of the killing off of those “less valuable” lives, such as infants with mental disabilities and comatose or constantly suffering patients. Yet such reasoning – that the value of a human life is defined or negated by its characteristics – in its most extreme form is what led the Nazis to exterminate millions of Jews. Basing the value of a human life on the mental or physical characteristics of the person in question is a faulty meter that ignores the intrinsic value of human consciousness.

I define euthanasia as a human life being actively ended by someone else. This stands in contrast to natural death from illness or the effects of old age, which includes death which happens after medical treatment is removed or withdrawn at the request of the patient or the patient’s family.  In this case, the treatment is not the cause of the individual’s death – rather the natural course of life is. Moreover, if a person is brain-dead, their body kept alive only by life support, removing that life support cannot be seen as killing – there is no life, no consciousness there. However, if there is any spark of consciousness left, or if they are able to survive without medical technology, then euthanization is simply murder. There is no degree of suffering which makes it less than murder for one human being to deliberately take another’s life.

It is easy to look at circumstances such as suffering, and physical/mental characteristics such as lack of intelligence or mobility, and say that this life is less valuable than others, that death would be better and therefore ending it is alright. But without respect for the fragile spark that is human consciousness, we will gradually become monsters. No individual has a right to die by another’s hand, nor when that happens can it be anything but murder. Life, as I have defined it in this essay, is inherently valuable and must be protected.

“It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.”

-Haruki Murakami, Dance, Dance, Dance (1994)

Lordy day. What’s a girl gotta do to get a little attention? What a waste of eyeliner.

Granted, I can, and did, do my shower, hair, and make-up in 15 minutes flat – but when a girl puts in that extra effort, even if it only takes 15 minutes, she wants the guy to at least show up. Not to mention the lack of extra excitement the whole night through. Le sigh.

Nouns and verbs are enough for soldiers and leaders of totalitarian
countries. For the adjective is the indispensable guarantor of the
individuality of people and things. I see a pile of melons at a fruit
stand. For an opponent of adjectives, this matter presents no
difficulty. “Melons are piled on the fruit stand.” Meanwhile, one
melon is as sallow as Talleyrand’s complexion when he addressed the
Congress of Vienna; another is green, unripe, full of youthful
arrogance; yet another has sunken cheeks, and is lost in a deep,
mournful silence, as if it could not bear to part with the fields of
Provence.

-Adam Zagajewski

Listening to Lily Allen’s “Who’d Have Known” as I do on practically a weekly basis, curled up on the couch in my sweatshirt about to watch an episode of Dream High before embarking on MFA and internship research. Life.

Every very day is a battle for independence and a grounded approach to life. – I Wynn

But I know I want more warm things in my life.

Today, I ordered Robert Hass‘s Sun Under Wood and Louise Gluck‘s The Wild Iris (for $7 each for used copies on Amazon, so not too bad).

I also renewed my Writer’s Chronicle subscription, mostly because they sent me a pleading letter, and I did enjoy last year’s issues, even if I thought they were rather hit or miss.

I also caught up on Fringe – I do love that show, it’s tightly paced and beautifully directed and all the actors have such chemistry together that the occasional (large) holes in the story don’t matter as much. Also, every time I think it can’t get more cool, it ups the ante. Fringe and Outsourced are the only American TV shows I’m watching consistently this quarter, and I just realized they’re polar opposites – Fringe, a tense, somewhat graphic, sci fi drama set partially in an alternate universe, and Outsourced, a hilarious if slightly racist, good-hearted, low-key comedy about a well-meaning young sales executive sent off to India to oversee a call center. They do offset each other beautifully however. I’m also watching Doctor Who season 3 when I have time.