Worshiping Death

Pile of Corpses of Victims of Nazi Death Camp

Many philosophers and others throughout history have glorified the notion of giving one's life for a higher cause.  Life itself is a very worthy cause, but when one is willing to sacrifice it for something even greater, that is seen as a beautiful thing.  Such as, giving one's life that someone else may live.  Or many someone else's, as in giving one's life in the defense of one's country.  There are many ways to die, but if one's life is cut down before its time - before one can reach one's ultimate potential - in service to others or one's country, then that is seen by many as a worthy sacrifice.  Not that that makes enduring the loss easier for those left behind.  But it matters for one to have died in a higher service.

But to be willing to lay down one's life for a higher cause, and worshiping death - that is, seeing death as a worthy cause in and of itself - are two different things, with miles of empty space between them.

Results of Radical Islamic Suicide Bombing in Africa, 2015

In the course of human history, civilizations have occasionally arisen, which worshiped death as a good thing.  The Nazi regime in 20th century Germany comes to mind, and for this reason - not because it killed more than other regimes - it is singled out again and again as the epitome of evil.  Some would say that Radical Islam, which sends hapless individuals off to sacrifice themselves, for the sole reason of inflicting death on its perceived opponents, also fits the description.  But when we see the worshiping of death, infect a society similar to ours - or even our society - we find the idea so monstrous that we deny it, and label it as something else.

I think that the impulse that make some of us support abortion-on-demand, and euthanasia for those who cannot achieve a requisite "quality of life," brings us close to a society that worships death.

Let me explain, but before I do I wish to make it clear that this is not a tirade against those who, as individuals, would choose either option.  It is not to judge those parents who, despairing to bring into this world a child who has not arrived at a good time, or who would come into the world afflicted by some severe condition, choose abortion.  Not is it to judge those who, faced with the maintenance of the life of an ageing parent or other relative, a life which will offer that person no sense of independence and dignity, choose to remove life support.  One can only identify with the pain of those who must make such decisions, and this is not to second-guess them.  Rather, my complaint is against society itself, and the tendency in society to not value life as an end in itself, but rather as a way of fulfilling some purpose.  I believe that, when we adopt such a utilitarian view of life, we at the very least come extremely close to worshiping death.

One recent news article, and one recent event, have drawn me to think about this subject.

Couple, Both Down Syndrome Individuals, Finds Marital
Happiness

The news article in question, reported that Down Syndrome (DS) had been "all but eradicated" in Iceland, because almost 100 percent of mothers of babies diagnosed in utero as having DS, choose to abort those babies.  Actually, I believe the article used the term "not carry to term" which somehow sounds softer and less draconian than "abort."  But it's the same thing.

Of course, the article's premise was misleading.  If DS had been all but eradicated, then the numbers of unborn babies afflicted by it would lessen over time and ultimately shrink to nothing.  But the article does not assert that that's what's happening, because it isn't.  DS is not a disease that can be eradicated.  Rather, the children who carry DS are being eradicated.  Parents are absorbing the zeitgeist concerning the diminished value of life itself, and looking at the potential life of a "low-functioning" person with DS - and what will be the parents' burden over the coming years - and deciding that that life is not worth living.  By the utilitarian view of the value of life, which has permeated Western Civilization and in particular its inteligentsia - government and even medical elites - a DS child is not worthy to bring into this world.

Alfie Evans, the Toddler Who Died 28 April After the UK
High Court Ordered Him Kept in Hospital Which Removed
His Life Support Despite Offers from Two Countries to
Treat Him

The recent event that also draws me to the conclusion that we are at least dangerously close to worshiping death, is the death last week of Alfie Evans, a UK toddler with an un-diagnosed brain condition.  When the child's parents would not give the hospital permission to remove him from life support, the doctors at the hospital that were treating him, petitioned Britain's High Court to allow them to do so despite the parents' wishes, and the court ordered the child, in effect, killed.  And we're not talking simply about the triage factor in a socialized medical system which claims that to dedicate the needed resources to this child would absorb funds that could help many more people with conditions that we know how to treat.  In this case, doctors in hospitals in both Germany and Italy, offered to take over the care of Alfie, in the latter case granting the child on request of Pope Francis, Italian citizenship and offering to provide medical transport to Rome.  This would have removed the financial burden of keeping Alfie alive, from the National Health Service (NHS), the UK's socialized health service which, by the way, is such a bloated bureaucracy as to be the second largest employer in the entire world, behind the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army.  But as we see, the inability of a huge enterprise to support this one child, was not the issue.  Rather, it was the state's power to dictate which lives are worthy of living...and which are not.  This follows a similar sensational case just last year, also in the UK, involving the young child Charlie Gard.  In his case, the offer of care came from doctors in the USA, who believed they could help Charlie with experimental treatment that they'd already been developing.  Likewise the doctors of the NHS hospital (not the same one as in the recent Alfie Evans case) petitioned the High Court to prevent the parents from moving the child to New York for treatment - they had already raised the money for the transport - and the court agreed with the doctors.  So the medical community in the UK - at least in these two well-known instances - believe that it isn't a matter of scarcity of resources, but of their essential authority to decide who lives and who dies.  And they will take the most extreme of measure - arguing the case before the country's highest court - rather than be overruled by the parents of the children in question since they, the medical professionals, believe they know best.

We can look at these high-profile cases against the refrain, very often-heard nowadays, of ageing individuals wishing to die should they cease functioning at the level, to which they're accustomed, or should they constitute a financial burden to their families.  Again, it shows at the very least, that we as a society have ceased to value life in and of itself, but have adopted a utilitarian view of life, that it is worthwhile only if it produces something tangible or does not remove resources from other endeavors.  I believe that this is dangerously close to the phenomenon that I label as 'worshiping death' as opposed to valuing, and protecting, life.

Although as a Jew, I am most reluctant to compare any impulse we can observe in our own society as equating to the evil of the Nazi regime which destroyed an entire Jewish civilization and wreaked immeasurable suffering upon the world, I am yet forced to make the comparison in this case to the Nazi regime that could so easily, and callously declare which lives were worthy of being lived, and which were not.  I believe that the Nazis worshiped death, as do the Radical Islamists today.  I wish I could summarily deny that the worship of death does not characterize today's Western Civilization, but when I read of the abortion of almost 100 percent of Down Syndrome children in one country, and see the medical community of another country so intent on denying life to children, for whom a cure might be found...then I despair of the direction, in which we're heading.  The examples I gave, were from Iceland and the UK.  But if those country's trends are in the vanguard of this trend, I believe the rest of us are no very far behind.