When the Machine Breaks Down
When it breaks down, you throw away the broken parts: you’re the broken part.
Today is Ash Wednesday. Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.
“Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In olden days of yore, this was a reminder that this world is passing away, and we are merely humble travelers here, going on to a new destination.
But to a modern world that often believes this is all there is and that there is nothing more, such a sentence takes on a much graver meaning. If life is ultimately an accident, if we are just meatbags—chemical machines—than we really do come from dust, and we really will return there. The end.
The implications of such a view of the world are many, and I’m thinking about one today: euthanasia. What a dreary topic, but obviously so vital to think about these days.
It doesn’t help that for work, I have to read some news on this topic every morning. I wasn’t planning on writing anything today, but then I saw something so awful, so brazen, that it sent my cluttered brain to sprinting.
“Ignore the Reactionaries Who Oppose Assisted Dying,” says Matthew Parris in London, in The Spectator a few days ago.
For those who don’t have a subscription (which includes me), I read an article summarizing his statement: the slippery slope is real, and it is good!
Like most issues today where progressives are seeking to push culture far beyond current boundaries, they often try to break a critical barrier, and claim that’s as far as it will ever go. There will be no further consequences. Recent history shows it’s a damn dirty lie, meant to manipulate people who can’t remember what was said a few years ago; the Unhappening is a powerful tool for modern mass media.
Opponents of the progressives and their horrific ends often point to a slippery slope as a reason not to start down a certain path. The “slippery slope” is not itself a logical fallacy. Naturally, if you blow up a dam, it’s not just the immediate area that will be affected, but everything downriver. That dam was holding back a lot of pent up water, and the changes will be long-lasting for everything in the river’s path.
Don’t worry about the slippery slope, they say, it’s just some crazy people making stuff up because they enjoy telling you “no.”
But human civilization is simply one giant dam holding back a strong wave of human emotion, desire, and ego. Many of the rules we take for granted were put in place after seeing the effects of letting people just give in to their base nature. Civilization isn’t natural at all, other than the human desire for security, which is often at odds with many of our other desires.
In an rare example of honesty about the final goals of progressivism, Matthew Parris admits that euthanasia will endanger the disabled, sick, and depressed. His conscience not fully dead yet, he admits in the past to lying to the public about the slippery slope when it comes to the sexual revolution. This time he says he’s going to be honest and says we’ll all come to accept the slippery slope as a good thing. Blow up the dam and drown everything in its path!
So, he says accepting euthanasia will indeed result in the sick and disabled feeling like a burden on others, and they will be pressured to commit suicide out of a sense of being a burden. And for Matthew Parris, because they are a burden they deserve to die to spare the rest of us.
Modern society and its ruling elite embrace euthanasia for two reasons. First, they want the option for themselves. We’ve had it so good in Western Civilization for a few generations that suffering has become foreign to us. And since they believe life is an accident and suffering has no greater meaning than a lack of dopamine flooding their brains, they cannot dream why they should suffer.
Drunk on their own power and authority in running the universe, they believe they should have the power to take up their life and lay it down at will.
And of course, if they believe that, they will believe they can exercise such power over others. After all, we’re just a bunch of mechanical parts in the vast machinery of human society, right? And so we get abortion, and of course euthanasia, as powers to exercise for the betterment of society.
The second reason for elite support for euthanasia is this control mechanism. They believe there are too many parts to our vast machine, and so they’ve ruthlessly promoted abortion and eugenics for a century now. But, of course, breaking that dam means we’ve suffered the inevitable consequences: we’re running out of young people.
Running out of young people is a gigantic problem for a society built on credit, where future investments pay off past debts. It’s a gigantic problem for a society that abolished the family and relies on government programs to care for the sick and elderly: young, healthy people pay those bills. It’s a gigantic problem for an economy relentlessly possessed with growth and increased standards of living, which today for the wealthy West broadly means more trinkets in a bigger, cheaper house. Fewer people means less growth, though we’ve deluded ourselves into believing it means a bigger slice of the pie for the survivors.
The obvious solution is simple: stop killing the next generation! But we are far too clever these days for the obvious. Except for the rare breed such as Matthew Parris, we can convince ourselves that we can blow up the damn and the water will halt in mid-air.
So, euthanasia’s value is a vast clean-up tool. Too many elderly people? Kill ‘em. Too many disabled or mentally ill people to fix? Kill ‘em. We can’t be bothered to take care of other people. That itself is a form of suffering and a constant reminder of it, and we shouldn’t have to deal with that in this short, accidental life, don’t you know?
Elites square the moral circle of euthanasia by putting their two reasons for supporting it together: because they would kill themselves if they became burdens on others, they have no problem killing others. Avoiding hypocrisy is all that’s needed to accept the inevitable consequences.
Many people today no doubt agree with that grim logic. After all, if life is just an accident, if we are simply accidently-arranged stardust with no greater meaning, then surely we are just machines, and machines that break down are useless. Throw them away.
But that’s not true. If it were true, then the slippery slope wouldn’t exist. Societies would function even better if we all accepted the worldview that says humanity is just dust.
So, of course, my favorite question: how is that working out for us?
We have more stuff, longer lives, way better food, all manner of creature comforts and seemingly magic technology, and we seem to be more miserable than ever. If we are born to merely consume, then consuming more should always make us happy.
We convince ourselves that euthanasia is the ultimate expression of our quest for personal autonomy, which will finally deliver ultimate happiness. But instead, this culture of death we are embracing is leading society to depression and eventually suicide.
“A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.” - Andrew Coyne
We know such a worldview is not true even by its own standards. If life’s goal is simply to propagate itself, then any worldview that leads an entire species to want to commit suicide must surely be madness.
People used to live life as it was meant to be lived: an adventure, not a mental patient taking happy pills. Life is a journey. Life has purpose, even if you can’t see it this moment.
So, today, Ash Wednesday, is another day. It’s another fork in the road of the rest of your life. We have been given the will to choose: life or death. There we stand with Moses, on the banks of the river Jordan, deciding what we should do as a people.
Right now, our leaders and culture are choosing a slow death in the desert. We have no argument against death and we are losing our faith in life. Will we turn towards the promise land and enjoy the adventure life has to offer? Or, are we just cogs to replace the broken down ones, and to be replaced ourselves, in a vast machine running endlessly for no purpose? Life, or death, Western Civilization?
Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
But we are more than dust, aren’t we?