Our culture of death

It was one of those times I had to sit in the car and listen to Radio National long after I arrived at my destination. The program was the second part of “Losing Erin” broadcast on Street Stories.

Erin Berg was a youngish mother of four who found her self deeply depressed after the birth of her fourth child and the breakdown of her relationship with the father. So severe was her depression that she contemplated suicide with the help of Philip Nitschke’s book Killing me softly that recommended the taking of Nembutal to ensure a painless and peaceful death. The book mentioned that Nembutal could be obtained over the counter at pet supply stores in Tijuana, Mexico. Erin flew to Mexico and took the drug but it took her ten days to die. Her sisters flew to her side and they watched as she had some moments of consciousness followed by her death.

The thing that struck me about the program was the contrast between the sisters’ painful narration of Erin’s death and Nitschke’s calm defence of his book and the advice given in it.

Erin had argued with the sisters about her right to choose death for herself and how that death could be painless and peaceful. The reality, of course was quite otherwise. Even if her attempt had not been botched, so that she lingered for 10 days, the death of a young mother by her own hand could never be a peaceful or a painless affair. The pain could be heard in the voices of her sisters. How will her four children deal with the fact that their mother killed herself? Nitschke seemed oblivious of this.

He can do this because his view of humanity is atomistic, he sees the individual as existing alone and being able to make decisions on that basis. But we all know that that is not true, our lives are human exactly in our connection with others. Indeed, it could be said that we do not “exist” apart from those connections. When we commit self murder (no death is “euthanasia”) we do two things, we cut those connections that make us who we are and we tell those we are connected to that life is not worth the candle.

This is not peaceful death as Nitschke would have it, it is anything but peaceful: it is full of violence. This young woman was ripped away from her children and her family and friends, leaving grief and bewilderment to haunt them for the rest of their lives. How does it happen that we could call this a good death and proclaim that this woman had a right to murder herself?

The other area of this culture of death occurs in most maternity hospitals in the thousands of abortions that are performed each year in Australia. Again the increasingly silly language of human rights are used to justify the silent murder of the child in the womb. The rights of the unborn compete with the rights of the mother. Here is the atomised self again. But the unborn do have relations. They have a father and a mother, grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunties. They have a future. A termination means that all of these things that constitute life itself are severed. A grandparent will mourn the loss of the child and wonder what that future would have held. Will the mother walking past a playground also wonder?

This culture of death is all so rational; indeed reason run amuck. We are mad with reason. Death is seen as the solution to the problem. Take the pill, fall asleep, abort the fetus and get on with an unencumbered life. These solutions to the problems of life are seen as having slight consequences. A painless death is likened to falling asleep, a daily and pleasant experience for us all. Nothing could be easier. But, as the pain of Erin’s sisters illustrates, it is not that simple. There are now four children in the world who must wonder why their mother chose death instead of them.

Likewise, abortions are called terminations, it sounds like the end of a train journey. What possible consequences could there possibly be to scraping an embryo from the lining of the uterus? If that is alright, because at that stage it does not look like a human infant, then what about when it does? What about when the heart beat is strong and the nursing staff are disturbed by the sight of babies in buckets?

It is obvious that both forms of death dealing have consequences. However, consequential ethics is not the end of the story. Our civilisation is not built on these but on the pursuit of truth and justice. Indeed we despise regimes that only look to consequences and who thus perpetrate the most obscene acts to achieve a desired outcome. We think we are better than that. But how much better when we regard suicide and abortion as just the exercise of a person’s rights to choose?

It amuses me that “human rights” are used both to condemn murder and torture and to give permission for self murder and the murder of the unborn.

What sort of ethical system is this?

The answer is that it is not an ethical system at all but a way of justifying anything that we want. It is a way of bending reality to our own purposes. Human rights are seen as being attached to the individual, they have no basis in community. This is why the rights of the mother compete with the rights of the child; why the rights of the suicide transgress the rights of those who love him. Does not the parent have a right to be spared the agony of a child’s suicide? Does no the child have a right to be spared the questions about why their mother chose death instead of them? We can proclaim all kinds of rights until we are blue in the face but it will not change our reality.

Self murder and the murder of the unborn is no solution to anything because they rob us of what is essentially human; it is a culture of death. It is one with the arms race that uses death as the final negotiator.

Giles Fraser published an article in the Guardian entitled “Birth, the Ultimate Miracle” in which he argues that the culture of mortality is confronted by a culture of natality. He points out that the birth narrative in the gospel of Matthew is preceded by a genealogy that runs from Abraham to Jesus. So the birth of Jesus takes place at the end of a long line of births. It could have been the other way around, the genealogy could have been marked by deaths and it is significant that it is not. This means that the gospel is predicated not by mortality but by natality.

A culture of mortality isolates the individual along with his death which nobody can do for him. A culture of natality sees the individual as linked to others and dependent upon others. In “Losing Erin” the two cultures collide, Erin, the mother, was seduced into thinking that the solution to her life was death while her sisters actually live out a culture of natality. They become mothers to Erin, stroking her, kissing her and attempting to open a future for her.

The Christian tradition sees human life as a journey into God that only ends in death. When a human being is murdered a particular person takes it upon himself to end that journey. There are many things that can end that journey, life being as it is hazardous. But murder is an unnatural ending; it is an intentional act that cuts off the journey into God that forms the future. Thus murder is a murder of the future; it is a denial of Christian hope.

The depressed state or the unwanted child is allowed to tip us into a faithless act that destroys the future. The idea of being tied down to a child gives us permission to end that child’s life. There is now no hope that a light will shine on the depressed or that a child will bring us into a new humanity. This is only one of the ways that our society is increasing mortgaged over to a culture of morality.