Monday, December 18, 2017

On Suicide (or, No, Autocorrect, I Did Not Mean Diocese)

Everyone remembers H.G. Wells, and most people know G.B. Shaw, if only for Pygmalion (better known, of course, as My Fair Lady). But apart from that particular brace of Brits, most of G.K. Chesterton's enemies are now remembered solely as G.K. Chesterton's enemies. I've never heard of Dean Inge or Robert Blatchford or Joseph McCabe, except as people getting mowed down in big fat jolly hails of Chesterton, like black-suited goons in a gunfight with John Wick. I have no idea who Mr. William Archer may have been; but he pops up for a second in Orthodoxy while G.K. reloads after perforating Matthew Arnold. "Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny." But unlike most faceless cannon-fodder, Mr. William Archer actually managed to hit something.

Dr. Nitschke Sarco of Australia has invented a 3D-printable suicide machine. It's what it sounds like. I don't really want to get into the ethics of this, because that would be like entering a serious debate about whether or not the Third Reich was, on the whole, bad. I just want to talk about ovens for a moment. Apparently, up until the tag-end of the '50s, British homes were all heated with coal gas. Coal gas gives off enough carbon monoxide that if you should ever happen to feel like not being alive, you could just stick your head in the oven for a few minutes and painlessly drift away. However! In the '60s and '70s, the British government began phasing out carbon monoxide in favor of natural gas; and once those convenient little death-boxes were no longer in every home, the national suicide rate dropped by nearly a third and has mostly stayed there ever since. They call this simply, the British coal-gas story. The moral seems to be that sometimes suicide isn't the end of an elaborate plan: sometimes you're just having a really shitty day and hey look, there's the stove.

G.K. wrote Orthodoxy in 1908, the dawn of a century in which most of the great Rationalist philosophers were united in their prophecies of a coming golden age. Worked out great. I incline to the view that people will dispose of things they're taught to regard as disposable, and I would just as soon not make it any easier than necessary for my fellow men to murder themselves. That said, there's a cosmos of difference between discouraging a thing and discouraging the discussion of it. When I went to make a note in my phone about this blog post, the autocorrect kept trying to shunt me away from the S-word, favoring "suitcases," "diocese," and even, for Heaven's sake, "shivs," which honestly doesn't seem that much better. I get that this is a difficult thing to talk about, but you don't help someone with a problem by shushing them. Making suicide a horrible taboo topic is probably almost as destructive as "Doctor" Sarco tossing out nooses and razor blades like the Easter Beagle.

Catholic author Walker Percy, whose father and grandfather committed suicide, and who struggled with depression and suicidal impulses till his death by cancer, addresses this matter in Lost in the Cosmos. His contention is that rather than shying away from the thought of suicide, it may be productive to examine it as a serious option. Life may feel less like a trap if you know there's an exit, even if you've decided not to use it. He coins the term "ex-suicide" to describe someone who has weighed the option on its merits (not stating but leaving open the inference that he himself is such a one), and explains the potential liberation of doing so. "The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from his past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on his step, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to."

We cannot do evil that good might come of it. But all things work to the good, for those that love Him. Sarco's machine is just another abomination, but perhaps Our Lord can once again turn the Enemy's weapon against him. Perhaps, like a recovering alcoholic who keeps a sealed fifth of bourbon on his shelf, a recovering victim of despair might find a strange consolation in knowing that thanks to the dweller in the land down under, the coffin lid is just a mouse click away. And for those who overcome. . .


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