Really, why not pull the plug?
By Chaplain Norbert J Karava

When considering issues of morality it is important to distinguish between the objective moral nature of human acts considered in themselves and the subjective moral state of affairs brought about in the persons who perform them.

Thus, while we may accept that objectively, murder defined as the taking of an innocent life is morally reprehensible and heinous as an act considered in itself, we cannot immediately conclude that the person who physically accomplishes the act of murder is actually guilty of the specific malice inherent in the act, objectively considered.

Is the person in question cognizant of the malice of the act, and to what degree?

Is this person’s freedom of will impaired, and if so, to what degree?

Whereas we often can glean a sense of these things from our knowledge and experience of both ourselves and others, we are well advised to avoid indicting anyone of moral guilt in the proper sense of the word, except ourselves.

I intend this as a caveat before writing on a highly controversial subject, to wit, the immorality of suicide: I truly do not judge anyone who has committed or attempted to commit this act.

The intended focus is on the moral nature of the act, again considered in itself and not the subjective instantiation of the act in this or that specific person.

An observation: Whereas we comfortably speak of the immorality of such acts as murder, theft, robbery, lying, torture, sexual assault and exploitation, it happens extremely rarely that someone unequivocally posits the immorality of suicide.

The necessary conclusion that we would have to draw, namely, that a person who knowingly and willingly commits suicide thereby becomes an irresponsible and evil man, as he would by knowingly and willingly committing murder, robbery, or mendacity, seems to be universally repugnant to contemporary sensibilities, and inadmissible in public and, or official venues.

Yet, I opine that this is the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the living room of our official publications, suicide prevention-preventive medicine education, conferences, slide presentations and yes, even our memorial services… that we pretend not to notice:

After we’ve psychoanalyzed commonly occurring emotional dimensions of suicide to death, after dispensing all the warm ‘fuzzies’ conceivable in an effort to persuade our suicidal correspondent that his problems aren’t bigger than life itself and that “life is good” and “worth living,” after presenting the calculus of what is to be gained and lost, we find ourselves crashing like a wave onto the cliffs of truth:

Unless there is a truly moral reason not to commit suicide, there really is no reason not to, just as ultimately, without a moral reason, there is no reason not to lie, cheat, steal or murder.

Failing a moral reason and an attending conviction of truth, we are adrift in a sea of Prozac and then suffocating in the vacuum of our own ultimately valueless and meaningless “well-being.”

Indeed, which, in this case, is worse: the death we are being saved from or the life being offered us to live?

We sometimes flirt with something approaching a moral reason against suicide if we dare to ask such questions:

“Where will this leave those who love you and need you?”

But alas, all too often we fear to lay bare the implications. And the nagging and unspoken thought “It seems that you valued your pain more than their love,” stubbornly refuses to be banished even by the most pathos-drenched eulogies.

For human persons, their monkey-manners notwithstanding, whose glory and uniqueness is such that their minds are capable of entertaining and grasping moral truth, all merely psychological motives taken together do not equal a single moral precept.

As we and those we love stand, in our moments of crisis, eyeball to eyeball with our own “to be or not to be,” we can help each other discover, in a moment of courage, that if life has not supported our agendas, the solution is probably not so much in either attempting to change the nature of life or terminating it, but in reexamining our agendas in the light of truly moral reasons.

Ah, but that does take courage, doesn’t it?

Reminds me of a great song by the band Dethklok called pull the plug...