Comment by hashhar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hashhar | Hacker News Reader

The lack of empathy in the comments is scary. No wonder the situation is so bad.

Let me present a scenario which might seem more relatable since it seems people understand physical pain but have no "scale" of what mental pain could be like.

You have a chronic pain (maybe one of wrists is broken in a way that there is no solution). No painkillers help. Every doctor you go to doesn't have a quick-fix. People around you keep telling you "you're imagining things", "be spiritual", "it isn't as bad as you think", "it'll go away". Nothing you try seems to help. You wake up every day feeling the pain and it keeps getting worse with no end in sight.

EDIT: Missed one crucial component. The pain is so much that you cannot have normal social interactions because 80% of your energy is spent trying to cover up the pain. You feel exhausted all the time due to this and don't have the energy or the motivation to do anything.

Image living this for even a year (where this is what life looks like for some people for the last 20 years or more) and then tell me you wouldn't say no to "anything to make the pain go away".

This reminds me of the case of Dax Cowart[1][2], who as a young man suffered tremendous burns from an accident which he survived but which killed his father who was with him.

He lost his eyes and face, had both of his hands amputated, and was forcibly given agonizing treatments for 14 months.

At his request a documentary video was made about him, which he titled "Please Let Me Die"[3]. It was shown to lawmakers and judges in hopes of allowing him to refuse medical treatment.

He was forced to endure the treatment against his express wishes, survived, and graduated law school to become an advocate of patient's rights. Still, he always maintained that he should have been allowed to end his life.

"No human being has the right to force another human being to undergo that kind of pain and to take away that person's right to self-determination."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dax_Cowart

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQHuaua4W0

[3] - https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/10105

Thanks for sharing this - I haven't yet looked but the description itself makes me feel bad that we don't let people make decisions for themselves.

I feel the only reason we don't let people chose that path is to make ourselves feel good and feel "guilt-free".

I recently had a situation where someone in my family was diagnosed with a life threatening condition but the dilemma was that if you chose to undergo treatment their life will turn to shit. If you don't then they might suddenly die one day - albeit happy and normal.

I felt a lot of guilt trying to find reasons to convince people why the 2nd option was better. If you think rationally the only reason to pick the 1st option is selfishness. For the person who has undergo the treatment the 2nd option is hands down the better one.

It is illegal to kill oneself because it deprives the state of a taxpayer, and the state will not tolerate theft of its human resources.

Its way more primitive than that - christian moral code prohibits suicide as those will end up in hell. Then not-so-small part of population feels entitled to project their own righteous path unto rest of humanity while even feeling great about doing that 'in accordance to god's wishes'. Next thing you know, any abortion is illegal, heck in places like Poland even basic human rights are violated by exactly this kind of self-righteous crowd.

Obviously this is just one of example of one random major religion and tells us mostly about how small many humans are and how it manifests across society. Feel free to apply this to much of evil caused by mankind, basically since we were humans.

Eye opening for me was when I met this fellow Texan guy in Nepal in 2008, great guy otherwise, who was telling me how all those arabs in Iraq and Afghanistan would make great christians. They just need to understand the right choice. He really believed it. If felt so surreal.

Interestingly, place like Switzerland which is highly religious has been for a long time bastion of self-assisted suicide, so that folks come here from all over the world to end their life peacefully. Tells you about how remarkably tolerant society this is (there are tons of other examples I can see every day around me, but that's for another topic).

To better understand people of differing beliefs, you have to temporarily pretend to accept their fundamental tenets.

To use your example, understand that most sects of Christianity teach that in order to gain entrance to heaven, one must accept Jesus as one's savior and at least try to follow the moral code promulgated by Christianity. People who do not will go to hell and suffer an eternity of torment. Understand, this is not a theoretical "what if" to them, they believe this to be true. Completely.

Thus, if you are a good person, would you not want to save others from eternal damnation? I mean, what kind of heartless human being would just let others go to hell without even trying a little? A good person, a kind person would therefore try to convert others to the path that would lead them to heaven.

Or similarly, if you believe a fetus is a human being then abortion is murder. Not the "termination of a fetus", but the literal equivalent of chopping up a newborn baby. If you understand that some people actually believe this, it is easy to understand why most pro-life arguments just seem facile to them. To them, those arguments are simply attempting to justifying the literal murder of innocent babies.

Putting yourself into the shoes of others and clearly understanding (not accepting as true, just accepting that they believe it is true) their underlying reasons is, IMO, critical to understanding what may, to you, be "crazy" or even "evil" positions.

Outlawing suicide is a lot older than Christianity. Aristotle was writing that suicide is an act of injustice toward state. And most probably he was not the first one to state that.

> He lost his eyes and face, had both of his hands amputated, and was forcibly given agonizing treatments for 14 months.

I bet this was because doctors and surgeons saw him as challenge and a career/resume builder.

>"anything to make the pain go away"

Sure, I think our rampant overdose problem and drug and alcohol over-use problem in general is a symptom of this. That's one of the reasons the war on drugs is so insidious, it punishes the people already suffering, which makes them suffer more, forcing a downward spiral that is almost impossible to get out of. All from a perceived moral failing.

The US is pretty cruel to its citizens. It's not overtly, in-your-face cruel like historical regimes, but still cruel, none the less.

I have not done much traveling, but Americans seem to self-medicate more?

We take way less vacation and have far more financial uncertainty and more bills (more complexity and more to keep track of just to get by), so our background level of stress is probably higher on average than in, say, most Western European states.

There may be other reasons that affect it more, but I'd fully expect that to be enough to result in more self-medication, all else being equal.

Actual medication and healthcare services (especially mental healthcare) are not always affordable or accessible in the US. Recreational drugs are everywhere though, so plenty of people turn to them for whatever degree of relief those drugs can provide.

As someone who now does suffer from chronic pain due to abdominal adhesions post-pancreatic trauma and having had issues with depression in the past, I'll take the adhesions.

At least I can take a pill to get some relief on occasion. People understand.

Your description and analogy is dead on.

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