When 75 is time to die: the film imagining state-run euthanasia in Japan | Hacker News Reader

When 75 is time to die: the film imagining state-run euthanasia in Japan

theguardian.com

39 pointssandebert24 comments

Open articleView on HN

Choose death or run a 3 hour 33 minute Boston Marathon

https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a43631575/jeann...

We really need to reevaluate “old age”. We’re not all runners but being decrepit at 80 seems avoidable for many.

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/maryland-80-year-old-embarks-on-...

Ed Thorp is still healthy at 90:

https://youtu.be/dzCpUbkC1dg

That’s literally the definition of survivorship bias.

Billions of years of evolution have resulted in you. Survivorship bias^10000

The attention-bait of the movie aside, I think when talking about the challenges with an aging population, it's more useful to understand what the "decay curve" (not trying to make a pun, I'm thinking of capacitor discharge) looks like. If Japan has a life expectancy of 87/81, are people mostly unable to care for themselves and others for the last many years of that, or do they mostly stay healthy and vigorous until near the end. Is there a reason healthy 75 year olds can't take part in caring for the infirm?

> Is there a reason healthy 75 year olds can't take part in caring for the infirm?

Given o lot of people are giving up on marrying/having children, I believe the main reason is (or soon will be) lack of remaining close people in the appropriate age bracket.

> It opens with a radio reporting that a gunman has opened fire in an old people’s care home – the latest in an epidemic of violence targeted at the elderly.

This is… dumb, right? Like it would be extremely unlikely to occur in Japan?

Idk. The film sounds interesting but I really don’t think it needs the implied insidious twists. They author says in the article that they don’t pick a side but… come on. Then why is there a reveal that the government is trying to compel people to do this in a manipulative way?

Not particularly. Not to get too morbid but, the weapon of choice may be suspect but not unrealistic; there have been plenty of attacks on nursing homes and kindergardens in Japan. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagamihara_stabbings

Things like that go under-reported, but there's a reason why terrorists attacks on defenseless institutions like schools (or care homes) are a trope in Japanese media.

Is it? Idk. I feel like Japanese media always shows these disgusting low lifes. There’s always some super perv who wants to take advantage of chaos to try to rape a girl. But… it feels like Japan is the least likely country for this to happen when we look at their examples of what happens when things actually go to shit?

Even this link you have of an insane guy going on a killing rampage has him doing so with seemingly empathetic, good intentions. Both going out of his way to not harm employees and turning himself in.

> In his letter and in statements made after turning himself in, Uematsu explained that he was "saving from unhappiness" both the severely disabled and those who he believed were burdened with maintaining their lives.

Fucked up, but I’d say still orders of magnitude better than the school shooters and racially motivated killings that dominate the US mass murder scene.

By Japanese standards, they are perfectly productive tax payers. Retirement is at least half a decade away. Hell if you are a Japanese politician, 75 is when your career truly takes off.

75? That's generous. On Kaelon II it's 60.

And that episode is what concerns me about euthanasia. On the surface is sounds harmless if some people want to make that decision. But then it becomes so normal to the point that your own family would be upset at you if you didn't go through with it.

I think that within a family it would be a way rarer problem. I'm open to being contradicted, but I believe it's a pretty universal cultural norm for younger generations to take care of older family members when they need it, at least until very recently.

Coerced (even lightly coerced) euthanasia is a feature I associate more with a welfare state, where the state doesn't have enough money to pay to care for everyone, so incentives begin to creep in to convince them to end their lives when the can't be cared for properly by the state. See the Canada example posted in a sibling comment.

> universal cultural norm for younger generations to take care of older family members when they need it,

OP is talking about how the normalization of euthanasia could find snoballing support derived from all sorts of social and economic pressures on the younger generations to reduce the cost burden of the older ones. With the result that once some tipping point has been reached this option becomes an expectation and the cultural norm has changed.

> at least until very recently.

this acknowledgement rather supports his point, long held cultural norms are far more brittle than we think they are. And the old and weak have no economic muscle to defend themselves against this change.

Not like a welfareless state, where you're lucky to be in a class that gets you that far

Example: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/denied-assisted-life-by...

Not a great example. This guy has a severe neurological illness (although to be clear, I don’t think it’s a mental illness affecting his decision making capabilities). The hospital has said he can stay in the hospital, die, or get care at home.

It seems he wants to get care at home at his with the government money spent at his discretion. And they won’t let him do that. So he is suing them for offering death.

The hospital care at home might be shit. But that’s tangential to the issue.

This reminded me a little of Margaret Atwood's "Burn the Dusties" short story which on googling apparently has also been made into a short film:

https://www.filmcoopinc.com/torchingthedusties

That reminds me of the ättestupa scene in Midsommar. Spoiler: not pretty.

George Orwell type shit

Strong Soylent Green vibes too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

https://youtu.be/N_jGOKYHxaQ?t=10

New York City. In the year 2022. Nothing runs any more. Nothing works.

Another part they absolutely nailed.

(Kids those days). Logan's run

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0074812

I don't get the NYC comment.

Definitely more Brave New World or right on the nose of Logan's Run.

A Wild in the Streets fate would be kinder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com