The Blackberry Walk

Yesterday saw the legalisation of euthanasia in the United Kingdom. The bill was passed through parliament by but a slim majority. The greatest moral minds of the kingdom made the courageous decision to allow the terminally ill to kill themselves with the assistance of a doctor, a move which, to lay out my cards, I disagree with. In this article, I want to touch on a few things: first the political angle, and then the moral angle. This first section, the political angle, will be brief. I was of course being tongue-in-cheek labelling our parliamentarians as our nation's greatest moral minds - they are far from it. Listening to their argumentation in parliament, listening to their speeches, you get the impression that these people are frankly stupid, that they haven't read a book in their lives, and that they aren't the well bred, well trained specimens that led the country in the past. And, most importantly, that they aren't equipped to make these moral decisions for the country. In part, this is because politicians are paid so little. All the skilled elites move into tech and into banking, not into politics. There is no money in politics. The main payment for politics is the power and the prestige tagged to the job, but today even the prestige is lacking. Politicians are looked down upon with contempt, not just because they aren't the greatest specimens, but because they're constantly lying. Johnson, who campaigned to reduce immigration, brought it to its highest levels. The public eye is forever watching, watching their lies, and their incompetence. These aren't the people to be making moral judgements. The Lords, who after the Blairite reforms are without power, might've been in a better position to make such judgements; but not the Commons. Kim Leadbeater, the leader of the euthanasia movement in parliament, mentioned in her victory speech that it was unusual for parliament to vote on moral issues. Which is a crying shame. Not just that parliament isn't primarily concerned with the moral health of the people, but that they don't consider the laws they pass on a daily basis to be concerned with morality! Every law passed is by nature underpinned by morality. That the rich should be taxed more than the poor reflects a moral position; so too is something as small as choosing one Small Modular Reactor supplier over another. Every decision is underpinned by a moral choice. But enough of politics, the real question is if it is moral to kill yourself - or at least have yourself killed. But when enquiring into any point of moral contention, you have to drill deeper. Beneath the top-soil of most discussions on morality, exists a hard bedrock which must be exposed before it can be penetrated. And for most, once you dig at them a bit with questions, the bedrock revealed is: "because it's their choice". "Because it's their choice, and they aren't hurting anyone, they should be able to do what they like", is the bedrock of most people's morality. There are some caveats of course, like the magic age of eighteen, whereupon people spontaneously develop agency; but otherwise most conversations on morality hit this wall of "because I want to". Where this axiom came from can be speculated upon. It could be J. S. Mill and his Utilitarian theories, or it could be later with the '60s, and the hippies. It doesn't really matter. After all, there is a dark, unmapped forest between theoreticians and common psychology, and the paths through aren't always clear. But no matter where the idea started, it manages to permeate all modern discourse on morality. Once someone says to you in an argument, "but it's their choice", with a smug snarl, as if they just performed a Mortal Kombat-style finishing move, they will consider the argument over. Push any further, and they'll look at you quite distrustingly, as if you are an alien, with an alien morality, and shouldn't be associated with, lest they catch your thought contagion. And they are quite right to be afraid. Once the nudity of the lie of the sovereign self is revealed, understood, and digested, it's hard to return to the cave, and believe in truly free will. Free will debates, whilst we're on the topic, is one topic of popular debate which greatly irritates me. The dichotomy is posed between complete free will, where every action is consciously chosen, and determinism, where the body is an automaton carrying out genetic orders. And neither are true. Anyone with a moment of introspection will understand we have limited free will, not absolute free will, nor absolutely no free will. We make choices all the time, but there are heavy weights tying us down, leading us astray. We want to make good decisions, yet we fail, continually, and sin. An absolute king is said to be sovereign because every decision made for the nation is his decision. If a man is to be punished, and his head is to be chopped off, the absolute king doesn't need a court, for on his word a man can be beheaded. If a law is to be enacted, he need merely to pronounce it, and the nation's law-book is amended. That is what it means to be sovereign. Kier Starmer is not sovereign. He exercises a limited power over Britain, a power only afforded to him by votes from the people and loyalty from his parliamentarians. When he wants to pass a law, he has to rely on his party members to vote on his bill. Starmer isn't above the law; the law is above him. Let's say man is about as sovereign over himself as Kier Starmer is sovereign over Britain. There are competing voices, competing interests, from each passion of the flesh, from each worry and doubt, vying for power over a decision. To make a decision, a firm and absolute decision, is a difficult thing. One must be strong, and command loyalty over his passions, and take no heed to the jeering of the opposition bench, those devils on your shoulders, tempting you to sin. Maintaining that strength is hard. And that strength is hardest for the weakest of us. And I'd say those suffering from chronic pain and terminal conditions are some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society. Are those suffering so grievously able to make a decision not tainted and tinged by those devils on their shoulders? Are they able to ignore the Thanatotic passions pulling them towards the earth? The argument is made, all would agree, for the suicidal. We tell them they shouldn't succumb to these passions or devils, and that they shouldn't kill themselves. Their suicidal tendencies is a syndrome, a set of symptoms - at root a label. They are depressed, hate their life, and want to end it - so too do those who want to be euthanised. All that's different is how much we judge their lives to be worth - isn't all life invaluable? What's the difference but the label? Both the suicidal and these terminally ill patients want to end their lives, whatever 'want' means. It's just their choice, after all. As if they can make the choice! As if every thought and feeling we have is authentically our own! As if we don't have a responsibility to protect our neighbours! We must protect each other from the devils which plague us, and, God willing, the state should protect us also. And yet it has chosen to not, by 23 votes. This feature of man, that we are not sovereign over ourselves, could be said to be the original bedrock of Western morality. And that bedrock of Western morality comes to us by St. Augustine. The Great Schism was in part cleaved by the works of St. Augustine, who the Latins clung to so tightly; and then during the Reformation, it was St. Augustine who Luther and Calvin reinterpreted, directing the moral sail for Western civilisation. It was St. Augustine who said, one must be a servant of God, lest he be a slave to the passions, a line which has stuck with me. The sentiment is a key, a key which unlocks doors to the thought of the past, and to doors barring us in the present, personal hardships, that seemed barricaded. That we are losing this sense of personal weakness to find strength in, this need of repentance for yielding to sinful temptation, is a tragedy. This is the bedrock of the Western mind, that has served us so faithfully, bringing us all this way. Spengler was right in saying the West was witnessing its last days. The moral reality we inhabited, the moral bedrock we stood on, has been beaten for some time by the crashing waves of the sea. Each wave of new thinkers, new adherents, new people, erodes the cliff face bit by bit - and at times, a whole precipice collapses. And in that sea, an island rises. A new culture - perhaps a new Atlantis - flocked to by men in their millions. Will the new culture last, and the old culture crash into the seas of time? I haven't the foggiest. What I do know however, is that the wisdom of the past shouldn't be chortled at, and lost. Man hasn't changed, human nature hasn't morphed. Whatever we believe, human nature, our fallen nature, remains the same. To discard the wisdom of the many generations preceding us will be at our own doom.