Life: Right or Obligation?

Good question JoeFX. I'm not generally a risk-taker, but I do take measured risks with my life. I drive on icy roads, I speed, I get my neck cracked at my chirpractor's..... I think about dying and I figure, if I do die, then I'm dead, what do I care anymore. I have no husband or children, just a couple pets, very little debt and a bunch of junk. So, I guess I feel that life is more a right than an obligation, but maybe I miss your point. If I had kids or a husband, or otherwise had people's lives twined with mine, I'd see life as more of an obligation.

Life is a right and an obligation? It's not up there.

Why would it be an obligation? By whom are you obligated to live?

For life of course. If there is no life then there probably won't be a you. Of course we don't know that.

Anyways, I don't think that a lot of people really do want to die if they think about it like that.

If you can't decide when to die, then there is no genuine choice at all in the world.

Re: Life: Right or Obligation?
Joe

As Rufio said, the problem is: obligation to whom?
My answer is: if you have someone that depends on you, you have not the moral freedom of killing yourself.
If not, I think you can do with your life what you want.

None of the above. Life is a privilege

The story in the movie (based on a true story) is the quadriplegic person seeks euthanasia because he feels he is not living a worthy life. Because of his condition he needs someone to take care of him, is he obliged to continue living as a payment for the care they have given him in 20+ years?

Cyracuz, then are you saying we have the power to choose when to end it?

Yes Joe, to some extent. I cannot chose that I will die when I'm eighty, because I might be dead already before I reach seventy. But I have the power to say "that's it. Enough" and then kill myself. But then, if I did, it would be evidence that I see life as obligation, wich I don't.

But no one can claim to be alive neither by right or obligation. That would be a bit presumtuous wouldn't it?

Why would the act of killing yourself prove that you see life as an obligation?


It would be presumptous if one believed that life does not belong to us, but to someone other.

If someone's life was intertwined to yours it would be selfish to kill yourself, to some extent. But no one is obliged to live for any reason other than themselves.