Right to die think it is ironic, when we consider history, that in the middle Ages all the most joyful events took place at the cemetery and this scandalized nobody. How different things are today. The attitude of our culture to death, to a large extent, reveals its attitude to life. There is an almost total contradiction of what death means when seen through the eyes of the Religion or seen through the eyes of our world.(Milton D. Heifetz)
Fundamentally, our society sees no meaning in death whatsoever. We live under the idea that the meaning and value of life is within life itself without any reference to anything outside the visible, tangible world. Our gods have become happiness, self-fulfillment, and empowerment. But death is a fact and a fact that even the unbeliever has to face. One reaction has been to cut down on the unpleasantness of death and to minimize its disruptive effects. Society has brought forth the medical practitioner, the funeral director and technology, to make death as painless and unnoticeable as possible.
The medical profession fights death to the limits of its capabilities, sometimes using heroic means to keep the body alive. If this fails, the mortician is called in and carries out what used to be done by the family. A game of pretence takes over as the dying process has moved from the home to the hospital and the funeral parlor. Ironically, in spite of our many achievements in unraveling the mysteries of nature, we are the first civilization in the long history of man to ignore death. What we attempt to do is to humanize death and to make it more palatable, more acceptable as something that is part of the natural process.(Derek...
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