Does the membership give them the "right" to disengage?
Of course people have the right to disengage. Are you next going to make it illegal to be a hermit? People don't have to interact with anyone if they don't want to. Of course, failure to do so has costs, but if the person is prepared to bear them, and doesn't whine about how lonesome he is, how does that get to be society's business?
I have noted several issues that impact the legitimacy question that you have not responded to except to say that it is not.
Which issues are those?
That a person's suicide, or hermithood, affects society? Well, sure it does. And how people dress and eat and drive and manage their properties affect others. But the effect on you of the suicide of the guy who used to jog by your house is pretty trivial when compared to the meaning to him of his existence. Existential determinations are the most private and personal and significant of human considerations. Next would be reproductive determinations, IMO. Those are questions about who we are and even if we are. The relative importance to society is barely worth discussion when compared to their individual salience.
You make the point that some people kill themselves as a hostile act toward others. Well, yes they do. If someone's attempted suicide harms someone else and he lives, then the other party can sue. If he dies, there's hardly any point in making suicide illegal because, as you say, there's no one to punish. Seems to me that the hostile act, if illegal, should be punished but not the suicide attempt, per se. Why does the fact that some jerks make a bloody mess killing themselves to hurt those who find the body compel us to make illegal the suicide of an invalid in unbearable pain.
Re the question of the person who tries suicide and fails, I think you're tying yourself in knots over that one. A citizen who fails in a suicide attempt is no different from one who has not made the attempt. He still has to file with the IRS and he still gets a senior discount at Home Depot if he's old enough. I don't see why you want to put him an a whole 'nother category of humanity. Even though suicide is illegal, we don't indict people for it, so what's the point? Only to make the statement that we, as a society, don't approve and think that people should just bear with whatever life throws at them until God chooses to take them. Well, I heartily disagree. The right to take one's life is the most basic of rights, more basic even than the rights to life, liberty, etc. |
