TAW122
Emissary of the right to die.
- Aug 30, 2018
- 6,883
Not limited to existentialgoof's posts, but there are many pro-lifers who attempt to troll, derail, attack, gaslight, and/or otherwise try to discredit him; there are many examples of pro-lifers trying to justify the infringement of civil liberties (especially negative liberty rights – like the right to die) as appropriate or acceptable even though it is not. So in this thread, I will present my argument that rebuts their claim of temporary (or sometimes permanent) infringement of another person's negative liberty rights WRT to the right to die.
Before I proceed, first off, the most basic and root of pro-lifers' argument is (no surprise) that life has value (and similar sentiments arguments – basically life is valuable as some unfalsifiable axiom) and that people who don't like that (along with all the negatives that come with existence, sentience, and the nature of life itself, including upkeep, suffering, and non-consensual contract that is imposed from conception/birth) is considered irrational, not of sound mind, and then relegated to the status of a child as well as being stripped of one's right to make decisions.
So here are some quotes that try to justify the infringement of negative liberty rights and they are quite despicable and barbaric. See quotes below (the text in green are the ones that pro-lifers said while the text in red are the rebuttals by existentialgoof)
Note: If you continue to follow the chain of comments, you can see how the pro-lifer tries to justify their position on infringement of rights for someone who is deemed 'mentally ill' or 'irrational' as acceptable.
Disclaimer: There are many more examples I can give but these will be sufficient for this thread, but basically it just shows how out of touch with reality that pro-lifers (including the misconceptions) on the right to die and yet they fervently deny it, resort to insults and petty jabs to discredit, silence, censor anyone who don't agree nor share their views.
My rebuttal to this is, if pro-lifers are okay with doing that, how would they feel if someone or some third party decided to (on their own arbitrary value) dictate, infringe, and govern their lives as they (the third party or someone else) sees fit? I'm willing to claim that pro-lifers would not tolerate even one iota of such infringment, let alone many! They are not only hypocritical themselves for wanting to govern and rule over others who don't share their same values, but are also sadistic as they believe that the infringement of dissidents and others who don't share the same values should be indefinitely restricted in making one's own decisions with regards to one's own life (including the cessation of one's own life on one's own terms).
Additionally, pro-lifers like to strawman (see this example chain of thread where the user MGD109 tries to shift the argument from bodily autonomy and concern trolling to seeking help via coping) and misrepresent the argument or even shift the argument into something different to evade whatever point is being addressed/argued (just like how religious apologists do when cornered), it's infuriating, however, this is for another thread. Anyways, back to on topic, I figured that I rebut this argument since I had some good retorts to use against pro-lifers and if anyone is unfortunate enough to encounter pro-lifers who try to justify unwarranted infringement of negative liberty rights, then they could bring up similar examples and turn the argument BACK unto the pro-lifers.
Before I proceed, first off, the most basic and root of pro-lifers' argument is (no surprise) that life has value (and similar sentiments arguments – basically life is valuable as some unfalsifiable axiom) and that people who don't like that (along with all the negatives that come with existence, sentience, and the nature of life itself, including upkeep, suffering, and non-consensual contract that is imposed from conception/birth) is considered irrational, not of sound mind, and then relegated to the status of a child as well as being stripped of one's right to make decisions.
So here are some quotes that try to justify the infringement of negative liberty rights and they are quite despicable and barbaric. See quotes below (the text in green are the ones that pro-lifers said while the text in red are the rebuttals by existentialgoof)
(bigjoeandphantom3O9)Once again, seek help. You very clearly don't want to do this, hence why you have been posting about the issue for years. I'm going to stop replying because you don't seem to be in a good headspace and I have no desire to encourage that. That said, you are wrong to think you are being denied some fundamental right when what you are discussing can be done by more or less anyone freely.
(existentialgoof 1)Not surprising that you'd finish on an insult and an attempt to gaslight, given that your entire justification for this is assuming that anyone who disagrees with you isn't mentally competent to be allowed to handle their own affairs. The entire rationale for the paternalistic government interventions that you support directly contradicts the claim that suicide is freely available to anyone; and you even reference the fact that not having the legal right to the best suicide methods means that there will be many failed attempts.
(breckenridgeback)Let me ask you a question, based on your post history: have you ever tried an antidepressant? I was on one that worked only very briefly, and it changed my life. You should try it, if you haven't - what do you have to lose?
Note: If you continue to follow the chain of comments, you can see how the pro-lifer tries to justify their position on infringement of rights for someone who is deemed 'mentally ill' or 'irrational' as acceptable.
(existentialgoof 2)Firstly, whilst antidepressants do work for some, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that they only tend to work at better than placebo levels for the severely depressed (which I do not feel that I am one) and only tend to work even in those cases over the short term. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325767#Why-the-doubt?
Secondly, my mood with respect to life conditions doesn't seem unbearable to me. To "medicate away" my anguish about the fact that I don't have control over whether I choose to continue living my own life (whether my life, in fact, belongs to me) isn't something that I think is viable anyway, but I also don't think that it would be worth the side effects, even if I could be medicated into a state where I'm kind of alright with the fact that the government owns my body and will force me to continue enduring this life, even if I become severely disabled, or become unable to meet the economic requirements to sustain my own existence, or if I have a job that I can't tolerate and can't find a better one, and so on. Thirdly, I categorically refuse to engage with any kind of authority which designates me as belonging to a political underclass that is unworthy of a full bill of rights as an adult (including the right to end my existence) without having to provide robust empirical proof in order to justify any move to take away my autonomy. Rather than how it works at present, whereby they can't prove that you don't have the capacity, so you're presumed incompetent and never get the chance to overturn that presumption, because there's no way of falsifying the label that has been assigned to you.
(brutokurvs)Living life is not torture, it is not slavery, and it is not prison.
If you think it is, we should start looking at your mental health
(existentialgoof 3)Not surprising that you would resort to slurs in order to discredit me, when that's what your entire argument is based on - labelling someone in an incredibly stigmatising way (that also happens to be completely unfalsifiable) so that even if they attempt to object to the label and to their treatment, none of their protestations will be taken seriously.
Have you ever taken 2 minutes out of your life to imagine how it would feel if you were the one on the receiving end of this treatment? If you were the one who was suffering unbearably and people were actively conspiring against you to make sure that the suffering wouldn't end?
Disclaimer: There are many more examples I can give but these will be sufficient for this thread, but basically it just shows how out of touch with reality that pro-lifers (including the misconceptions) on the right to die and yet they fervently deny it, resort to insults and petty jabs to discredit, silence, censor anyone who don't agree nor share their views.
My rebuttal to this is, if pro-lifers are okay with doing that, how would they feel if someone or some third party decided to (on their own arbitrary value) dictate, infringe, and govern their lives as they (the third party or someone else) sees fit? I'm willing to claim that pro-lifers would not tolerate even one iota of such infringment, let alone many! They are not only hypocritical themselves for wanting to govern and rule over others who don't share their same values, but are also sadistic as they believe that the infringement of dissidents and others who don't share the same values should be indefinitely restricted in making one's own decisions with regards to one's own life (including the cessation of one's own life on one's own terms).
Additionally, pro-lifers like to strawman (see this example chain of thread where the user MGD109 tries to shift the argument from bodily autonomy and concern trolling to seeking help via coping) and misrepresent the argument or even shift the argument into something different to evade whatever point is being addressed/argued (just like how religious apologists do when cornered), it's infuriating, however, this is for another thread. Anyways, back to on topic, I figured that I rebut this argument since I had some good retorts to use against pro-lifers and if anyone is unfortunate enough to encounter pro-lifers who try to justify unwarranted infringement of negative liberty rights, then they could bring up similar examples and turn the argument BACK unto the pro-lifers.