Still, small voice of calm
The novelist Martin Amis has called for euthanasia booths on street corners, where elderly people can end their lives with “a martini and a medal”.
The author of Time’s Arrow and London Fields even predicts a Britain torn by internal strife in the 2020s if the demographic timebomb of the ageing population is not tackled head-on.
“How is society going to support this silver tsunami?” he asks in an interview in The Sunday Times Magazine today.
“There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years’ time.”
Read the Sunday Times account here. And the Independent account here.
Labels: Assisted suicide, self-deliverance
posted by Charles Cowling at
16:50
2 Comments:
Martin Amis is eloquent and forthright - and he is looking to stimulate discussion and action over a very important issue, hence the "silver tsunami" and other shocking phrases. (I'd have thought more of a silver pretty slow but very steady landslip,than a tsunami, but no doubt he meant the effects, not the event.) He is not being rude to old farts like me, of course - he is talking about his own generation, and he's a brave man.
No doubt those excellent organisations representing us silverheads will feel they have to condemn his controversial remarks etc etc, but the key issue for me is simply this - if a person wishes to end his/her life, and someone close to him/her wants to help, what business is it of the state's? Surely the freedom to end one's own life is an ultimate freedom.The Greeks and Romans thought so.
"But people may be pressurised by those who seek to gain from their deaths," we are told. None of us is immune from pressure anytime from those who might gain from the consequences of such pressure. Would it not be fairly simple to devise a process and documentation that ensures the suicidee is of sound mind and clear understanding, and that the suicider (i.e. assistant, when needed)is not in fact a murderer, or close to it.We inhibit access to free will and justice by our concern for every possible negative consequence. The lawyer culture.
Bah! Pass me the silver needle, George, I've had enough.
Thank you for that, Gloriamundi. Here's Joan Brady in today's Guardian. The comments do not amount to a tsunami of approval of Mr Amis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/ageing-provocateur-martin-amis
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