WHEN LIFE BECOMES UNLIVEABLE, who are you going to call? A friend? A doctor? A priest?
In the transition from the Christian to the liberal notion of property, we no longer belong to God, with all the concomitant demands to look after ourselves. On the contrary, we belong only to ourselves, and thus can dispense with ourselves as we see fit. No more bonds, duties, obligations or higher values. No more worrying about eternal damnation, and no obligation to be grateful for the gift of life either.
We live in the era, not only of the fully administered life, as Max Horkheimer put it, but of the total bureaucratising of death. In this vision of the world, suicide is simply one more thing to check off the list.
In his 1974 critique of modern medicine Medical Nemesis, Ivan Illich declares that “In every society the dominant image of death determines the prevalent concept of health.” What today does death resemble? A lonely pill.
If, we might still idly dream of a gentle death in bed, at home, surrounded by loved ones after a life well lived, today the reality of death contains an unbearable coldness: unfamiliar surroundings, an
