MovieChat Forums > Soylent Green (1973) Discussion > Is the suicide center in our futures

Is the suicide center in our futures

posted 11 years ago by jeffyoung1
14 replies | jump to latest

You never forget SOYLENT GREEN once watched. It stays in your memory. Every time you sit down to a good meal with everything, meat, potatoes, rice, vegetables, bread, butter, dessert; you keep wondering if you'll enjoy that twenty, thirty, or forty years from now?

The suicide center is a traumatic memory of the movie. As the years progress, older people seem to garner less and less value in modern society. Older people are beginning to be seen as more and more of a drain on society. Old age, at least in America, is beginning to look more and more as something to dread, not look forward to as in the ancient agricultural days. Yet I wonder if even that wasn't more romantic notions. People lived shorter lives not that long ago.

I am afraid that something like the voluntary suicide center is in our future. It's still repellent to think about, but I know, given the current political climate and the government and political party in power that anything like this is possible even if falsely and deceptively couched in the facade of being, "...good for people and society". Remember that even Hitler and Stalin got their infamous, murderous ways by doing it in the 'good of the people'. Anybody who disagreed was suppressed in one way or another.

The awful thing was, assisted suicide in the movie was conducted with the utmost civility and dignity to the suicide applicant. Those people looked for the most part that their short time in the suicide center was their most pleasant in their hellish lives of poverty, pollution, food scarcity, lack of decent housing and sanitation. It's unacceptable for a more or less able bodied person in the prime of life to visit that suicide center, but what about an elderly, sickly, person who faces little to no quality of life left, if that would turn out to be a future you or me? Would we even think about doing something like that in our elderly years? It's still awful to to think about.

[–] contradad-1 10 years ago

A recent article mentioned a new law in Switzerland allowing the elderly (who are not terminally ill) to end their lives.
More and more States in the U.S. are allowing or considering assisted suicide. I think it is just a question of time.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

I don't find it repellant at all, providing that the government is not coercing people into using the suicide centers. I'm from Oregon, whose voters twice voted in favor of physician-assisted suicide. I'm all for it. If anyone over the age of 21 decides to end it all, not only should the state not interfere, but it should rather provide the means for those who cannot afford the service. And a service it is, and more than a service.

There is a completely stupid and pitifully human notion that "all life is sacred". Existence, of course, testifies otherwise. Humans, like all other life, get hurt, get sick, get old, and die. Thus there is no support from existence or nature for the "all life is sacred" myth.

In one sense, the human ability to "just say no" to biological imperatives, and more to the point, to just say no to the myriad, lethal slings and arrows that life deals out to helpless sentient beings, is the only true human freedom. I would never respect or take the advice of Life Crusaders who insist that others die horribly of the protracted effects of injuries and diseases.

I cannot imagine a more degrading condition than the condition of slavery that Life Crusaders wish to impose on the rest of society ... slavery, for example, to terminal cancer.

For any person to stand idly by and watch cancer devour it him/her alive, but being afraid to break the Life Crusader Code and opt for suicide, is a true slave. A slave to a stupid myth; a slave to a non-sentient, mindless, insensate killer disease which, if not stopped by suicide, will extract the very last drop of agony from the slave-victim. To permit the disease to torture and kill one is a passivity so debased that it is virtually sub-human. The only dignified way to just say no is to kill the body-host, and therefore the disease before it "comes to term"; to cheat the killer illness of its ultimate victory.

So three cheers for doctor-assisted suicide and the development of suicide centers ... and to the ultimate human freedom.

[–] jeffyoung1 10 years ago

This is such an emotional, spiritual, ethical, moral, and theological issue for which there is not even a thinkable solution.

Some human beings are endowed with the gift of old age, that is, they will live out a long life with their minds intact and the ability to walk around and care for themselves. Unfortunately, this group of humans is but a small segment of humanity. Most of humanity is still genetically and biologically targeted for short lives to end in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. But modern medicine and medical technology has thwarted Mother Nature's plan to end the lives of those humans who would have typically passed on between age 40 and 70. Now humans are living past their individually, genetically-programmed lifespan, but in misery of dementia, loss of mobility, and a host of physiccally debilitating ailiments. A healthy 70-year old should not contemplate suicide. A phycially-capable and mentally-sound person should not contemplate suicide. But for those bed-ridden in poor health and suffering demential, prolonging life is pointless if it means agony, pain, suffering, and loss of humanity. It's difficult for Christians to contemplate because we are taught that this might be God's test of humanity's faith and trust in Him that we live as long as our bodies allow us to, whatever the circumstances. Suicide is still a mortal sin, not including self-sacrifice to save someone else's or some other people's lives. Being shut away in such elderly storage facilities is a terrible way to contemplate one's supposed, golden years. That is a myth we pass on each generation to give people a reason to keep going on with life.

[–] mccarthystuart 10 years ago

I couldn't agree more, Jeffyoung. Losing independence in old age has become one of my greatest fears, recently.
Quite a few members of our family have died through ill-health at a relatively young age. There's an aunt of ours
who is in her early-70's who is completely bedridden, and can hardly breathe without a respirator. (To be fair, this
is mostly self-inflicted.) if I ever end up in such a state if and when I reach that age, I would seriously consider
suicide, myself!

So this is how liberty dies-with thunderous applause?

[–] TerraFirma69 10 years ago

I'm from Oregon, whose voters twice voted in favor of physician-assisted suicide.

The fact it was voted in twice suggests it was quashed at least once. May I ask if it ever became law? Or was it voted in twice and thwarted twice?

I like the rest of your post too, but this much common sense is unpalatable to way too many people.

...then whoa, differences...

[–] Edward_de_Vere 10 years ago

The medical profession is so obsessed with prolonging life today that it gives little regard to the quality of life. Sure, people are living much longer today - which means that people who would have died while still able to take care of themselves often now persist in semi-vegetative states of senile dementia, or are so physically incapacitated that they're bedridden in their final years. To what end?

Is voluntary euthanasia for people who are still of sound mind really worse than the indignity of keeping somebody alive for years with advanced Alzheimer's? Seems to me that the former is a more dignified and humane way to go, especially for someone at the early stages of physical and/or mental degeneration who is still able to make the decision.

In Soylent Green the euthanasia seems monstrous not because voluntary suicide per se is bad, but rather because there is an element of encouragement on the part of the government (and of course because the bodies are harvested and rendered to food afterwards)! There's also the fact that Sol chose death not because he was terribly ill, but because he was tired of life and what society had become.

[–] jeffyoung1 10 years ago

Good reply. While you share my opinions and feelings, we both have no solution. The Roman Catholic Church condemned Brittany Maynard's assisted suicide two weeks ago as a mortal sin. The Church was careful not to condemn the woman but rather to condemn the suicide act itself. You also raise the valid point of once a person suffers dementia, they cannot make a fully legal, legitimate decision to terminate their own lives via assisted suicide. I tend to think most people secretly agree that death is preferable to an old age of debilitation and/or dementia.
I remember my mom's former boss, decades ago. The woman was 92 and energetic and active. She was witty and intelligent and very much still full of life and vitality. One morning, at the age of 94, her lifeless body was discovered by relatives on her kitchen floor. While passing away in bed would have been more dignified, still her passing was something to be envied and congratulated by billions of us who would love to live out old age like that and one day, just quickly and painlessly let go and pass on.

[–] scarlettsdad 10 years ago

Frankly, my thought every time I see this film is, "What a nice way to go." In Sol's world of poverty, overpopulation and unbreathable air, why should he want to continue to live? What's the purpose of staying alive accomplishing for a 70yo man? When Sol was talking to the other elderly people before he made his decision, one woman says, "What God, Mr. Ruth? Where will we find Him?" Sol answers, "Perhaps at home." He made his choice in his own way to find God. There are some who consider suicide to be a religious abomination, so they can go ahead and stay "alive" until their end. But I don't agree that their personal beliefs should be pushed on to everyone else. I don't blame Sol one bit in his situation.

[–] me-1523 10 years ago

It probably should be, especially for the terminally ill.

Better to go out with dignity than to be a financial drain on your friends and family, stricken with a debilitating disease that won't let you enjoy life ever again.

Medical science has prolonged life -- increased the quantity. But it can't do anything about the quality, and all of us must some day make the decision about when it's time to go. To hold out until the very end via feeding tubes and breathing machines is simply greedy.

[–] chiluvr1228 10 years ago

Seems to me if a woman can chose to kill her unborn baby because it's "her" body then she should be allowed to off herself also. After all it's "her" body.

[–] creatorof2002 10 years ago

it seems like euthanasia centers might be used by unhappy YOUNG people too, and not just terminally ill but people who are depressed or lost their job or their wife left them etc.

A lot of people who are feeling suicidal hold off because it can be hard to kill yourself but if someone else can do it for you its pretty tempting.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] TheBoz 9 years ago

Euthanasia has already been used by greedy heirs to hasten the receipt of their large inheritance. To paint a weepy picture of people suffering with something like Cancer and say that they should have a way out, they do. Nobody is stopping them from pulling the trigger, cutting the wrists, throwing the plugged in hair dryer into the bathtub. All quick and painless. But considering how Euthanasia is just an part of the social engineering that sick leftists keep experimenting on using the average Joe on the street as the lab rat. Its a dangerous precedent.

[–] jim-85613 8 years ago

I think the suicide centers are a great idea. Very humane