Death and loss of meaning

TO Ewan S. Goligherauthor of comments Thursday, October 31, 2024

The desire for death with the assistance of a doctor should be understood as a cry of despair, a cry that cannot be ignored. Ignoring this cry denies the worth and worth of the sufferer just as causing his death denies that worth.

Imagine for a moment that you are walking along the edge of a cliff and hear a cry of distress from the edge. Looking over the edge, you see someone clinging to a ledge, hanging precariously, desperately afraid of falling onto the rocks below. Suppose a friend who is with you offers him a large dose of a fast-acting sleeping pill to help him fall asleep and no longer feel fear or anxiety. You can successfully convince both your friend and the person whose life is in danger that it would be useless, unwise and inappropriate to offer or take sleeping pills. But the problem remains: how to actually help them in a moment of danger?

Likewise, even if we successfully argue that physician-assisted death is an inappropriate and unreasonable way to respond to suffering, our task will not be complete. We have failed to truly care for our patients if we hear their cries of despair, their pleas for death, and simply throw our hands in the air to say, “Sorry, it’s wrong of me to end you, so I can’t help you. “Rather, we must find out the reasons for the request; we must understand the fears and pain that lead to such screaming. And we must find a way to come to their aid.

It remains for us to propose a better way for our fellow human beings who find themselves in the crucible of suffering. In many ways, an effective answer to the question “Why?” the question will display “Why not?” the question is controversial. If we can show that medically assisted dying is not necessary at all, if we can show how we can endure the unbearable, then we have come a very long way towards solving this problem. Answers to the question “Why not?” thus, in fact, secondary questions compared to the search for a deep solution to the question “Why?” question.

What kind of solution is this? How do we help others endure their suffering? Is there salvation from despair?

Get our latest news for FREE

Sign up to receive a daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

Find a reason to live

Nietzsche, always an astute observer of the human condition, said that “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — how it can become unbearable. We humans crave meaning; deprived of this, we die. Without meaning and purpose, our existence seems futile, absurd and unbearable. French playwright and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus famously stated, “There is only one truly serious philosophical problem—suicide.” By this he meant that “the judgment of whether life is worth living or not is tantamount to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

For what reason do we fight against the “slings and arrows of furious fate”? Why not just leave quietly? For some reason we want to live, although we cannot always understand why.

Few have written more insightfully about the deep human need for meaning and purpose than Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the horrors of several Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Frankl’s parents, wife and brother died in the camps at the hands of the Nazis; he alone survived. Frankl wrote movingly about his experience of the Holocaust in the international bestseller entitled Man in search of meaning. In this work, Frankl talks about the power of meaning to withstand unimaginable suffering. He became convinced that his survival in the camps and that of his fellow prisoners depended on them finding some purpose for their existence, even though their Nazi captors did everything they could to make their lives seem completely meaningless. and unbearable. Meaning, he argues, is necessary for survival.

Any attempt to restore the inner strength of man in the camp had to first lead to the achievement of some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how,” could become the guiding motto of all (mental health) efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, it was necessary to give them a “why” – a purpose – for their lives, to strengthen them so that they could endure the terrible “how” of their existence. Woe to the one who saw no more meaning in his life, no purpose, no meaning and therefore no reason to continue. He soon became lost.

Frankl emphasized the deadly consequences of losing meaning. “Those who know how close the connection is between the state of a person’s soul – his courage and hope, or lack thereof – and the state of his body’s immunity, will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have deadly consequences. effect.” Frankl founded an influential school of psychotherapy that used the discovery of meaning (he called it logotherapy) as the basis for restoring and maintaining mental health.

Frankl was not alone in his observations. Prominent Canadian psychiatrist and palliative care researcher Harvey Max Chochinov described the central role that meaning and purpose play in maintaining a sense of personal worth in patients with terminal illnesses. He and his team surveyed more than 200 end-of-life patients admitted to palliative care units to find out what factors influenced their sense of personal dignity in the face of impending death. Patients identified key factors that undermined their sense of dignity, such as being treated disrespectfully, feeling burdened, losing control of life, or feeling like they had no lasting contribution to the world. Of all the concerns expressed, the factor that best predicted loss of dignity was “the feeling that life no longer has meaning or purpose.” The authors conclude: “Clearly, creating a sense of meaning or purpose as a way to prevent feeling like a burden and no longer feeling worthy of respect is a cornerstone of dignity-preserving care.”

This study confirms Frankl’s observations about those who struggle to survive in the face of death. The instinct for life and the desire to live depend on a sense of meaning and purpose.

---

Originally published in the Worldview Bulletin.