Zoned Out: Belonging

Bookshelves - the ones that actually have books - are a luxury for an itinerant. It doesn't matter that one stays in the same place for decades, all the while feeling uprooted. Not to trivialize the travails of the incarcerated but one wonders if they ever develop a sense of homely attachment to their prison cells.

On Canada's MAID service

Note: Left this as a comment for a video on Canada's euthanasia laws (added here)

I hope that at some point this becomes a philosophical issue primarily and then sociological (socio-political to lesser extent still). That is: should one have the ‘right’ to end their life whenever they choose to and treat everything as irrelevant, incidental externalities (excepting direct, tangible harm to another/others in the process)? If the answer is yes, then the next obvious question is if the State should offer that as a service? (For the ardent free market capitalist, the question is: should there be licensed private players who provide this service?)

Why is the State or the private players required to assess the underlying circumstances/causes that led to this ‘service request’? Beyond the basic assessment to ensure one is of ‘legally sound’ mind all other questions should be moot. It's not like they can cite and impose purpose to existence (under pain/distress or not).

Most societies – I say most and not all just as an academic qualifier – follow an action-consequence model with some caveats to assess the magnitude of both cause and effect. Poverty is often the cause of crime but crimes have legal consequences regardless of underlying circumstances. Mental distress is often why someone snaps at their boss but they are fired still. Drunkenness is often why someone engages in a brawl but their face gets pounded anyway. I can cite numerous examples where we aren’t concerned about the ‘underlying circumstances’ and just deliver the consequences. And these consequences -- be it jail time, suspension, probation, a scar in the forehead etc. -- are all irreversible in their own way just as death is.

Sure, lets work on poverty alleviation, ensuring there’s near-equal access to all primary services (education, security, healthcare, legal-aid etc.) but let’s not conflate that with what is fundamentally a philosophical question.