A short but important text

Blind man in Belsen, by Alan Moore

The following text is the response I gave to someone who made a comment I consider well-intentioned but misguided. That comment was posted in reaction to my YouTube reading of my essay titled In Defense of Euthanasia. In my view, the person who made the comment did not intend to champion the cliché of the supremacy of the "strong" over the "weak" — a notion so common on the internet nowadays that it has become a scourge affecting presidential elections worldwide, from the United States to Brazil, as well as Argentina and many other countries.

The comment remains visible, and I think that, while misguided, it doesn't stem from malice, quite the opposite. I believe this person's comment comes from a good place, from a place of compassion. Had it been otherwise, had I felt their comment stemmed from a malicious attitude, I wouldn't have bothered to reply seriously. I would have treated them the way I treat so many incels and supremacists with Knights Templar or anime profile pictures: that is, I would have treated them with disdain.

Without further ado, here is my response, though I will took the liberty of modifying it slightly, albeit minimally:

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I completely disagree with your thesis. I say this without making any value judgments about you personally, I don't know you. However, I think you should reconsider your way you think. I will explain why I disagree, perhaps then you will understand that nothing I write or say has anything to do with the notion that "the strong deserve to live while the weak do not," nor with ideas revolving around that concept. I will try to be direct. You claim that strong, "superior" people are those who manage to live without suffering as much, and that, therefore, only they are truly worthy of life. In my view, this is completely mistaken.

Those people you speak of, people who manage to "live easy" without much apparent existential suffering (though it is only apparent), are not superior to anyone, even if they might seem to have an advantage. The reality is this: they are brutes. They go through life with little to no reflection on the "why" of things or the value of existence. Even those who possess considerable intelligence usually have a narrow, albeit useful, kind of intellect (for example, the brilliant, high-earning engineer who proudly claims never to have read a book in his life). No one considers the boorish, uncultured types to be superior. People tend to view the successful engineer, doctor, lawyer, or businessperson as "superior." Yet, they are all on the same level as the boorish, uneducated, uncultured. They are all brutes, except for those who do, in fact, reflect on life (and in that case, even the uncultured, uneducated boorish fellow could not be considered a brute by my definition).

No one is superior simply because they "do not suffer", not least because, in real terms, such a thing does not exist. On the surface, yes, life might be a total disaster, yet those "brutes" I speak of will simply carry on. But it is not that they don't suffer. They suffer like hell too, often even more than we do. In fact, the vast majority of those who commit suicide are people of this sort, people who reflect little or nothing on life, given that brutes (and those not far removed from brutishness) make up the vast majority of the human race. That is why Cioran wrote something, somewhat jokingly, that can be paraphrased as: "only optimists take their own lives." Of course, it is not only optimists who take their own lives. But I would bet everything I have that pessimists commit the act less frequently than those who affirm life.

And here is the crucial point: the majority of us, including most of those living in wretched conditions amidst war, poverty, disease, and so forth, consists of brutes, or people not far removed from a brutish state, precisely because we go about our daily lives without reflecting on anything beyond our material and physiological needs. It is no wonder that the vast majority of people outsource the metaphysics they subscribe to, buying it from charlatans, multimillionaire preachers, and the like. Under the worldview your thesis relies on — one that deems certain people "superior" simply because they manage to live without (apparently) suffering — a figure like that pastor Valadão of the Lagoinha Church would certainly qualify as a prime example of a "superior individual." But, forgive me, there is no universe in which I or any sane person would view him as superior, at least not in the sense we are discussing here. Of course, if we are talking about him being a brilliant businessman capable of selling a non-existent product at an exorbitant price, then we could say he is an expert, far ahead of the rest of us. Otherwise, no.

Having said all that, I do not mean to imply that I am superior simply because I am a pessimist. In a way, I envy those who are not pessimists because, as I see it, they do not have their eyes open to the grim reality that sentient existence is akin to a torture camp and a forced labor camp — and all without rhyme or reason. Yet, my envy vanishes when I recall that I, too, was once like that. I was one of those "brutes" I speak of. For years, I viewed and described myself as an optimist, as someone who loved and affirmed life without question. And I remember very well that I suffered far more back when I was a life-affirmer than I do now as a pessimist. There is simply no comparison. My life, though far from perfect today, underwent a radical transformation once my eyes were opened. It changed from water to wine, so to speak.

Ultimately, no one is superior, inferior, and so on. Some are simply less unlucky than others, because some are wealthier (for a time) and some are healthier (for a time). Some do not die dismembered or from a terrible, painful disease. Some die while sedated, in the comfort of a bed. That is, in fact, a good thing for them. If only we all had that right — to die sedated and comfortable. That is what professor Célia Maria Cassiano fought for, and I am very happy she succeeded in undergoing euthanasia in Switzerland. But, in the end, we are all indeed in the same torture and forced labor camp that is sentient existence, without knowing for sure what tomorrow will bring. Our only certainty is that, at some point, life ends.

by Fernando Olszewski