Society, not science, defines minimal quality of life

The old. The disabled. The disturbed. The befuddled. The annoying and the forgettable. When we… The old. The disabled. The disturbed. The befuddled. The annoying and the forgettable. When we legislated these people equal treatment, did we excuse ourselves from any real obligation to them?

I’m sure there are guidelines that determine who among us can be trusted to roam free. I don’t know how they decide that someone is too limited to function without assistance, but I do know that the rules and enforcement system in place aren’t working too well. And, I’m not sure they can.

Guaranteeing wheelchair access on buses and preventing discriminatory practices intended to keep senior citizens from working are fine things. We ought to ensure that people have the right to live as they choose, despite what fate or age may do to them. And those who choose to fight through their disabilities and live as “normal” a life as possible are evidence that the human spirit hasn’t overdosed on information.

But the 70-year-old man who bagged my groceries and dropped the last lady’s bag of vegetables into my cart wasn’t fighting. He was stranded. The white-haired man in the diner who yelled at another customer, “My father invented Teflon! What did your father invent?” had clearly crossed the line from eccentric to unwell.

When I worked at the mall back home, there was mentally disabled man who came every day from open to close. If a new employee anywhere in the mall let him buy something with his $5, he had no food for the day.

Science can prolong life and the government can try to protect it, but the responsibility for defining a minimal quality of life lies with society. Our values spring from the writings of sages and philosophers who lived before antibiotics. We assume that their understandings carry over to our world with Saturday morning cartoons that use the term “Recombinant DNA.” We make that assumption because ethical and spiritual revolutions take longer to alter the mass’s lives than do technological breakthroughs.

The lag between our ethics and our technology is growing, and the rate at which it grows is accelerating. The questions raised by Aldous Huxley and even Frank Herbert are becoming less hypothetical — or symbolic — every day. We may not long have the luxury of resting on an increasingly out-of-date belief structure. And, if we don’t actively define a new one in response to changing conditions, who knows what kind of society will be spawned by combining nanotechnology and a literal reading of Deuteronomy.

The first step to making the changes necessary to keep us from the apocalypse, or the far worse fate of state-run nursing homes, is recognizing that throwing the issue to the government isn’t going to solve it. Regardless of whether you believe the government has the ability or even the right to handle such problems, I think we can all agree, it’s not the most efficient organization. Well, except when it’s devouring our rights.

I’m inclined to offer up caring for each of our own families despite age and disease as a panacea for all such social problems. And while there may be a synergistic effect, the truth is that there are too many shattered families for such a solution to help all those who’ve slipped between the official definitions of functional and requiring institutionalization.

So for now, don’t sit in the front of the buses. Reach out to that estranged relative who’s starting to rot. And, carefully consider how automatically you react to new technologies and old tragedies.

Euthanize 20th century sensibilities with Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu.