This line of reasoning goes to a dark place. You can't know what makes sense in someone else's life. A heroin addict self-medicating unbearable pain is, to me, a tragic figure deserving help. A morbidly obese person may be suffering from an undiagnosed underlying condition that makes diet and exercise impossible. A smoker may need the stress release.
Should we refuse to treat any injury sustained by the Wright brothers during their experimental flights? Surely that's highly dangerous highly voluntary stuff. Should we refuse to rescue hikers if they become lost or trapped? Should the coast guard never help recreational sailors? Should we have to submit to a proscribed diet exactly to prove we deserve medical care? Should we forgo treatment for tendonitis if it can be shown we ignored known warnings about typing too much?
To me, people are precious, and they lead messy, imperfect lives. They make bad decisions and good ones, and decisions I don't understand. They'll take risks I never would in pursuit of goals I don't see as valuable. Sometimes, when you really get to know someone, a decision that didn't make sense from a distance really starts to. And sometimes people are being self-destructive and there's no more to the story, and sometimes it's something they go through and come out the other side of.
My conviction is to love and help them no matter what.
Sometimes I can't, and that's a different thing, but deciding that someone doesn't deserve help is a level of judgement I don't want and can't justify. Maybe what they were doing really was worth it. I don't know. Even if it's not, it's essential to let people try.
I would find someone else trying to exert this degree of control over my life - requiring me to comply with their particular take on what risks were worth it - suffocating and unbearable. I am sure others feel the same way, about control in areas in which I wouldn't mind it because I happen to already be normal. So I am against it on principle. People need to be people, in all their messy glory. And we should help them if we can, regardless of how they got there. I think the only case in which I would act differently was if I thought letting someone suffer natural consequences was for their best - and I would have to be incredibly sure.
Leaving people to a fatal condition when we could help them is incomprehensible and inhumane to me, and represents a dangerous level of escalating disagreement into dehumanization.
I should clarify that I live in the free world, where healthcare is a right and broadly speaking provided by society. Additional helathcare is of course available on a pay basis. However, to clarify, my comment was in regard to this system.
> Should we refuse to treat any injury sustained by ...
You break it you buy it. Should the state and society in general be expected to shoulder the burdeon for people who chose to put themselves in danger, should 10 people be sent into danger to save the sailor who makes the choice to take on a hurricane?
Who do we save if we can only save 1 person, the heroin addict with a fatal condition we can probably save or the child that would be a flip of a coin?
> My conviction is to love and help them no matter what.
What of the children of the helicopter crew flying into the hurricane to save the lone sailor? No love and help for them? Or the person who doesnt get a bed because it is take up by others?
> I would find someone else trying to exert this degree of control over my life - requiring me to comply with their particular take on what risks were worth it - suffocating and unbearable?
Your choices are other peoples consequences. As a functioning member of society, philosophically you comply with these things on a constant basis, and no doubt demand it of others. It is not a matter of principle, it is simply a question of where the line is. If you have ever complained about anything you have exerted your control over someone elses life.
Sometimes you cannot help everyone and have to make hard choices, but be wary: atrocities don't happen in a vacuum. Behind every historical Red Terror or Holocaust is a narrative, and it almost always goes along these lines: they're a danger to us and they deserve it. Even the eugenicists had a (temporarily) convincing tale.
You cannot rely on "being right this time" to avoid participating in tragedy. The liars are too good. But you can refuse to hate and dehumanize those you are told to.
If you truly believe that medical care is a human right, then you should extend it to every human, regardless of how they wound up in the situation they're in. While you sometimes do have to choose, it is abhorrent to choose the rich over the poor, the socially well-adjusted over the outcasts, ideological friends over ideological foes. The standard we actually use is to do the absolute best you can for everyone you can.
You're right that it doesn't make sense to cause greater harm to avoid lesser, but rationing too quickly, especially from a place of moral judgement rather than medical triage, seems much more likely to be coming from a place of spite than a place of tragic necessity. We take care of enemy soldiers. We take care of people on death row. We take care of people who would see us dead, because this is what civilized and humane people do. If you are quick to deny care to people you perceive as not doing their part, you're coming from a perspective much, much darker than the general thought and ethics of this civilization.
I know everyone is angry and has suffered in the last couple years, and I know everyone wants to fight. There are people running around right now stirring up that anger and trying to direct it at their ideological enemies. By all means, fight for what you think is right. But if you find yourself indifferent to the death of your fellow man or even cheering for it, beware - it may make sense to you right now, but that will be no comfort in five or ten or twenty years if what you wish for comes to pass and you have to remember cheering for it.
Should we refuse to treat any injury sustained by the Wright brothers during their experimental flights? Surely that's highly dangerous highly voluntary stuff. Should we refuse to rescue hikers if they become lost or trapped? Should the coast guard never help recreational sailors? Should we have to submit to a proscribed diet exactly to prove we deserve medical care? Should we forgo treatment for tendonitis if it can be shown we ignored known warnings about typing too much?
To me, people are precious, and they lead messy, imperfect lives. They make bad decisions and good ones, and decisions I don't understand. They'll take risks I never would in pursuit of goals I don't see as valuable. Sometimes, when you really get to know someone, a decision that didn't make sense from a distance really starts to. And sometimes people are being self-destructive and there's no more to the story, and sometimes it's something they go through and come out the other side of.
My conviction is to love and help them no matter what.
Sometimes I can't, and that's a different thing, but deciding that someone doesn't deserve help is a level of judgement I don't want and can't justify. Maybe what they were doing really was worth it. I don't know. Even if it's not, it's essential to let people try.
I would find someone else trying to exert this degree of control over my life - requiring me to comply with their particular take on what risks were worth it - suffocating and unbearable. I am sure others feel the same way, about control in areas in which I wouldn't mind it because I happen to already be normal. So I am against it on principle. People need to be people, in all their messy glory. And we should help them if we can, regardless of how they got there. I think the only case in which I would act differently was if I thought letting someone suffer natural consequences was for their best - and I would have to be incredibly sure.
Leaving people to a fatal condition when we could help them is incomprehensible and inhumane to me, and represents a dangerous level of escalating disagreement into dehumanization.