By: Borut Korun
Europe and our relationship to life and death is the result of a cultural evolution that arose from Christian and ancient foundations. The essence of Christian doctrine is represented by the ten commandments of God, the fifth of which reads: Do not kill! I will quote Hippocrates from antiquity. In his oath it is written: I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panakia… that I will never – even if he asks me – prescribe deadly drugs to anyone or lead him to such a thought with advice…
I know that both in antiquity and in the Christian era they also killed, that there were wars, that they enslaved people, burned witches and the like. This happened and many bad things are still happening. We are always on edge. But what is essential is the healthy core of our civilisation, not its deviations. Thanks to this healthy core, we have always found the right path so far. In the Western world, we have abolished the death penalty, we avoid war conflicts, if possible, we condemn all cruelty. We do not chop off arms and legs, we do not throw people off minarets because they are gay. We do not allow cruelty to animals either. We also try to understand criminals – sometimes even too much. We have become a humane society because the core of our civilisation is humane. This basic principle has been shaken several times and certain social phenomena have threatened these foundations: national socialism, communism and now – a sociological contagion that may threaten the whole world – cultural Marxism. In Slovenia, we are witnessing a real tsunami of the destruction of the postulates of our society – the destruction of the family, its relativisation, the attack on the symbols of independence and now the attack on our understanding of life and death. It is an effort to legalize euthanasia – that is, assisted suicide.
At first glance, the legislators appear to be driven by humanitarian goals. Some people actually suffer unknown torments, and maybe someone even wishes to die, to end the suffering. But for every such individual, there are 1,000 of them who do not want to die, who hope to the end, who prefer to suffer rather than disappear into nothingness.
Of course, the drafters of this law do not think about humanism, about understanding the suffering, about helping those who have lost all hope. They do such a deviation from civilisation on purpose, you know, it is part of their agenda to destroy this world and its foundations. They are destroying our foundations.
It is because of Hippocrates, who of course was not lonely in his time, that it is clear to everyone that the doctor will help you at any moment, that they will do everything to keep you alive. In the doctor’s hands, trusting in his humane and humanitarian goals, we place our fate when we are at our worst, when an accident happens to us, or we are attacked by a serious illness. This is how we feel and trust now.
What would be the consequences of a legal decision where the role of the doctor would change so drastically?
“Assistance with suicide” would require the decision of the sufferer, but the act itself would tarnish the doctor, nullify his special mission, his special social position, and above all, it would significantly affect the relationship between the patient or casualty and the doctor.
Let’s just think about everything that circulated and is still circulating on the Internet and among people about vaccination, what stories about a global conspiracy against humanity arose because of a vaccine against a disease that threatened to become a new plague. And what will people think, write, and say, what will their overheated heads invent, if doctors can actually end our lives?
They help you for a while until it pays off, they will start talking, and then they kill you. Who else will want to be sent to the hospital? Who else will believe that doctors will go out of their way to use the most expensive drugs, when necessary, when you are old and sick? And a doctor will sometimes really think if it is still worth the effort when he is close to using the last medicine – euthanasia. Even doctors are only human after all. As history teaches us, humans have often slipped over the edge of civilisation.
It is precisely for this reason that we must have absolute untouchable civilisational principles, which are the axiom of our conduct and action. If we devalue them, if everything is relative, we will again find ourselves in barbarism.
*Inscription on a banner at a protest gathering of pensioners in Ljubljana