Judging Kevorkian

(with my journal entry dated March 27, 2012, a Tuesday)

I was channel surfing last night and then I got to HBO and saw an old man trying to get into his car. There was an angry crowd addressing him about religion or spiritual beliefs. And the man said to them, “I, too, have religion! And his name is Bach! Johann Sebastian Bach!” and he got into the waiting car and drove off.

I guess that was the hook for me. J.S. Bach. That spirit who can appease believers and nonbelievers alike.

The movie was “You Don’t Know Jack,” about Dr. Jack Kevorkian who was the rallying figure for the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide in the United States. I think more than the legalization, what he was after was for doctor-assisted suicide to be seen not as some form of murder or homicide or whatever. The word that resonates in my head is “release”—release from the pain and suffering  with as much humanity preserved, what with the patient having been given the choice—the right to decide over his/her life.

All the time I was watching, I was thinking a lot. Arguments for and against the practice in my head. The movie did not present Jack Kevorkian (brilliantly played by Al Pacino) as mad or maniacal. Well, to a certain degree, he was passionate. His arguments are intellectually provocative, coming from a sound mind who also happens to be a poet, artist, and musician (he plays the flute and he played Bach on the flute in the movie).

I think the least I can say about him is that he’s fascinating. He has his faults as much as the next man, or genius, if you may, but I’m thinking the movie was not made for us to side with him or make a stand on the issue. Foremost, I think it was made to make us rethink about life and the liberties (or restrictions) we have over it. I wouldn’t want to be his judge.

Subjective as it may seem, morality, to my mind, is not, and has not always been, an individual decision or acquisition. STANDARDS OF MORALITY ARE ALWAYS MORE THAN THE SELF. You have a sense of right and wrong individually, but somewhere at the back of your mind, you believe you will be judged and that you cannot get away with everything (try as hard as you might to deny it).

Maybe you can defy your neighbors or your loved ones or societal conventions. Or maybe you can even get them to change their minds about you, even side with you. But there will always be your conscience to contend with, a higher power if you will—some guy in robes hovering above each of us, perhaps.

In the end, Dr. Kevorkian was judged and imprisoned based on technicalities (I think). Not that he was “morally” wrong and found guilty, but simply because he broke the law. He deliberately conducted a last doctor-assisted suicide of a patient suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease (if I remember it right), had it videotaped, and then had himself interviewed and the video shown on national television, much to the outrage of conventional society.

By doing so, Dr. Kevorkian thought he could “persuade” the public to see it his way through provocation. But what it all boiled down to was that he broke the law. The US Supreme Court judge said that living in a democracy entitles one the right to have the law “rethought” by discussion, debate, public demonstration, etc., but not by breaking it to provoke public denouncement or approval (or something to that effect). The judge ended the decision with a “No one is above the law” pronouncement, and that was how Dr. Kevorkian was judged.

It all happened in the 1990s. With the film focusing on the doctor’s “misadventures,” we get to hear his side of the story.

I do not agree with him on most points. I don’t believe suicide is moral (even that by Socrates drinking the hemlock). But then, who knows, right? Feeling the pain of “a severe toothache in every bone of your body,” I’d probably contemplate suicide, too, for all I know. I’d probably think: Why this cross to bear? And why bear it for much longer?

Perhaps it’s what defines us. For a moment in time, we carry a burden. Either we carry it all the way through, or “choose” not to. The way I see it, life is about the choices we make, and NOT whether we are able to make a choice at all.

But then you can always argue: I choose to choose. Well, that’s just semantics. Ahehe. That doesn’t really paint a complete picture of you, does it? In the end, it still boils down to the QUALITY of the finished work, NOT IN THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE to finish the work.

So, which one is it? Which decision would you choose to define you?