My Life and Times Part X

Ninth grade was a more productive year in terms of philosophical viewpoints for me than was eighth grade. While eighth grade was easy, it was easy. By this, I mean that while I could relax, it offered me no real opportunities to challenge myself intellectually. During ninth grade I became depressed, and began thinking on many subjects, unfortunately the least of which was school. As my grades sank, however, my mind became more active, and I began to think more and more on many of the aspects of life. I was going to an arts school, and people were creating “art,” but was it really art. I have always found myself closer to music than the other arts, and I was exposed to many newer types of pieces (which were very poor indeed). Unlike Leo Tolstoy, I did not think art merely needed to elicit an emotion from the viewer; I thought that a piece was truly art if the artist conveyed the emotion they were trying to. From this, I did not and still do not consider many pieces which people rave over true “art.”

It was also during ninth grade in which I really began to pay attention to the news. One large story of the year was that of euthanasia in a brain-dead woman in Florida. By this point, I was pretty concrete in my view that euthanasia should be legalized. This was a very humane act, in my mind, and I see now that I was very much in agreement with James Rachels’ views on this topic. Instead of killing, it should really be viewed as a kind thing, to help make another person happier. A tandem story happened to be going on at around the same time as this one, in which the legality of lethal injection for prisoners was being put to question as a form of “cruel and unusual punishment.” The defense argued that due to the ineptitude of the prison guards and staff, the injection was being administered incorrectly and therefore causing the prisoners great pain. I remember that one proposed solution was to get physicians to administer the injection instead. The only problem was that there was not a single doctor in the entire United States of America willing to kill someone. I thought this was a very strong statement for the cause I had rallied myself behind. Even those doctors in favor of physician assisted suicide were not willing to kill someone without benefit to the person. Clearly, there was something to be gained by the patient in death that they could not have in life, even if that something was a painless death.