'Inheritance impatience' - It's out with the old!

She is told: 'Give me my money now!'  Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels

As societies lose their ability to exercise moral coherence particular groups who are the least able to defend themselves are bearing the brunt of the harsh individualism that is coming to dominate. This post examines how elder abuse and euthanasia are being intertwined as both chop through traditional bonds within the family.  

In speaking about the introduction of euthanasia, journalist Bak Se-hwan wrote:

In South Korea, a highly Confucian society where embracing death is deemed as disrespect for life, the idea of seriously ill people choosing to forgo artificial life-prolonging methods has been uncomfortable for many.

But a rapidly aging population has prompted a shift in the attitude, raising demand for end-of-life care among the elderly. 

That shift in attitude toward promoting "end-of-life" procedures for the elderly is most evident among younger generations, with other Asian countries also shedding their traditional moral stance of utmost respect for elders. 

From Japan:

Since the late twentieth century, movements to legalize euthanasia in Western countries have received growing coverage in the Japanese press. For the most part, though, this has not sparked serious debate on the topic among the Japanese, who have tended to view it as an issue not impacting their own country.

The handful of Western countries with euthanasia laws boast strong traditions of individualism, and it would be a slippery slope for Japan, with its group-oriented culture, to follow their lead in drawing up its own legislation. If euthanasia is legalized, there is a real danger of patients being pressured into choosing anrakushi [“mercy killing” in cases of pain and suffering] out of deference to their families and society, a risk made even greater by the lack of laws laying out the rights of patients.

The writer of this piece is Andō Yasunori, associate professor at Tottori University, specializing in death studies, bioethics, and religious studies. Born in 1961, he is a member of the Science Council of Japan, and he sits on the boards of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies and Japan Association for Bioethics.  He has written extensively on the Japanese view of death.

He says the Japanese have another concept relating to this subject, songenshi, which is closer to normal medical practice:

[This] suggests a “natural death”, such as a family choosing to disconnect a relative in a vegetative state from a ventilator, based on an advance directive from the individual in question, or a critically ill patient opting to cease or forego life-prolonging treatments.

Singapore has been alarmed by the increase in elder abuse more than doubling, even before the Covid pandemic.  The Straits Times reported how the abusers were often family members:

Evonne Lek, a family therapist, [said]: "At their end of life, having to face such abuse at the hands of their children can lead to a steep psychological decline, and they may feel that life is not worth living."

Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser said: "(A rise in elder abuse cases) would undermine the family as an institution for mutual support and for inculcating respect and honour for elders in the family."

At least 5 per cent of India’s elderly population aged 60 years and above stated they experienced ill-treatment, according to the national longitudinal ageing study published this year. "Close to a quarter experienced economic exploitation (26.5 per cent), which means misuse of an elderly person’s money, property and assets." 

By comparison, " as many as 1 in 10 people over the age of 60 experience elder abuse, according to the US Centers for Disease Control". The CDC states: "Elder abuse is a serious problem in the United States." Its next set of figures, relating to physical abuse, shows the extent of the degradation of US society: "From 2002 to 2016, more than 643,000 older adults were treated in the emergency department for nonfatal assaults and over 19,000 homicides occurred."

Ten US states have given in to the push for euthanasia. 

With assisted dying-euthanasia legislation debated again in the UK Parliament last month, this information was published:

 In March 2021, Canada expanded its law on assisted dying. Now adults with a serious and incurable “disease, illness or disability”, who are in an advanced state of decline and are suffering, are able to seek a medically assisted death - even if they are not dying,  The Times reported.

Previously, the country had only permitted euthanasia and assisted suicide for adults suffering from “grievous and irremediable conditions” whose death is “reasonably foreseeable”. 

Medically assisted deaths counted for 1.89% of all deaths in Canada in 2019, the BBC reported. About 1.5% of Swiss deaths are the result of assisted suicide.

Belgium allows euthanasia and assisted suicide for those with unbearable suffering and no prospect of improvement. If a patient is not terminally ill, there is a one-month waiting period before euthanasia can be performed. Belgium has no age restriction for children, but they must have a terminal illness to meet the criteria for approval.

The pattern of a rise in elder abuse and a growing list of jurisdictions legalising euthanasia is striking. 

This is how the academic literature treats the abuse crisis:

Elder abuse is now recognized internationally as an extensive and serious problem, urgently requiring the attention of health care systems, social welfare agencies, policymakers, and the general public. Reports from the World Health Organization, United Nations, and other international bodies have prominently featured elder abuse and highlighted the range of harmful activities subsumed under this rubric throughout the world ( World Health Organization, 2011 , 2014 ; OHCHR, 2010 ; Podnieks, Anetzberger, Wilson, Teaster, & Wangmo, 2010 ).

With a global explosion in the older adult population, elder abuse is expected to become an even more pressing problem, affecting millions of individuals worldwide. Elder abuse is associated with devastating individual consequences and societal costs, meriting attention as a serious public health issue. 

Arizona's attorney-general states: "Reports of abuse have increased 150% over the last decade." The statement continues:

The most prevalent type of abuse referred to law enforcement is financial exploitation and fraud. The most common characteristics of victims of fraud and exploitation are that they are gregarious (need interaction), compulsive (cannot pass up a good deal), have a sense of machismo (believe they cannot be fooled), vulnerable (have experienced a recent trauma) and naïve (they want to believe everything they have been told is true).

From the United Nations, to mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (June 15), comes this:

Older people are increasingly subject to financial abuse, in many cases by their own family members, Rosa Kornfeld-Matte, the UN-appointed independent expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons, warns.

“Financial abuse of older persons is rampant but largely invisible, and the problem is expected to grow dramatically with the ageing of our societies,”  Kornfeld-Matte said.

“Sadly, most abusers are family members", adding that even experienced professionals have difficulty distinguishing an unwise but legitimate financial transaction, from an exploitative one that was the result of undue influence, duress, fraud, or a lack of informed consent.

Financial abuse reflects a pattern of behaviour rather than a single event, and occurs over a period of time. Older people may even tacitly acknowledge it, or feel that the perpetrator has some entitlement to their assets.

“Some older people also have a desire to compensate those who provide them with care, affection, or attention”, she said.

To put my theme into a wider context, I turn to Alasdair MacIntyre who is a Scottish born, British educated, moral and political philosopher who has worked in the United States since 1970.  After Virtue is his great 1981 work of moral philosophy. One commentator states that work's main principle this way: 

We are entering a time of crisis, claimed MacIntyre. The Enlightenment destroyed the idea that human life is imbued with purpose and direction. It took morality away from the community and made it a matter of individual choice, thus replacing morality with individual self-assertion. The final passage reads:

If my account of our moral condition is correct we ought to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.

And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.

The predicament is that the grouping of nations as "Western" is now a false identity because that concept depended on adherence to Christian insights and morality. But, says our commentator, "the United States is not really a Christian country at all, that it worships a god that has been made in its own image – that is, it worships itself. And that capitalism and a belief in the total freedom of the individual is not [an] unmitigated good..."

Christians are now merely "resident aliens" in what had been a supportive homeland. The environment is "overwhelmingly hostile"; it is "enemy territory". And "much that passes for orthodox Christianity in American life" ... [is a] "pale reflection of traditional Christianity [that] has been hollowed out by the continual march of market-driven acquisitiveness".

The greed that infects Western society and its imitators brings me to my final example of the dysfunction that is increasingly crippling societies worldwide.

With house prices soaring in Australia, as in many other countries, even with the pandemic still rampant, a perverse outcome has been noted - adult children seeking to exploit their relatives to alleviate their own financial or housing difficulties.

Mary Lovelock is a senior lawyer at Legal Aid New South Wales who specialises in elder abuse. She says:

What our service is seeing [more of] is the abusive behaviour of adult children and that's what makes elder abuse so particularly confronting and challenging to deal with.

 It can be an adult child standing over mum or dad on pension day. But with the recent surge in housing prices, it can involve really serious amounts of money.

The housing crisis has fuelled a lot of the financial abuse we're seeing.

We've assisted many clients who've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars through different forms of financial abuse.

There's what we call 'inheritance impatience'. We get children saying 'mum and dad are spending their money, that's my inheritance'.

The other thing we've seen through Covid is adult children moving back into the family home because they've lost their job. Sometimes it's very difficult for the older person to say no.

Elderly members of the community, like the unborn, are at the frontlines of the battleground that society is increasingly becoming as we see younger generations devoid of a moral foundation that values self-sacrifice and altruism. Instead, the self-seeking acquisitiveness ingrained in them by our consumerist society, and the untethered self-assertion learned from fickle celebrities are directing us into vile places to a degree that seems inevitable. 

I was struck by the words underlined above, from researchers who have absorbed the conclusions of world organisations and fellow academic observers, that a growing ageing population would lead to a higher incidence of elder abuse. What an indictment of the society we have, and that of the decades ahead! Why is there an expectation of a more depraved society? 

And so to return to Alisdair MacIntyre. He ends his After Virtue with a call for a moral regeneration that is deep and extensive by tapping the Christian heritage that laid the basis for the true human rights achieved since the days of the Roman empire. It must start now because it will take several generations to achieve and, in the meantime, it will go toward preventing the last of our remaining faith, hope and charity from bleeding away.

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