Safeguarding the family from the digital juggernaut

The digitally distracted family. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

One way to break free from a psychically cancerous society is to be online less. People are increasingly seeing the need to undertake detoxification from technologies that create tension and other forms of distress in their life.

Robyn Ferrell's description of our predicament is so true. She writes:

The smart phone has become like a valet, arranging your life in terms that make it liveable. The smart phone is an object that does your thinking for you. You use its calculator to do what you used to do as mental arithmetic. You use its camera as a repository, and perhaps a substitute, for memory. The calendar is your social secretary, nudging you to your “two o’clock”. You keep track of time with it. You keep track of money with it. In fact, you even use it as money with a cashless payment app. You use it to find out where you are, and to navigate, with the map app.

When waiting anywhere, it is an indispensable amusement, with its podcasts and news apps. It’s the library in your pocket, the encyclopaedia, research assistant and broker of disputes at the dinner table. “Who was that guy in …?” You can even talk to it, and “Siri” will answer you and perform things for you. It makes you feel powerful, with a surge of attachment for this shiny and incredibly useful object.

And yet. Are you really sure who is master and who slave? Now you can’t add up to save your life; you’re lost without the calendar to tell you where to be when; you no longer remember the phone numbers of your friends and relations (or even your own). You need the phone to move funds or record your steps or summon an Uber. And that’s before you even make a call on this (uncannily) smart phone.

This was your instrument, but now you are beholden to it and dependent on it. And meanwhile, it is reporting on you behind your back. Like a jealous lover, it has you under surveillance wherever in the wide world you are roaming, discoverable by mobile phone towers and revealed by your purchases and searches. Or perhaps more like a handler, relaying your information faithfully to the powers that be, the marketers and advertisers who pay well for it. 

Ferrell links this view with that of Martin Heidegger, who died in 1976 and who had the insight that with technology all of nature had become a "standing reserve" - on call, as if it were a part of industrial inventory. For example, soil has no longer an essence in itself, but is seen as part of the food production sector of the economy. Everything has a means or end instrumentality. Ferrell goes on:

In this sense, Heidegger saw the danger of technology as a spiritual one, not only infecting others who become a standing reserve but a habit of thought in which even the self becomes trapped. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that this dystopia has arrived, in the form of the internetted world bound in all its fibres to the instrumental-mercantile. 

Therefore, technology generates "consumer logic", central to which is "a prefabricated idea — a shorthand for thinking that forestalls thinking".  With the adoption of instrumental thinking and automated thought, "no other thinking makes sense anymore".

Drawing on other social observers, Ferrell leaves us with the view that "habits of mind associated with a market economy and its related technology ... became inflated in the modern world" and that "this remains a suggestive point of departure for diagnoses of our time".

You may recall the meme: "That moment you've lost your phone but feel like you're the one that's lost." That state must be part of the diagnosis of our time. As well, there is the resulting distress caused by the way tech companies tap addiction psychology in the design of the smartphone, to take one device.

Dr Anastasia Hronis, clinical psychologist and honorary associate at the University of Technology, Sydney, says a smartphone notification gives a dopamine rush similar to a hit of cocaine or a win at the slot machines:

I specialise in addictions — yet clients don't say 'I have a problem with my phone' — they present with anxiety-depression, and often phone addiction is a cause.

I foresee a push towards cafes and theatres introducing phone-free policies in the future, but for now the self-regulation is down to us.

A working mother reports how self-regulation in deliberately trying a digital detox proved a boon for she and her husband and their two sons:

I thought that anxiety, distraction and stress was the inevitable price I needed to paid for being a working mother.

But it was my own decision to not be fully present [within the family], and it was a habitual thing that could only be broken through a total detox.

Research findings on the digital environment coming out of Australia shed light on the worries parents have about their children:

Parents were significantly concerned about the negative impacts of digital media and technologies on their child’s physical activity levels (73%), attention span (62%), and time for, and interest in, playing (62%). 

Parenting and teaching are harder than they used to be:

• Most (73%) parents and grandparents think it is harder to control their child’s digital habits since they have got their own screen-based device.
• 83% of parents, carers and grandparents felt that their child was negatively distracted by digital technologies. 13% of these respondents felt that this distraction was experienced to ‘a great extent’.
• 84% of educators in Australia believe that digital technologiesare a growing distraction in the learning environment.
• 59% of respondents observed a decline in students' overall readiness to learn in the last 3-5 years.

This Growing Up Digital report I have been quoting from has this as part of its conclusion: 

Overwhelmingly, parents, carers and grandparents recognise that they are a critical influence on their child’s use of digital media and technology – in good and bad. 72% of parents recognise that their own technology habits influence those of their children. 90% of participants agreed with the statement, “I need to be a responsible user of digital technology for my child to learn from”. 

A comment that reflected a common view was: “As a parent I need to know how to work the programs and sites the kids access to be able to protect them. I do not assume they are safe”. Indeed, it is unrealistic to expect that children will improve their digital media habits unless they see their parents at home behaving accordingly.

It's not only the addictive nature of the technology and the learned ettiquette, or lack of it, of social media that consign adult and child alike to a toxic psychic state, but there is also the fact that digital media and technologies are mostly offered to young people for consumption rather than content creation. The Growing Up Digital report states:

Parents grapple with confusing messages about whether educational or learning uses of digital media and devices and recreational and entertainment use need to be treated in the same way. The time recommendation increases with a child’s age and are based on the idea of media as a ‘digital babysitter’ and a source of entertainment, rather than recognising the educational, active and engaging purposes that digital media can provide. Clarifying the key point that there are better uses of screens than others, and the need for balance in a young person’s day, is critical to seeing change in parental decision making [My emphasis -BS]. 

Passively consuming digital content poses other risks, too. The content that young people absorb and consume from the digital world around them is filled with ideas and examples that shape their views of the world around them and how they fit into it. Some of these are inappropriate and unsafe and without sharing what they are seeking and experiencing online, parents have little leverage to intervene. For parents, it is far better to engage in a conversation with young people about their habits and share the digital world with them.

Here's the report's punchline:

Ultimately, it has become abundantly clear that we all have a problem, and we all must take responsibility for helping young people grow up healthily, happily and responsibly.

The challenge must be accepted especially by those of us with a religious worldview. First, the technology itself - as I have tried to make plain for parents in this post - has an impact on the way we think, and parents must be ready to counterattack. Secondly, parents must be confident in their God-given role of caring for young ones. Third, parents must decide on practical steps to break the addiction, even simple practices such as putting smartphones in a drawer around meal time.

Based on the arguments and information of the type I have presented here, I am among the growing number convinced that a response in our personal lives is urgent as we wait to see if governments will be courageous enough to take a stand against the economic power and cultural influence of "Big Tech".

An important part of that response must be more time devoted to prayer and the reading of our scriptures. These in particular can provide some spiritual balance to the agitation that purposeless digital use generates. 

SOMETHING EXTRA: "Remembering is a subversive communal activity in an age that coaxes us to drift in the constantly streaming, twittering present, forgetful of history, forgetful of the past." - Richard B. Hays, drawing on his Biblical scholarship

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Christian insights into what we are today

The stuff of culture can create a heavy burden

Daniel Defoe, the English author of Robinson Crusoe, was as well a trader, business and political journalist, and travel writer.  His story of the shipwrecked sailor, published in 1719, has Crusoe looking back at his spiritual state as his life alone begins after eight years at sea. The words strike a chord when looking at the lives of many today:

I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways; for a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger, or of thankfulness to God in deliverance.

There's the challenge for us all - to be alert as to what is happening internally, and as to how the environment of this age is imposing upon us "a certain stupidity of soul".

Another insightful observation about how the world we live in traps us in a particular frame of mind comes in this form:  

Perhaps we are not touched by idols today (even when we live in places with statues of gods and deities) but there are many other idols of a more subtle kind which we can easily fail to recognise as such – materialism and consumerism, the obsession with money and wealth, the cult of sex and even of the body, the slavery to image and fashion, the cult of the hero be it in the media or in sports (‘fans’ = fanatics, a word used to describe the actions of frenzied worshippers in another age). Obsession with such idols can blind us to the very real needs – material, social, spiritual – of those around us. Then we fail in the essential quality of being a child of God – love for each other.

Fr Frank Doyle SJ on 1 John 5:14-21. 

Read in full here.

Finally, there is the curse of  meaninglessness that has seeped into the bloodstream of society:

There is so much division in society today, simply because the individual is facing a crisis of meaning and purpose.  Because of secularism, man does not believe in a creator or the existence of the Ultimate, whom we call God.  He has no idea of his origin, purpose in life or the outcome at the end of this life.  The world teaches us that the universe, and that includes us all, comes from the random interactions of the atoms.  It is by accident that we were born into this world.  Life has no meaning, no intrinsic value, except to make the most of what this world offers, at the end of which we return to the universe as atoms. This lack of purpose means that we are called to live for ourselves.  There is no reference point, no objective truth or morals to follow.  It is all about me finding fulfillment in this life.  People are important to me insofar as they can enrich my life.  This is what individualism is all about.

Therefore, we have to take a countercultural stand. St Irenaeus, who died about the year 202, has words that encourage Christians to be countercultural these days in their mind and lifestyle: 

The glory of God is each person fully alive!

Ω On the eruption of dysphoria and rising rate of mental illness in young Americans, see my post here

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Mother says: 'Down's Syndrome is all about love'

Tommy, inset with his mother Jane, plays murder suspect Terry Boyle in a BBC drama

When my wife and I were talking about having a second child - this is more than 20 years ago - I did not show any enthusiasm because I was afraid. I was much older than my wife, but we would both be in the older group of new parents, and I was afraid that there would be a high chance of our having a baby with Down's Syndrome. Having an abortion if this did occur was out of the question. So we did not have a second child. 

I have come to regret how I let my fear rule our life in this way. I regret not being more positive about how God gives each person - whatever their personality, characteristics, or interests - a meaning in the providential plan for us all. I have come to regret, too, being so very ignorant of how people affected by Down's Syndrome can be a boon to a family and to society.

Earlier this month, this blog looked at how Richard Dawkins was chastised by parents of children with Down's because he could see only sorrow in the lives of such people and their families. See this post here. The parents pointed out that, to the contrary, despite health problems being typical in the early years, people with Down's were innately happy and they brought a lot of joy to their families. 

So, to continue to educate myself on this matter, I want to lay out more information on the life of a person with Down's Syndrome and what impact it has on their family.

Jane Jessop had been a marketing executive in England, and when a doctor told her that her newborn son had Down's Syndrome, the genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in the pers, “My first reaction was to wonder why God had sent this baby to us....What was God’s purpose, what did he want me to do? But maybe it was more about God’s plan for Tommy.” The syndicated Telegraph article continues:

In her tired, postnatal state, she could not then have predicted that her son would go on to star in a prime-time BBC series, one of the first actors with Down’s to do so.

Down’s affects about 40,000 people in the UK and life expectancy has increased dramatically since the 1950s; somebody with Down’s can now expect to live to their late fifties, at least, with some living well into their seventies. 

Jessop highlights what is referred to as "the joy and warmth Tommy has brought into her world" - “He’s enriched us enormously. I’m delighted with the young man he’s turned out to be.”  The article explains:

Most people with Down’s experience some form of intellectual impairment; for many, language is delayed and memory impaired.

“Tommy’s prognosis was very poor. But I would say to parents, don’t believe all those pessimistic forecasts. When Tommy turned one, he kind of woke up. It was as though the sun came out; he became smiley and started learning. He reacted to everything, whereas he hadn’t in his first year. When we came into the room, he would bounce up and down. He attracted love.”

Tommy’s communication skills thrived with the help of music; he loved being sung to and playing with little bells on sticks. He once said that when he dances, he “becomes the music. It’s as if he disappears into himself,” says Jessop.

Tommy [who is now 36] was part of the first cohort of children with Down’s to attend a mixture of mainstream and specialist schooling (before the 1981 Education Act, disabled children in England were mostly segregated from their peers).

It enriched his childhood, as well as those of his classmates, who learnt to appreciate difference. Aged 10, he became a strong reader virtually overnight; he was fascinated with online quizzes and began to memorise Trivial Pursuit answers so he could beat his family.

“It was a bit cheeky – and good practice for learning lines now.”

Jessop admits to being a little sceptical when a teenage Tommy said he wanted to be an actor. “We didn’t really believe him. We were thinking: ‘Well, Tommy likes books, why doesn’t he work in the library?’ ”

She created a theatre group for those with learning disabilities, and it was successful in highlighting the skills of its members in the demanding entertainment industry. Tommy was then included in a BBC talent group.

[At present,] Jessop is frightened by the prospect that Tommy’s condition might at some point be eliminated from the population.

All pregnant women in the UK are now offered a free prenatal blood test screening for Down’s, first approved by the UK’s National Screening Council in 2016 (it replaced a more invasive test which carried of a risk of miscarriage).

Nine out of 10 in the UK terminate their pregnancy after receiving a positive diagnosis, according to a 2013 government report. The condition has almost disappeared in some countries, like Iceland, where termination rates approach 100 per cent. [See my Dawkins post here for details on Iceland's aggressive screening regime.]

Jessop says: “I’m really thankful I was never offered a test, because that is a horrible decision for parents to take. It’s ironic: now [people with Down’s] finally have the chance to learn and show us who they really are, and society and scientists are trying to deprive them of the chance to live. I’m not talking about abortion itself, I’m just talking about the choice of doing it because a child will have Down’s.

"I think having a child with Down’s syndrome is all about love. Some of my best times are when it’s just me and Tommy on location – he’s really good company. Think about your family, friends and colleagues – how boring would it be if everyone was the same.

“And the tragedy is that many adults with Down’s syndrome are aware of this. Tommy himself feels very scared by it.”

Her views are shared by actress Sally Phillips, whose son Olly was born with Down’s in 2004. Phillips told the Telegraph in 2016 that raising her son has been much more fun than she anticipated after seeing the grim face of the doctor who gave her Olly’s diagnosis.

“I think I would have been really served by having someone around standing up and saying: ‘This is a good thing’,” Phillips said. 

Tragic case

A tragic case of misdiagnosis arising from a prenatal test has come to light this week where an Irish couple sued doctors because they had an abortion when told their baby had Edwards’ Syndrome, a condition that is usually fatal around the time of birth. In fact, the baby was healthy and the tests had shown false results. The story - see here - concludes in this way:

Lawyers for Rebecca Price said the realisation that she had aborted a “normal, healthy baby” caused intense, nervous shock and left her with a devastating sense of loss.

Prenatal testing conducted in a perfunctory manner, and the acceptance of abortion as a catch-all remedy, are a combination that can be expected to cause ongoing torment as the death toll mounts because of mistakes.

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Mind wide shut - a common affliction in science

The door of the mind can be firmly closed to certain ideas

As a test for how open your mind is, here’s a story about finding happiness, told by a young Spanish professor to American writer Rod Dreher who was visiting Barcelona. The account was given at dinner so here it is in Dreher's words:

Pablo (as I will call him) was raised in a Marxist home. He was baptized as a baby, but that was the last thing he had to do with Christianity in any real sense. His parents were unbelievers, but they baptized their kids as part of the ritual of their Catholic society. Yet all throughout his childhood, he had the ability to see a woman that nobody else could see. There was something about her not quite right. He assumed it was the Holy Virgin from Christian mythology, but the culture of his home was materialist, so he never really tried to understand what was happening.

When it came time for his first communion, he told the priest that “I’m not going to eat that sh*t.” The priest slapped him for his blasphemy. Pablo was shocked to hear these words coming out of his mouth. Where had they come from? They weren’t his own.

There were all kinds of other spiritually dramatic things that happened to him, but this morning, I can’t remember them clearly. The climax of the story came a few years later, when he was roaming the streets of his city with a couple of his buddies. This was 2004. A homeless man walked up to them, and began to speak to Pablo: “Ah, Pablo, it is so good to finally meet you,” he said. “I am here to tell you that Jesus loves you.” And then the homeless man began to tell Pablo all kinds of things about his life. He was reading Pablo’s heart, and telling him things nobody could have known other than he, least of all an indigent stranger on the street.

He told Pablo that he knew that he had been seeing a woman appear since childhood, but that Pablo needed to know that that wasn’t the Holy Virgin. That was the Evil One disguising himself to deceive Pablo. Apparently Satan had had his eye on Pablo for a long, long time.

“Finally I asked the man what was his name,” Pablo told me. “He laughed and said, ‘The Happiness of Christmas.’ I asked him what his name really was, and he said the same thing.”

After bringing this message to Pablo, the homeless man wandered down the street, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Was he an angel?” I asked Pablo.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you follow him?”

“No, he was an indigent. We were all standing there completely shocked. My two friends saw and heard all of this. It wasn’t something I imagined.”

The next morning at breakfast, Pablo’s mother asked him what was wrong. “You seem different,” she said. But nothing was wrong. Everything was finally right.

Pablo then went to a church, to Mass. “I saw Our Lord in the Eucharist, and I knew that I really was looking at the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Creator of the Universe. I knew that this was where I had to be, and I could not leave Him behind.”

Pablo was confirmed as a Catholic, and began to roam around, looking for the will of God. Eventually he ended up in Barcelona. He is married now, and is a teacher.

He was the only religious believer in his extended family. Again, they were all Marxists. But one by one, seeing the difference Christ made in Pablo, they began to convert. His father was the last holdout. But one year ago, as he lay dying from stomach cancer, Pablo’s father called for a priest, made a confession, and was reconciled to Christ through the Church. Pablo now expects to be with his ex-communist father in Paradise someday.

My question for the "atheist" or the agnostic is, given that the information about the main incident comes from an honest source and there were witnesses to the accuracy of what the homeless stranger was telling Pablo, could it be at least possible that the strange man was somehow a messenger from God?

Clearly, there are several philosophies or academic constructs that have propelled Western society - and increasingly the whole world - into adopting a materialistic mindview. Because of this mindview and that other doors that close a person off from reality, many people find it extremely difficult to accept, or admit that they could accept, the existence of the spiritual realm because it is far beyond what is "normal".

Therefore, it's natural for a person to develop the set of materialistic preconceptions based on personal experience, education and on the fact such concepts are fashionable, if not de rigueur, in society. Society makes it easy even for those from a religious background to bow to the anti-intellectual and hedonistic (meaning, in effect, anti-social) moral atmosphere, given the consumerism, the wish for material success, and the superficiality promoted through all forms of media. 

It's worth spending some time checking out the filters, the blinkers, the gates, the doors that prevent a person or people generally from acknowledging the strength of information of another kind, other than what they are used to. Theists are accustomed to examining their conscience, which brings a person back to their essential beliefs. So let's look at some philosophies that have shaped Western societies and threaten to engulf societies around the world where the elites think they will be held in contempt if they do not follow the lead from abroad.

Doors that close a person to the spiritual:

1. Logical Positivism

Though he is by no means the first in this, Alfred Jules Ayer's 1936 work Language, Truth and Logic would have us accept the belief  that "only knowledge that can be empirically verified is warranted or meaningful". Of course, that statement is a philosophical principle and cannot in itself be empirically verified.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was of the same school, though he had a basic agnosticism, in that we cannot know anything. Reality was made up of statements, not objects. His principle was that we could not say anything except what can be said, meaning only propositions arising from natural science were possible.

2. Rationalism 

This is the philosophical position that adds human reason to the mix in that the empirical sciences and philosophy can provide sufficient explanations for all of reality. This is the foundation of the "New Atheists" who deride any attempt to undertake theology as a compelling pursuit of reality. On this basis Stephen Hawking expressed the view that physics would in time deliver a "theory of everything".

Rationalism is interesting in that its adherents are split into two camps. One party holds, as we see above, that reason is all we need to understand reality, though an objection is that it would fail to comprehend God who always remains more unknown to human reason than known. The other party has too little confidence in reason and proposes that even if there are realities above the bounds of reason we do not need a doctrine or science about such things because the natural order should be sufficient for human aspirations - we should not aim too high!

3. Materialism  

Keeping it simple, "materialism is a form of philosophical monism [denying the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world] that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. ... Materialism is closely related to physicalism [naturalism]—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical." (Wikipedia)

4. Scientism

This belief system runs from the weak version: “Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge”, to the "arrogant, dogmatic, or otherwise epistemically vicious" intrusion of science into other fields of study. In response, there is the pushback in academic circles like this: "Philosophy and Scientism: What Cognitive Neuroscience Can, and What It Cannot, Explain".

Another case of dogmatic scientism comes through the writing of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett who declare that a believer in God cannot accept both evolution and that God has been guiding human development.  But a mainstream Christian is freer in this matter and can accept both, though pointing out how the accepted theory is flawed in part.

In conclusion, scientists have achieved much that they can be proud of, but the history of the intellectual domain points to a close-minded materialism today that would have dismayed Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Pascal, as well as the "father of genetics", the developer of the Big Bang theory, and the head of the Human Genome Project—all of whom had a deep religious faith.  For the scientist and for all of us, the challenge remains: How to account for the spiritual nature of the experiences Pablo had as a child and the encounter with the stranger as an adult?

Ω Here is a list of eminent scientists, many of them Nobel Prize winners, who have shown that their life's work incorporates having a firm relationship with God.

Ω Go to my blog here to tap into my archive of posts. 

The narrow gate is not to be narrow-minded

Return to Paradise by Victor Bregeda - see more here

Let's look at the contrast between the wide and the narrow roads, between the lifestyles of the "many" that lead to "destruction" and those that lead to "life", as Jesus teaches as part of the Sermon on the Mount (see verses below): 

To follow the wide road is to do just about anything you feel like doing. It is to follow your likes and dislikes, your instincts and whims wherever they lead you. That is going to include following roads of greed and self-centredness, of lies and deceit, perhaps even of violence and hurt. It is clearly not a way of life.

The narrow gate is not to be narrow-minded. It is rather to be very clearly focused on certain very specific ways of thinking and acting, having one’s life guided by a clear set of truths, principles and values, those truths, principles and values which form the core of the Gospel’s teaching. In other words, the Way of Christ. It is a way that leads to life.

It is a hard road only in the sense that it requires discipline and it is true that relatively few people find it. In the long run it is the easier way because it conforms more to the deepest needs and desires of the human person. (It is important to be aware that the Way of Jesus is not an eccentric choice of lifestyle, one religion among many, but that it is in total harmony with all that human life is meant to be.) But there is no doubt that the wide undisciplined road is the easier one to follow even though in the long run it does not bring happiness.

 Frank Doyle S.J.  Source: Living Space 

Matthew 7:13-14: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

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"I wouldn’t take back my injury - it’s made me who I am"

Grace Spence Green in a splendid Guardian photo...wise beyond her years 

One of the most uplifting stories for British people in the last couple of years has been about the medical student left with a spinal disability because a drug-crazed man landed on her after jumping from the third level of a shopping mall in London. She has never shown anger at what the man did to her, and she has become an advocate for the disabled while continuing her studies.

On radio and television, and in newspaper accounts like the one in the Guardian that I am drawing on here,  Grace Spence Green shows a generosity of spirit that amazes all who are used to calls in society for  revenge, for punishment, and to seeing the victim play that role to the hilt.  Instead, she is focused on starting work as a junior doctor, and eventually working in paediatrics, especially with disabled children,

Spence Green was 22,  and the immediate aftermath was hard, as when the doctors finally gave her their prognosis of life with paralysis from the breast down: 

"I remember getting out of that meeting and just crying, folded up on my lap. I went outside, because I wanted to breathe, and it was pouring down with rain.” Her family went home and she remained in hospital, dealing with this news and contemplating a future that felt extremely bleak – because this was what she thought life as a wheelchair user would be. 

At the beginning, it felt like a “huge loss. I couldn’t imagine myself having a good life in a wheelchair, because I just don’t think there are enough examples of that anywhere. The only thing that kept me going was the fact I knew I was going back to medicine [she deferred her studies by a year].  

However, the harsh reaction of others surprised her. In fact... 

She was shocked at some people’s anger towards her in online comments “for not displaying the emotion they thought I should”; they thought she ought to be consumed with anger and bitterness. “I had people saying I was in denial and that I was secretly angry and things like that. It just made me think there’s always going to be people that think my life is a tragedy, that my life is ruined, and I just have to accept that.” She laughs at the absurdity of it.

So what were her reactions? Did she feel anger and bitterness toward the young man?

“There was never any anger, no. There was sadness at the beginning and there was definitely some kind of: ‘Why me?’” There were a lot of what-ifs: what if she hadn’t taken that route through the shopping centre? “But I find it so exhausting, and I hate feeling like a victim and self-pitying, because it doesn’t feel like it gets me anywhere. Now I look at it and I feel completely disconnected to him. That’s what I also find strange – people ask: ‘Are you going to meet him?’ like for some reason we’re still associated. It’s difficult having so many other opinions put on you.”

Finally, Spence Green was able to accept that she was disabled: 

 It took about a year, she says, to get to a point approaching peace with what had happened. “I’d call it radical acceptance, because I really had to embrace being disabled,” she says. “As soon as that happened, my whole perspective changed, because as soon as I felt proud of who I was I just didn’t take people’s crap any more. I didn’t take people’s pitying or ableist comments, or feel like I needed to answer to people about who I was and what I was doing. But it took a long time to get there.”

That "radical acceptance" seems to keep any sense of loss in check:

Instead, she concentrates on what she has gained – a wealth of new experiences, friends and perspectives. “Talking about disability and advocating for disabled people has become something I’m so passionate about. Without my injury, I wouldn’t have that,” she says.

The injury has “changed everything about me … people don’t understand, but I wouldn’t take back my injury because it’s made me who I am.” She is stronger, she says. “I used to let people walk over me.”

It has given her a broader perspective on life. “I was 22 years old, with this ignorance of how other people live. I grew up very privileged, a young white woman, middle class. I understood there were barriers out there for other people, but once you’ve lived through them you can really understand what it’s like.”

If many people do still underestimate, patronise or look past her, it is equally true that her injury has allowed her to connect with people. “Because my wheelchair is so obvious, it’s like a very visible scar, I see people really open up to me. They recognise that I’ve been through something.”

In brief, the resilience and positivity Spence Green has shown meant that life has not become small for her, as was a fear at the beginning. Rather, she has had to mature quickly and she knows that she has a depth to her that she values, and which others can discern by the manner of  her interaction with others. 

With her declaration "I wouldn’t take back my injury because it’s made me who I am" we see another instance of personal growth coming out of hardship, failure or personal calamity. Spence Green provides a vivid example of how hard times of any type give us a chance to hone our spirit, of how suffering is not always something we should flee from, rather they are opportunities for us to learn, as this blog has recently explored here and here. 

Ω For a brief BBC video interview with Grace Spence Green, go here

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When "right to die" becomes "duty to die"

That Noel Conway killed himself last week engendered among many the disappointment that is natural when a person does not live up to their potential. His act meant this 71-year-old British campaigner for "assisted dying" did not have the stomach to go to the true end of the journey of his life, but cut short for himself the full extent of exploration and discovery - yes, partly through pain and suffering - offered to him. It also stymied the opportunity for the growth (see here and here) that could have ensued in the lives of those around him, 

Conway, a retired further education lecturer, had motor neurone disease, as had Stephen Hawking, whose long time with MND is a counterpoint for all the arguments Conway presents in trying to explain why he killed himself. In the statement he prepared for release upon his death he declared: "When you read this I will be dead... because I have made a conscious and deliberate effort to end my own life." He said his carers planned to stop using a ventilator he needed for breathing.

His MND was diagnosed six years ago and he knew there would be a time when "I would reach a point when my muscles would have deteriorated to such an extent that I could not function effectively".

Those last two words are enlightening as to what life meant to Conway. Clearly, he was blinkered by the utilitarian view of life that is ravaging most developed nations, where the fruits include the unwillingness to respect human life at its beginning, and the destruction of those affected by genetic disorders such as Down's Syndrome, both often because of their impact on someone else's personal lifestyle, as is the infectious impulse in recent times to kill old people when thought not to be able to "function" any more.

Conway wrote this:

Over the past two months it has become increasingly evident to me that the balance of fulfilment in life, or if you like, my quality of life, has dipped into the negative … My voice has depleted to the extent that many people cannot now tell what I say and my eyesight recently deteriorated.

I’m already a paraplegic and I cannot use my hands or fingers but I am aware that my neck muscles are weakening as are my mouth and speech muscles. I recognise that the time has come to take the decision now to do something about this.

His conclusion:  "I feel that I have no alternative to ending my life without pain and suffering".  

Pain is always a test of one's principles and mental strength. Conway was a member of the Humanists UK group, which supported him in his campaign for a law change. It was unfortunate that he went in that direction for support rather than tapping into a religious acceptance of his circumstances as the will of a loving God. All religions dwell on the meaning of suffering, none more so than Christianity, where God Himself took on human form and died horribly to benefit all people from the damage of sin and what was seen as the curse of death.

However, society's response to those who are suffering continues to improve. Palliative care has seen an explosion in services and investment in resources. It's noteworthy that both the British Medical Association, and the Royal Colleges of Physicians, General Practitioners and Surgeons are against any relaxing of the law.

Specifically: "A British Medical Association members’ survey found that 76% of palliative care specialists – those who have the most expertise and experience in caring for the terminally ill at the end of life – oppose any legalisation of assisted suicide, and the same percentage declared that they would be unwilling to participate in any such activity."

The evidence from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Oregon, which have lax laws, is that  it becomes very quickly a matter of "Kill first; ask questions later" - the headline of an article on the issue in Statute Law Review; and the so-called right to die quickly becomes a duty to die as young and old feel pressure to not be a burden on their family. In addition, suicide multiplies in the general population as ethical standards weaken.

Stephen Hawking was mentioned above. He died in 2018 aged 76. He was 21 when he was given his MND diagnosis and doctors gave him two years to live. That was in 1963. If he had killed himself at that news, imagine the loss of insight into astrophysics the world would have suffered, the huge gap as a role model for the disabled, the absence of unique technology that has gone on to benefit others, but most of all, the glowing example to all of us of human striving in the midst of adversity.  

Tracey Bleakley, Hospice UK's chief executive, has said that her members recognise that a big concern among the public, propelling many to favour a law change, is the fear of the symptoms of conditions like paralysis or dementia.  She says:

My feeling is that we need to increase public knowledge on the choices that are already available and on decision-making at end of life in general before we can think of taking the next legal step.

That the patient has a role in making a decision about the end of their life is well-recognised in ethics. A Catholic statement has this to say about the intent of refusing treatment:

Everyone has the legal right to refuse treatment, but patients who refuse treatment rarely do so in order to end their lives: they do it because they are finding the treatment burdensome and they want to let nature take its course. There’s a world of difference, in medical ethics and in law, between accepting that death can’t be prevented [in the process of certain relief treatment] and seeking assistance to end your own life. 

Depression is another cause for a person to think death is the only way to escape their suffering. But, again, it's a mistake to make life and death decisions when in a state of despair. A Guardian first person account runs with the headline: "I tried to take my life five years ago. Now I'm grateful to be alive".

The writer, a British surgeon, describes his state this way:

I first realised I was depressed a few months before I tried to kill myself. I had been feeling low for a long time and things began to spiral after the end of a relationship and moving into an apartment alone. ...  One day, I had had enough. The pain had become physical as well as mental, and the idea of having to live any longer was unbearable. I took an overdose. My last thoughts were of my family and how much I loved them.

Though he was not happy to find that he had been resuscitated, he got the psychiatric help that he needed:

I was referred to a psychologist and a psychiatrist. I started weekly therapy. I slowly learned to live with my feelings rather than try to suppress them or distract myself with work. It was extremely hard digging through years of painful feelings and memories. Often I would feel worse at the end of a therapy session than I had coming in. But eventually I began to feel better. I found an antidepressant that suited me. I learned how liberating it was to say honestly how I was feeling. I learned how to ask for help and to go easier on myself when I was struggling. I realised just how much my friends and family cared for me and how much they wanted me to get better. This gave me the strength to keep trying. 

This surgeon is back serving his community:

Five years on, I am grateful to be alive. It took a few years before I could say that. I still have bad days, but I live a full life and it doesn’t hurt to be alive anymore. I’ve learned that when times are tough, I need to talk about how I’m feeling. I tell my support network if there are challenges coming up in my life so they know to check in with me more closely. I’d like to think I’ve become a better friend and a better listener. I’ve learned to be more open with people and share the bad times as well as the good ones. The more I have opened up and shown my own vulnerabilities, the more others have felt able to show theirs and we have been able to support one another. I no longer feel alone. 

Conway, in effect, is not a pioneer, but just a prominent member of the bandwagon promoting "rights" in every direction. This movement is not particularly worried about the consequences. For example,  

[They] conveniently ignore the ways in which the Oregon Death with Dignity Act has been bent and broken since 1997. The rate has skyrocketed by over 1000% from 1998 to 2019, and while almost half of all patients in that period have cited concern about being or becoming a burden on family, friends, and caregivers among their end-of-life worries, only around a quarter were concerned by inadequate pain control.

Another matter of concern is how access under such laws contininues to expand:

In Oregon, it is now possible to have your life ended on the basis of ‘terminal’ conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, and complications following a fall.

How unsound and deceptive it is to have a "right to die" cried up in society. That many governments are accepting the call is distressing given the false premise of such a "right" and the adverse consequences that are already becoming clear from the pioneers in this latest example of  a society blinkered by today's Godless and amoral Zeitgeist. 

For those who recognise how misguided society is in this, the challenge is to be more convincing through loving support than is any law that promotes death as the best solution to personal pain and distress. Our task is to make redundant whatever laws of this kind appear on the statute books. 

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