Sanctity of life

Do you view life as sacred? Something that should not be violated at any costs? On a related note, what do you think about suicide — is a person allowed to take his/her own life? And what about abortion? Or even euthanasia?

I generally regard the phenomenon of life as a miracle, and hold it in the highest of esteems. And therefore it generally pisses me off when I see life being treated as a “thing” — I mean look at places like Iraq or Afghanistan; you’re not even sure if you’ll live by the next half hour or not; life’s value is so degraded in these places; its such a small, puny and matter of fact thing.

I’m not saying that I am able to empathise with the hundreds (or even thousands, I don’t know the numbers) of people who lose their lives for no reason the world over. But I still do feel that we should value life for what it is and not play around with it like a toy. Then one day Asim and I got into a discussion, and Asim said, “how does all this matter in the big picture anyways?”. A deep question, and mostly rhetorical. But it still begged some elaboration.

He said that in the grand scheme of things (life, universe and everything), did it really matter what we thought or not? Whether we lived or died? History (and nature) will take their courses, and people live and die all the time — that doesn’t change things. Or rather, it keeps changing things, but thats how things were meant to be right?

Its the same thing with wars. Most people will agree that wars are not good, but history will tell you that they have been necessary. And in a war (from the movie “China Gate”), soldiers die and people lose their lives, no matter who wins. So in the cause for “greater good for all” human lives seem much less important, don’t they? In the recent movie Hero (Jet Li), the director explored a similar issue. Jet Li wanted to avenge the death of his people, but in the end let the emperor survive because he realized that for the greater goal of China’s unification, sacrifices would have to be made — it will be his people, or someone else’s — it didn’t really matter in the end.

So how does one measure the sanctity of life? In the face of humanity, human life seems small (which kind of makes sense). Men may change the course of history, but they still can’t “make” life, they can just “take” it. And how about the war on Iraq — needless lives were lost, but was it for a “greater good of humanity”? Or just the greater good of a few vested interests? We might never find out in our lifetime, but it still demands some consideration I think.