I am the first and so far only philosopher to point out that assisted suicide for the depressed cannot be discussed ethically without also discussing the drug prohibition that makes it necessary, at least in the minds of the depressed.
1 Amazingly, I cannot seem to convince anybody else of this fact, however. Mainstream westerners have learned their lessons too well from the conglomerate media, which simply will not publish any stories of beneficial drug use (although they'll run prime-time ads for Jim Beam bourbon targeting young people on prime-time television
2). But this is all par for the brainwashed course in the Age of the Drug War. I am used to being ignored. This is why I call myself the Ignaz Semmelweis of our times
3.
That does not mean that I am "standing down," however. To the contrary, I just sent the following proposal to Reason magazine
4 for an op-ed piece by yours truly on the subject of drug prohibition and assisted suicide for the depressed.
One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
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