Recently, Dr Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, claimed that, in his view, cancer is the best way to die, as it affords one the opportunity to come to terms with death, say goodbye to family and friends, and spend time doing favourite things or visiting favourite places. Thanks to a combination of 'love, morphine, and whisky' even the pain that cancer results in can be managed and made bearable.
This perfectly reasonable argument predictably attracted much criticism; a spokesperson for Cancer Research, for example, claimed that his comments were insensitive, irresponsible, and nihilistic! The fact that he also suggested we should spend the billions of pounds invested worldwide each year in a search for a cure to cancer in other areas, obviously didn't help convince the above of the merits of his case.
What most interested me about Dr Smith's remarks, however, was his view that it is the protracted death from dementia that it is the most awful to contemplate or experience, as the person is slowly robbed of their humanity and, eventually, their life.
This proves, contrary to what some of his critics claim, he's no nihilist; rather, he's a romantic humanist who finds the prospect of becoming-inhuman or becoming-object the most terrible thing imaginable. As an object-oriented philosopher - and as a son whose mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - I would beg to differ here and challenge Dr Smith's thinking.
Contrary to what he says - and despite our anthropocentric conceit that posits human subjectivity as a unique and superior form of existence - there's nothing to fear about becoming-object, or making a return to material actuality. It might in fact be rather joyous and liberating to be stripped of agency and autonomy; to abandon the illusion of essential inner life and discover instead the seductive and ironic qualities of complete inertia and indifference.
Why dream of being your old self once again when you can become-object? Indeed, might it not be the case that in becoming-object one finally becomes what one is ...?
