Why life is as crucial for the 70-year-old as it is for the 30-year-old

Although with the new vaccine there is some light at the end of our pandemic tunnel, no one knows how long that tunnel will be. With infection rates still spiking, it is clear that masks, distancing, and hand scrubbing will continue to be the norm for the foreseeable future. Thus the overriding public issue with which all governments have been grappling remains unchanged: how to maintain a country’s economic health while at the same time to ensure its physical health.

The issue has led to some ideas that are very troubling. The lieutenant governor of Texas, for example, feels that to reopen the economy, we might need to consider a trade-off between the lives of people who are over 70 versus the possibility of losing our “whole country.” The implication is clear: The lives of the elderly are expendable and can be traded off for the common good

This kind of crass calculus is not limited to prominent politicians. The more sophisticated versions of such thinking are found even in more thoughtful circles. The famous ethicist Peter Singer suggests that it might be necessary to balance loss of life as against “loss of quality of life and loss of well-being” ( see the online journal “Sightings” 6/11/20).

The phrase “quality of life” is a popular platitude. In the justification for mercy killings, the argument being that one might as well die if he lacks “quality of life.” The argument stems from a utilitarian approach to the meaning of life. If the purpose of life is to have fun, to derive pleasure, to satisfy one’s material and physical needs, then the absence of these qualities indeed means that life is not worth living. But if life is considered to have inherent value, measured by the Jewish standard, of service of G-d and to others, of enhancing one’s spirituality, of connecting with G-d, of fulfilling His Divine will through mitzvos, of discovering His Presence in the everyday, of elevating the physical into the spiritual, of possessing a spark of divinity itself — then the loss of such life would mean the end of something very meaningful. Which is why life is as crucial for the 70-year-old as it is for the 30-year-old.

Besides which, who determines that the quality of life of Mr. X is more important than the quality of life of Mr. Y? Will it be a panel of “experts,” a congressional committee, a jury of one’s peers?

Singer suggests that in order to do this, “it’s best to measure well-being by using individuals’ reports of how happy and how satisfied with their lives they are….”

Here we have Exhibit A of the kind of guidance in life and death dilemmas that can come from an ethics that is unmoored from a transcendent anchor such as Divine law. Ironic, is it not, that those who do not believe in G-d nevertheless aspire to become gods themselves and to decide mi yichyeh u’mi yamus, who will live and who will die?

(Incidentally, I have often wondered about that honorific, “ethicist.” Does it mean that the bearer is an ethical person, or that he simply writes and teaches about ethics? How does one become an ethicist? Does one go to college and get a degree and write a book? Is there a licensing authority? What’s to prevent anyone from hanging out a shingle that attaches “ethicist” to his name?)

We should pray for a quick end to COVID-19, not only because of the misery it is causing now, but because of the tragedies that could befall us in the future in a world of moral decay, when more and more voices will suggest that we trade off “expendable” human lives in order to save the world. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 842)