The Sanctity of Human Life
The sanctity of life, or in non-religious terms, the supreme importance of life is, admittedly, a difficult subject. But is there a way to describe the worth of a human life in terms, such that it would be almost inconceivable for someone to terminate it?
I think I would start with the assumption that most people believe their own lives have worth, and would not want to prematurely lose their lives. Even exceptions to this, such as those who commit suicide, may be based on certain periods of loss of self-esteem, rather than on an innate and continual sense that their life never had any worth. And for most people, the value of a life would extend to family, friends, etc., i.e., any other humans that are loved. Extending this to strangers or others less well known would not be as strong a feeling. However, it would still exist for most of us, I think, to include even moral reservations about taking the life of an enemy in time of war.
I have long held that almost all of us are encoded with some sense of the sanctity of life, similar to C.S. Lewis’s belief (Mere Christianity) in a “still, small voice,” a moral compass we are born with. When there is evidence that this doesn’t exist, such as with someone like Hitler, Lewis explains this as the presence of pure evil. But I’m beginning to question my long-held beliefs. Does evil explain the actions of someone who goes into a school or church and indiscriminately kills people? Or anyone who takes another life when they had the power not to? That is a deep subject with many overlapping contexts to the word that I can’t address.
However, I do think these examples are evidence of a significant shift in our society’s belief in the sanctity of life. I believe that, over a period of decades, there have been multiple cultural changes that have reshaped the moral fabric of our country. These include a culture that emphasizes self-importance compared to others, that offers competitors to the role of family in shaping our moral values, that de-emphasizes personal connections through our social media, that de-sensitizes us to loss of life through video games and news reporting, that creates an “us vs. them” mentality in our political process, and, yes, that marginalizes the role played by religion in underpinning our moral fiber. The still, small voice may still be there but our experiential environment may be subtly and inexorably rewiring those moral fibers.
In past times, we might have called a mass murderer evil or mentally ill (admittedly a catchall phrase). But more and more recent examples do not fit those definitions, and blaming the problem on things like the ready availability of guns I think misses the point. Underneath all the factors associated with each case, these people in our society have somehow trivialized the taking of a human life. Trivialized it to the point that the threshold of the act itself can be crossed. The sanctity of life is apparently less important to them than achieving the notoriety of committing the act.
So how do we increase the real value of, and the perceived value of a human life? I am not an expert in this field, if it is a field (bioethics?), and I am concerned that the weight of the cultural changes I discussed will make it extremely difficult to embrace our more traditional understanding of the value of life. But I believe this traditional understanding is the right one, and moving back in that direction is one of the most important things our society can do.
Perhaps a place to start is to leverage our current “me over the rest of you” mentality and dig deeper into the “me”. If we are as important as we think we are, is there a way to define that in terms of an immeasurable importance of life itself? And if once that concept takes hold, can we find compelling reasons to extend that definition to all others? That makes the taking of another’s life so unthinkable that we would find every reason not to do it? I know it’s much more complicated than that, but it is vital that the restoration of the sanctity of life within all of us be a goal we pursue. What additional thoughts do you have?
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