Canadian fashion ad sells euthanasia to the masses

To Fashion again, this time From Balenciaga to La Maison Simons. Who knew how prophetic the title of the 2006 hit film ‘The Devil wears Prada’ would be.
A new advertising campaign from a Canadian fashion retailer features a 37 year old, terminally ill woman who availed herself of the euthanasia laws to end her life.
The short film is gentle, beautifully shot and as one commentator said, ‘sells euthanasia to the masses like an advert for a luxury holiday’. The reality of course, is different.
In 2020 Professor Yuval Harari addressed those assembled at Davos for the World Economic Forum saying;
“Whereas in the past humans had to struggle against exploitation, in the 21st century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance…those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new ‘useless’ class” he goes on to say “The biggest question will be…what to do with all the useless people”
One answer, on the mind of the Canadians perhaps, could be to show them this advert.
And this is how we begin to view human beings when we reject any idea that they are created in the image and likeness of Almighty God.
Christians speak of value not utility, and emphasise upholding the dignity of the person until their natural end. As JP2 says, ‘The human person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love’. An improper and inadequate attitude towards our fellow human beings can be found in the mouths of those who call ever more loudly for abortion and euthanasia on the grounds that such lives have no quality, no utility, and therefore no value.
It is improper and inadequate to attribute value only to those persons who are able to fulfil some economic, social or political end. It is improper and inadequate to say that human beings are worthless because they drain resources, contribute nothing to the economy, have no obvious skillset. Those who fall into this category are always the most vulnerable; the severely disabled, the terminally ill, the elderly, the unborn. If we adopt this view, how long before a programme of eradication becomes easy to justify….starting in utero and ending with the physicians needle? Has it not already begun? It began in Nazi Germany, but like the sinister origins of planned parenthood whose founder remarked;
‘we don’t want word to get out that we want to exterminate the negro population’
eugenics has had a slick PR makeover. This is the culture of death, make no mistake, it is the childcatchers kidnap wagon disguised as a sweetshop; it is dressing up death and selling it to people as a right; but as Seth Dillon recently said to Joe Rogan ‘Abortion is Healthcare, the way that rape is lovemaking’. Let’s not be fooled.
In the late 19th Century Nietzsche wrote
‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?’
And this is indeed the inevitable consequence of Deicide – the next highest thing becomes God, and that’s us. We then decide whose life is worth living and whose life should be discarded. According to this matrix, today it seems that mine is of some worth, tomorrow it may not be. As we move to a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence that makes divine claim to know us better than we know ourselves, what will become of the ‘useless’ people?
Hararis advice? “We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls”
‘All a bit miserable isn’t it?’ remarks my husband.
It doesn’t have to be; because God is not dead. The enlightenment thinkers erected a veil between us and God, but we can pull it down. It is an Ebenezer Scrooge moment, we can see a future unfolding before us, but it is never too late to change. We can choose between a culture of death offered to us by weak and fearful humans, or a culture of life offered to us by our creator God.
If we fear a future in which our value is determined by our usefulness then we must choose life, but we can’t just choose life, we have to live it, we have to participate in that choice. It cannot be merely an idea, any more than you can be a husband, wife, parent or international football star simply by imagining it. To choose life means to see its sacredness and take creation seriously. If we do that a number of things follow; Fundamentally we must see our life and the lives of each person around us from conception to natural death as a gift to be cherished, not an accident to be dealt with. We must see the face of God in all those we encounter and treat them with the dignity that this truth demands. The means of creating life can no longer be viewed as casual; contraception must be seen for what it is – the instrumentalising of human persons – and avoided. We must defend human life wherever and whenever we see it under threat. Fortunately they are the things taught by Holy Mother Church, all we have to do is open our eyes. Many refuse to pay attention to a church that doesn’t always live what it preaches; but this is to cut off the nose to spite the face. Consider the smoker who warns young people not to smoke, hypocritical yes, but right nonetheless.
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