(no subject)

[naath]

A general trend in nuisances...

Whilst it is very nice to be helpful, to offer practical assistance or information or opinion that might assist me in making decisions (there are many ways to be helpful) it is often the case that the help offered may not actually be helpful, for a variety of reasons. Naturally this help has been offered out of kindness and generosity and should be politely refused, not rudely rejected. This is not the nuisance.

The nuisance is when the help-offerer goes on to insist that you accept their help, follow their advice, etc. even after I have politely declined and offered an explanation.

This is a nuisance (and worse than a nuisance) at a wide range of levels - from the small-time barely-a-flicker-of-irritation right up to serious assaults. Naturally the more serious the violation the more annoyed I am about it; but I am also generally-annoyed about the prevelance of this idea that my help/advice/etc is SO WONDERFUL AND AMAZING that OBVIOUSLY you want to follow it.

At the most trivial end - my bike lights have no battery, they do not need to be turned off, I deliberately leave them on at all times because I'm a lazy wottsit. So, naturally my life includes a large number of people telling me I have done so; or even turning them off while I'm not there. I strive to remember that these people are generous helpful people who I can't reasonably expect to know anything about how my lights work.

At the most serious end - the law in this country provides for detaining and forcibly medicating people if the relevant someone decides that that's a good idea. Now, I am absolutely all for providing absolutely everyone with all the medical treatments that they want; and I am on-balance in favour of detaining people who have committed crimes in part in order to protect others from the possibility that they will commit more crimes; I'm certainly in favor of offering people who have committed crimes the option of receiving medical treatment whilst detained; I'm just not in favour of people being forcibly medicated against their will.

Comments

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Forcible medication... Obviously I am unable to consent to being forcibly medicated at the time, however I could conceivably consent in advance. If I think about circumstances, and assume generously that people will be doing their best to act in my best interests - and that their best is a good best:

1) If I start acting seriously out of character, due to a new organic cause, for example a brain tumour. This, I think, is the prime case for forcible medication, as I wouldn't say my reactions are me.
2) If I start acting "seriously out of character", due to a psychological cause, for example a traumatic incident. Arguably my reactions are still very much me. That said, it could be argued the other way.
3) If there is some ongoing oddness due to an ongoing cause that has been around for a long time, where some magic threshold has been crossed. This cause is a part of me, so it would be hard to justify forcible medication. OTOH if I have been aware of this in advance, and I've previously said, "I'm in a degenerating state, if I degenerate too far, medicate me", then fair enough.
4) Diathesis-stress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model) - some ongoing neurological oddity, which previously had been sitting there quietly, is brought to the fore by a traumatic incident. I have previously not known about this, and have not had the opportunity to build character traits to deal with this. It really isn't clear whether the lurking oddness is me - hence the worries in point 2.

When I look at this... I can see this translating into lysystratae's case-by-case thing, with very careful regulation from the outside, looking at feedback from people who have (or haven't) previously been forcibly medicated, erring on the side of not medicating. But I still twitch. The thought of intervening on behalf of someone's True Self, knowable from the outside but not from the inside, is so abusable...

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think there's a danger to asking people "well, we did that, in retrospect did you want it?" because whilst "refusing treatment" might be a symptom of a disease "requesting ongoing treatment" might be a side-effect of a treatment...

I think giving consent in advance ought to be allowed - both in terms of "if I get to this point give me this drug" and in terms of "if I get to this point just let me die". Easier to set up if you've diagnosed someone as being in the early stages of a condition than if you first meet them in the later stages.

[passage.livejournal.com]

Requesting ongoing treatment being a side-effect of the treatment is a problem. Especially as we know of drugs developed for medical use which have this effect (e.g. heroin) to some extent.

The whole problem of two states, in both of them I want to stay in the state I'm in, is a nasty one. I have no idea how to solve this, but I wonder how real world it is - have you ever encountered someone who's been in that situation (or are they all locked away in metal institutions which is why we've never met them)?