Tea at Trianon: Is Mandatory Mass Suicide in the Future?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Is Mandatory Mass Suicide in the Future?

From Return to Order:

A recent case that has shocked those who still value human life is that of the 37-year-old Japanese man Yusuke Narita. Narita is an assistant professor of economics at Yale University, a position he has held since 2013. Recently, comments he made in a 2021 video interview resurfaced online, which led to Narita earning media infamy overnight.

Responding to a question about how to handle Japan’s demographic issues, Dr. Narita stated: “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear. In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass’ seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is the brutal custom of ritual suicide of disemboweling followed by decapitation. Born out of samurai practice, ritual suicide was deemed more honorable than allowing oneself to be defeated in battle and thus fall into the hands of enemies. The practice is more widely known as harikari.

But this was not the only instance in which the Yale-based academic advocated for eugenicist policies. In a different lecture to school students delivered last year, Narita expanded on his euthanasia ideas. He referred to the 2019 Swedish horror film “Midsommar,” in which members of a Swedish cult commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The cult members committed suicide at age 72, believing it to be an honor.

“Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” said Dr. Narita. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

A third instance involved the academic raising the possibility of mandatory suicide in the future—an eventuality appearing to echo the Swedish horror film. “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future” will “come up in discussion,” he said in another interview.

As noted by the New York Times, while Dr. Narita has passed relatively un-noticed in the U.S. until now, he has amassed a large following among Japanese nationals and has nearly 600,000 followers on Twitter. Writing in NewsWeek Japan, columnist Masato Fujisaki noted that Narita’s comments could not be ignored as merely deluded ravings.

“This statement should not be easily viewed as ‘metaphor,’” wrote Fujisaki. “What is more serious is the fact that his comments have been accepted by the other performers of the program who are present at the event,” and not only were Dr. Narita’s comments welcomed by the interviewers, but they represented a growing trend of thought in Japan. “More and more people have a desire to cut off those who may be a burden or a burden to them,” wrote Fujisaki. (Read more.)