The fetichism of life?

You noticed I put a question mark. I am not sure myself. Is it an obsession, a wrong one – or also partly a good one.
Let’s start by some of the facts:
- The Greek and Roman would not fret about ending their lives early (the suicide of choice was drinking poison) – on the contrary, living on when all was lost would have been seen as cowardly. They also had no major issues with abortion, or infanticide, when socially appropriate…Myths are full of (usually failed) infanticide attempts targeting heroes foreseen to supplant the current ruler…
- The Old Testament took already a much more restrictive view (abortion and infanticide were not condoned, and there was a general prohibition on murder…but Jewish resistants against the Romans are known to have committed suicide when it was clear that all was lost, in the last rebellion). On the other hand, many parts of the Old Testament are full of divine orders to eradicate the enemy down to women and children, or to retaliate one to one…
- Jesus did not (if my memory does not fail me) speak specifically of either suicide, abortion or whatever. I don’t even recall him speaking about murder. It was too obvious for him, probably. But he stopped a crowd from stoning a sinner. And he refused to fight when arrested. He refused the sword.I would suggest his message could be summarized as: (i) violence is to be relinquished, (ii) pardon is stronger than violence, (iii) do not judge, only preach by your own example…
- The different so-called “Christian” churches (I would strongly argue as to whether they really preach, and practice, “Christian” virtues) developed their dogma in different layers, but over quite a few centuries and thousand of pages of theological writings, ended up with a strict prohibition of (i) suicide, (ii) abortion, (iii) supposedly, all kinds of murder. Except that at the same time the churches also developed a huge “arsenal” of justifications for (i) individual murder in the form of the death penalty (with or without horrendous tortures, depending on the times) and (ii) mass murder in the form of war. Let me be provocative and not go into all the justifications that were developed for each of them – just state the point…
- Now, what about our times? A contrasted situation, I would say:
o After having had the deadliest wars in history, Europe and the US moved to wars, where we aim at having not more than a couple dozen casualties, or if possible none at all – but wars everywhere else are deadlier than ever, and we have more than a hand in many of them…
o Most democraties and most developed countries (and, in fact, a number of other countries in the world!) have abolished the death penalty. And at least proclaim their faith in international law, meaning that they relinquish the right to start a war. All interesting steps, because they mean that one does not apply anymore a double standard to murder, some licit and some not – all murder becomes forbidden, so even the state can not order it anymore. As is well known, the US has a “complex” relation with internaional law (repeatedly going to war without international agreement or being attacked) and with the death penalty (legal in most of the states, but not all).
o Abortion is legal in most of the developed world, and much of the developing one. But at least the christian churches are fighting hard against it (most prominently the catholic one).
o Torture, well, is supposed to be illegal in most of the developed world…for what this means…
o What is just as interesting is the attitude to life saving: in rich countries at least, one will go to extreme lengths to save lives – not only through medical care, to extreme costs sometimes even when there is little hope, but also through “prevention”, which increasingly rhymes with “prohibition”, attempting to avoid harm by avoiding all “risky” behaviours, from walking on cliffs, to driving too fast, to drinking and smoking etc.

Now, what puzzles me is how to interpret all this. Should we read it as a general line of progress, that is not yet fully perfected, whereby life is increasingly “sacred” (even, interestingly, to atheists), and should be saved at all costs – but with strong disagreements remaining on suicide, abortion…and war (and the death penalty, to some extent, though this is only a serious debate in the US – in Japan and Europe, it gets discussed little, though both are on different sides of the issue).
Now, let’s think provocatingly:
- There are some human beings who are so far beyond the borders of social life, and are so clearly without any hope of any pshychic improvement, that one can wonder whether locking them up for life is appropriate – think, on obviously different scales, Hitler, or Fourniret (a particularly horrid French serial killer who murdered in particularly gruesome way dozens of young girls). Should they be executed?
- Since war appears to be just as much a part of human life as it ever was, in spite of all pretence to the contrary, does it make sense to always refuse it – or is it better to keep the possibility to intervene, as it is clear that sometimes it will result in lessharm, not more (think WWII, Bosnia, or a number of other cases, where non-intervention was unfortunately shocking, say Cambodia, Rwanda…)?
- Should we really forbid people to end their own lives? Should we keep people “alive”, when their mind is already dead, and their body cannot move anymore, and they live only through the tubes, connected to them?
- Is abortion murder? Even when the embryo is a small cluster of cells? Who should judge?
- Should safety always trump freedom?
- When will we simply reach the economic limit of over-medicalization of the last months of life?

Quite a lot of questions, because I am torn. On the one hand, I think the increased respect for all life is one of the defining strands of human progress, if there is such a thing. On the other hand, maybe, as the Greeks believed, measure is key in all things, and maybe we are on the edge between respect and fetichism of life?