Better than the alternative?

Better than the alternative?

Peter A. Hempel – 10/16/25

When my father moved into his late 80s, his memory began to fail. He was an academic, a world-renowned figure in the field of philosophy of science. He loved his family and loved being with friends; he had a wonderful sense of humor. But his intellectual career was central to who he was. He loved having in-depth discussions with colleagues about different issues in philosophy of science, and in particular, questions of what constituted scientific proof. (He came up with the famous “Raven Paradox,” which has millions of hits on Google.)

By this point in his life, however, things had deteriorated. Due in part to a detached retina in one eye, his eyesight was so bad that he was nearly blind, and his hearing wasn’t a great deal better. So, when his memory began to fail him, it was devastating. He was not someone who could simply watch TV all day and be content. He had none of that in him.

When he would talk about his frustration with his memory, members of my family, especially my sister, with the very best of intentions, would try to reassure him that she was always forgetting things too. She wanted him to feel more normal, to make it feel like less of a big deal. But for my father, it was a big deal, and trying to downplay it really meant she was not acknowledging the deep frustration that he felt. Instead of making him feel better, it could basically make him feel more isolated because no one was listening to him and his feelings about being trapped in this nightmare scenario.

I’ve noticed a similar dynamic in a common expression that people use. I recently went through surgery to remove a cancerous growth on my tongue. Now, before I am fully recovered from that, I have discovered that I have a tumor in my colon, which is obviously discouraging.

What I have found is that when I talk about some of this and how sub-optimal it is to face all this, many people will respond with, “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

I don’t agree. When my father was in his late 80s, he tried to commit suicide. My mother, who had been away for the day, found him and called me, and I called an ambulance, and he was “saved.” When he woke up in the hospital after having his stomach pumped, he was quite angry about being “saved.” Talk about no one listening to what he wanted.

The people around me, the other members of the family, were very upset about what he had done. They “couldn’t understand why he would do such a thing.” I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t surprised or upset. I understood exactly why he had done it. And I agreed with it.

There are people who are terrified of death, and will do anything to keep hanging on; other people, however, care about quality of life. The assisted suicide movement – death with dignity – is all about understanding our own values and what makes life worth living.

Imagine having a very bad case of the flu. Someplace in that first week, you're feeling like shit, everything hurts, you can barely get out of bed if you can stand at all, etc. But, bad as it is, you know that in a few days you’ll feel better, in a week you’ll be pretty much back to normal, and in two or three weeks you will have forgotten what it even felt like at all. Now, suppose that you weren’t going to get better, that this was the best you were ever going to feel from now on, and in fact, things would only get worse. That is completely different. Would you still say, “Better than the alternative”?

When people respond to me with, “Better than the alternative,” they’re basically not responding to what I’m saying. On one level, it’s insulting. It’s a way of not listening, or not having to listen. They’re not going through what I’m going through. I understand that there really isn’t anything perfect to say, but “BTTA” is a way of ignoring me.