He talks about the fundamental sickness of a society that pursues the rights of the individual and yet leaves millions of people terribly lonely. We want independence but have no time to listen to each other in our weakness and sickness. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses and we are indeed created to be interdependent. The tragedy in our society he says is that at the end when people are frail they feel like they are a burden to their loved ones and feel the need not to be. Vanier says we need more legislation about life not just about dying; more legislation about helping people become fully human. Fully alive as we get older, fully alive as pensioners, fully alive in old age homes and sickness and even fully alive as we are dying. All of this is the beauty of our humanness. We need to become friends even with death.
Vanier on Legislation for Living
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