My oppinions on Suicide.

[Anachronous Rex]

Obvious alarm-squirrel mechanics asside, there are times when destroying ones self is the only choice one can make. Suicide can preserve human dignity in hopeless situations. There are also circumstances in which choosing life is merely choosing a more painful means of death.

I'd be reluctant to brush the act asside entirely.

 

[lilablassblau]

It is rather easy to judge suicides as selfish acts and condem them, if someone never went through a phase of depression and hard struggle in their life. I'm not suicidal myself, but I can understand how someone can feel that's the only way to handle things. Depression for example is a terrible thing and you constantly feel extremely bad. To point a finger at someone and cry out: "How dare you, your selfish bastard" is a very cyncial thing to do, if you have no idea how it is to life under a black cloud and your own mind makes you unhappy.

I'm not advocating suicide and would wish that suicidal people could be helped. I just would wish for less judgement on people how are often just very desperate. It's always easy to watch from the outside and judge somebody, if you don't really have an insight on what is going on.

 

[australopithecus]

What about jumping on a grenade to save someone else? Is that technically suicide?

 

[Anachronous Rex]

What about jumping on a grenade to save someone else? Is that technically suicide?

Or for that matter, even throwing yourself on a sword to spare your family discrace?

 

[Exmortis]

What about jumping on a grenade to save someone else? Is that technically suicide?

I have answered that already and I think that killing oneself in this fashion would be a exception. Not an exception where it is no longer suicide; don't get me wrong, it is. However, where, suicide for emotional reasons is, to be frank, cowardly. This kind of suicide is rather honorable. Actually I just thought of a word which better suits it, sacrifice.

Suicide can preserve human dignity in hopeless situations

Dignity? Why would it matter if your Dignity is intact or not? You just killed yourself... your dignity is now non-existant.

 

[nasher168]

suicide for emotional reasons is, to be frank, cowardly.

:|
I disagree there. No one in their right mind would take suicide lightly. I assume everyone here is in their right mind and so they look at it from the perspective of an individual in their right mind. The conditions that drive a person to suicide, however, do not necessarily leave that person in their right mind and so might give them a distorted view of reality. I don't accept that such an individual is being cowardly or spiteful or selfish in choosing to do that. It could genuinely seem to them to be the best course of action.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

What about jumping on a grenade to save someone else? Is that technically suicide?

I have answered that already and I think that killing oneself in this fashion would be a exception. Not an exception where it is no longer suicide; don't get me wrong, it is. However, where, suicide for emotional reasons is, to be frank, cowardly. This kind of suicide is rather honorable. Actually I just thought of a word which better suits it, sacrifice.

How is this not still an emotional reason?

Suicide can preserve human dignity in hopeless situations

Dignity? Why would it matter if your Dignity is intact or not? You just killed yourself... your dignity is now non-existant.

What would it matter if a comrades body is intact or not? You just killed yourself... you're now non-existant.

Your value judgements are flavored with the most extraordinary subjectivism masquerading as though it were somehow self-evident. To some of us, life is worthless without dignity, quoth Patrick Henry: "give me liberty or give me death." the sacrifice of a worthless life is no sacrifice at all.

 

[salko7]

didn't read any comments but this link might be useful : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-killing-yourself-adaptive-that-d-2010-10-11

 

[lrkun]

I can't find a reason to do suicide. But I've thought about it, I've tried it, I've wondered how it would affect those around me. In the end, it's a selfish act done by one who can't face reality and laugh.

No offense. ^^

 

[SirYeen]

Dear Exmortis,

It seems to me that you are judging something you don't have the slightest clue of. I have several reasons for claiming this (and completely disagreeing with you).

* Decisions are not based on (entirely) rational thoughts. Decision making is done by the limbic system in the brains while rational thought is done by the neocortex.
* Your arguments seem to be from a relatively rational/biological/ objective? point of view. However even if life is as rational as you think (and I personally agree with this statement) we don't experience it this way. On top of that we are simply to dumb to see the order in all the chaos. In cases of suicide it is not based on rational thoughts most of the time.
* Preferring life over death is a luxury most of us are happy to have. Not everyone has it.
* How is it selfish to commit suicide? In my honest opinion it is just as selfish to expect someone to live just because you want to. That being said I understand your point of view.
* I frankly can't motivate myself at the moment to write a wall of text of which I'm not entirely sure you'll read it so I'll stop here.

This comes from someone who *has* been depressed, for quite some time. The scary thing is that I realized it, knew how it worked (I'm trying to empirically work out how thoughts affect each other and how emotions affect eachother), and so on. At some time I didn't even know WHY I was depressed, I just was and it frustrated me to no end. This comes from someone who has been depressed for years and at some point was busy planning everything. I didn't not do it because I thought it was selfish or because I was a coward (because at that moment I'd have accepted that out of cheer self-hatred) but because I was scared my parents would do the same. Because I didn't want my parents or those dear to me to suffer (Again it had nothing to do with not being a selfish basterd, I sincerely didn't want those dear to me to suffer).

If you need more information please ask. But at the moment I'm to tired to write a wall of text if I'm not sure you're interested anyway.

 

[lrkun]

If in doubt, call the suicide hotline.

 

[SirYeen]

If in doubt, call the suicide hotline.

Thanks for the advice (I mean it). But I'm past that now =).

 

[Andiferous]

Personally, I laugh outright at the very concept of suicide. A life form deliberately killing itself as a result of emotional distress makes no sense. I mean, such an action is counter-productive to the state of living and therefore results death. Death being the end of life and by extension everything that life entails (IE. conscientiousness). Also considering that humans being afraid of the unknown (which by rights is known, but let us forgo the bullshit afterlife theories) should avoid death (an unknown state) at all cost. I say humans in the previous sentence and not life because I am not aware of any other life form that takes its own life for purely personal reasons.

...Maybe humans just have too much spare time on their hands...

In former reponses I was reacting to this generalisation, in an effort to point out that I know of few ways to make such a statement with accuracy. It's an interesting question, and I suspect that depression and other conditions are not unique to humankind, but there seems no way to argue or prove this one way or another.

A life form deliberately killing itself as a result of emotional distress makes no sense. I mean, such an action is counter-productive to the state of living and therefore results death. Death being the end of life and by extension everything that life entails (IE. conscientiousness).

Yeah, I think that's the point of suicide.

As he said.

I cannot see your argument aside from the assertion that suicide is unnatural to the animal world. And why does it make you laugh? Nothing about suicide seems laughworthy to me.

 

[Yfelsung]

If someone wants to go out like that then that's what they want to do.

I can't be mad or look down on someone who goes out on their own terms.

I had a friend, Howie, sort of a friend of a friend but we hung out and talked a fair bit. One day he taped his own mouth shut, put on a Rammstein CD and hung himself in his and his girlfriend's bedroom. She found him, fucked her up for a long time, fucked a lot of our friends up for a while. Some were mad at him, but I never understood that.

We're not animals driven only by survival. A side effect of our higher functions is the ability to act outside of natural pressures to thrive.

Look at Japan, they still have much less of a cultural taboo on suicide than the West and there's nothing wrong with that. Their society is not imploding.

 

[scarified2012]

My opinion: cowardice.

Unless there's an ultimate end to the means, such as doing it for someone else, but at that point it's not longer suicide but sacrifice. Unless the sacrifice requires a suicidal action... which then I suppose it's both? Either way, suicide just because you cannot take the harsh reality of life on Earth is just cowardice.

 

[Yfelsung]

My opinion: cowardice.

Unless there's an ultimate end to the means, such as doing it for someone else, but at that point it's not longer suicide but sacrifice. Unless the sacrifice requires a suicidal action... which then I suppose it's both? Either way, suicide just because you cannot take the harsh reality of life on Earth is just cowardice.

Natural selection would only factor into suicide if suicide was a genetic trait.

The most genetically superior specimen of human kind could still kill themselves.

Oddly enough, high intelligence has been correlated to depression and mental illness in more than one study. It could be quite possible that genetically superior specimens could be more likely to kill themselves.

The smarter you get, the more absurd you realize life is.

 

[Thyssane]

Hey all,

my first post here after lurking for quite a while. I'm not awake enough to respond to other posters coherently, but I'd like to give my view on the subject.

I've been chronically depressed for a long time, having ups and downs. As time went by, the downs became deeper, while the ups descended into the upper regions of the downs (hope people can follow this description...)
Eventually, it was just one long depression, which fluctuated in how bad i was feeling. At one point, I developed a passive death-wish, which meant I was not actively trying to commit suicide, but went to bed hoping I'd die in my sleep, or out the door hoping a truck would squash me.

This continued for a while and eventually helped to destroy the marriage I was in. During that time, active suicide was on my mind. The reason I didn't do it was because i somehow still realized that it would hurt friends and family.
The reason I wanted to do it was, as far as i myself can discern, not cowardice.

My condition is biological, somehow my body does not produce the chemicals needed to be able to feel happy. Even the periods where I thought i felt happy, in hindsight, were nothing more then recognizing that a period of time was passing in which I should be happy and was able to repress the depression.
When the situation reached its lowest point, the reason I had for wanting to kill myself was that if this constant feeling of sorrow was all life had to offer, then it wasn't really worth it. I just wanted to cease existing, to stop all the trouble, pain and sadness. Is this cowardice? What I still remember is just being so incredibly tired that everything was too much. I only wanted to sleep forever.

Luckily around this time I was finally diagnosed correctly, put on the right medicines and started the climb back up, and beyond.

Right now, I know what it is like to be happy. I enjoy life and what it offers and help friends and family when I'm able to. I'm glad i didn't kill myself, as there's a lot I would've missed out on.

When I hear about someone else committing suicide, I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I think everyone has a right to decide their own fate. On the other, I hope that everything possible was done to help out that person and that loved ones at least know that there was a problem which prevented that person from enjoying their life.

One last thing which may be good to know. A depression is not always recognizable as such. In my case, i just thought that the way I felt was how it was supposed to be. I didn't even consider another possibility. Depression is tricky, and it often prevents you from analyzing yourself and thinking critically. At least consider this before judging

Kind regards,
Thyssane.

 

[australopithecus]

Quick show of hands: How many people here, especially the ones associating suicide with cowardice, have ever seriously contemplated it? Either through illness or depression or other.

I have.

 

[Thyssane]

Quick show of hands: How many people here, especially the ones associating suicide with cowardice, have ever seriously contemplated it? Either through illness or depression or other.

I have.

Same here.

 

[kenandkids]

Quick show of hands: How many people here, especially the ones associating suicide with cowardice, have ever seriously contemplated it? Either through illness or depression or other.

I have.

I find suicide to be inherently cringeworthy in my mind, but I have had periods where I wish I could just quit or stop... permanently. The bravest, strongest, "manliest" man I knew committed suicide, those who equate it with cowardice are full of shit and unknowledgeable on the subject.