Suicide

[Anagor]

Haven't read all posts about it here, so just my two cents about suicide:
I'm not religious, so I don't think I'll wake up in Heaven or Sto-Vo-Kor (for the Klingons among us) after death. I believe I'll just be gone.
I only have one live. No Backup. No Savegame. I don't live healthy and I'm thinking about taking more risks then I did before. But that's not the point.
I would never end my life. Because I think there is nothing after it.
One exception: terminal illness. Think cancer terminal stage. Every day a torture. No hope for cure. Pain even morphine can't ease. Then I'd do it.

 

[Tumbleweed]

If life is a curse then suicide is a valid way to resolve an impossible situation. I don't think of life as a curse, I think of life as an adventure, and as a challenge. If your life is so fuckin miserable that ending it by your own hand is the best solution you can come up with then I sincerely wish you luck in your attempt. There is nothing more pathetic than a repeat failed suicide in my opinion.

 

[Thrasymachus]

Life is not really an adventure. Life is generally about doing what you don't want to do over and over again because you feel you have to since you have to sell yourself to a corporation to survive today, or doing something else you equally don't want to do to obtain enough of the symbol of death we call money. People live as a sacred sacrifices to the institutions and companies that they depend on for their lives and they sublimate with massive amounts of drugs, television, alcohol, shopping, careerism, to ignore how hollow their lives are. In other societies I think life was more immanently liveable, people were freer, they had community, they were able to use their hands to make a living. If there was a chance to still do it, I think I would have been one of those white settlers who dropped out of white settler society and went over to the Natives.

I think you are responding emotionally about suicide because your father committed it. My father was a druggie, partier who straight up abandoned our family after my mom divorced him because he was too irresponsible and selfish. I don't feel any better because he didn't commit suicide. I don't generally hate or love him either. My parents were just another pair of people who wanted to have kids for whatever reason but didn't know how to raise them, just like everyone else in this society I have meet. And it is hard to recover from that, being born into bad circumstances, in an exploitative society where everyone fucks over everyone else for money, to people who have no clue how to raise children.

Saying that suicide is bad is fallacious, or that you should think of the parents(who gave birth to you against your will),other family and how they will feel is misguided because people don't choose to be born. But they can choose to die. If someone doesn't want to be alive, as they never were asked about the matter, they should be able to right the situation through suicide. That is the beginning and the end of it. Being born is not a choice or privilege.

 

[Tumbleweed]

So Thrasymachus, you obviously put some thought into your last reply. While I disagree with almost everything you said I don't want to dismiss your ideas without offering a honest reply: my 10cent philosophy is that life is tabula rasa (blank slate), i.e. we write our own narrative as we live our lives with our actions dictating the quality of the narrative. So for me adventure, conflict, love, building community and making real connections with the people I encounter are more important to me than that dark part of myself that tells me to hate everyone, distrust reality and wish for death.
Regarding your statement that I am "responding emotionally about suicide because your father committed it" you are of course correct. Living though the death by suicide of a loved one is a deeply emotional experience - a deeply disturbing experience. It sounds like you are arguing that this cause and affect relationship should have no bearing on an individual's decision to end their life because, and here you totally lose me, none of us are given a choice when we are conceived? Am I getting that right? I think maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand where you are going with this idea.
Finally, I never said that I think suicide is "bad", I said that life can be brutal and you have to fight everyday to survive. I respect those who fight a good fight and feel distain for those who throw in the towel. I don't give a shit about moral judgments regarding suicide, because it's not a thing that can be easily taken away it's an inalienable right. As such I don't really see the points in discussing it's merits, only it's affects.

 

[PotBellyFatGuy]

MFB : I plan, too, to kill myself when I get old and sick ( mainly, the sick part ) Its not negative, its just, I prefer going away peacefully rather than suffer in an hospital for months/years. I understand exactly how you feel and I feel the same way. But it is a tricky subject not a lot of people are willing to talk about, as it is taboo.

also reminds me of terminal illness, most recently that girl who "died with dignity" instead of putting burden on her family:

http://www.people.com/article/brittany-maynard-died-terminal-brain-cancer

PS - big pharma does not want you to do that. it will try to keep you alive as long as possible while it lobbies congress and gets the govt. to pay your medical bills on the backs of taxpayers. i am surprised that a law even exists that lets you die with dignity (5 states have it so far). that is a real shock to me. any person who has become a vegetable is of great use/benefit to pharmaceutical companies. even doctors. the entire medical profession. think about it. if a body is not present in a medical care facility, NO MONEY is made. no one is sick. no one doing paperwork. no nurse putting needles in you. no doc diagnosing you. no pharmacies pumping meds into you. nothing. nada. do you think they want people to just up and die on their own volition? absolutely no. you are asking to kill the cash cow - the sick and suffering patient - that generates hundreds of billions.