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Unless a person has a terminal illness that causes them great pain or is being sent to prison for a long time, suicide isn't the answer. People who are depressed can get help if they really want to and live perfectly normal lives...
Except when the meds don't work. It's not uncommon for a person to have to try several antidepressants before finding one that works for them. Sometimes, nothing works.
Life has always been hard. In the past, and in other cultures (other than Western), life can be excruciatingly hard. Should all of those people have "exercised their rights" to off themselves?
What do these pro-suicide people tell their kids (if they are raising kids)? Do they say, "Life will get hard, and bad things may happen - and when that happens, a good idea is to "off" yourself."
It's gotten to the point of the ridiculous - and you can see that on this thread, a good 85% of people think suicide is a valid option. It is mind-boggling.
What happened to the idea that "life is sacred." And that life is painful, but "suffering" is optional.
How about when people become depressed that they do something about it.
The Dalai Lama says we should "Help others - and if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." (Paraphrased.)
Suicide was looked at as a viable option in many ancient civilizations, so it's not accurate to say that modern-day people are weaker. Suicide has always been part of human experience.
Having empathy and understanding for why some people commit suicide is not "pro-suicide". Those of us who can understand it, are not going around urging people to off themselves. I have a friend who has been suicidal off and on for years because of relentless depression since childhood, and I've done nothing but try to comfort them and get them to see a brighter way. And since I never imply they are a "coward", they feel they can actually TALK to me about their feelings.
I doubt anyone suicidal will ever turn to you for comfort. I hope not. All you will do is make them feel worse. Why do you assume that depressed people who kill themselves didn't TRY to help themselves? The meds don't always work.
Suffering is not ALWAYS optional. That platitude is full of holes. Would you walk up to someone who just got run over by a car and say, "Suffering is always optional"? Would you walk up to someone with ALS who can't move a muscle from the neck down, but can still feel every bodily discomfort without the ability to address it, and say, "Suffering is optional"?
Sometimes, suffering is all there IS, and it's not going to get better.
The only difference between you and anyone who has committed suicide, is that you haven't reached your limits. Did you ever stop to think that any of these people have experienced things more hellish than you can imagine?
Suicide was looked at as a viable option in many ancient civilizations, so it's not accurate to say that modern-day people are weaker. Suicide has always been part of human experience.
Having empathy and understanding for why some people commit suicide is not "pro-suicide". Those of us who can understand it, are not going around urging people to off themselves. I have a friend who has been suicidal off and on for years because of relentless depression since childhood, and I've done nothing but try to comfort them and get them to see a brighter way. And since I never imply they are a "coward", they feel they can actually TALK to me about their feelings.
I doubt anyone suicidal will ever turn to you for comfort. I hope not. All you will do is make them feel worse. Why do you assume that depressed people who kill themselves didn't TRY to help themselves? The meds don't always work.
Suffering is not ALWAYS optional. That platitude is full of holes. Would you walk up to someone who just got run over by a car and say, "Suffering is always optional"? Would you walk up to someone with ALS who can't move a muscle from the neck down, but can still feel every bodily discomfort without the ability to address it, and say, "Suffering is optional"?
Sometimes, suffering is all there IS, and it's not going to get better.
The only difference between you and anyone who has committed suicide, is that you haven't reached your limits. Did you ever stop to think that any of these people have experienced things more hellish than you can imagine?
You like me are debating with morons, best to just ignore their posts because they will never get it.
It's gotten to the point of the ridiculous - and you can see that on this thread, a good 85% of people think suicide is a valid option. It is mind-boggling.
It is quite an eye-opener. They seem to have blinders when it comes to loved ones having to dealing with the aftermath. But it's not their problem and they will get over it.
Unless someone has dealt with crippling depression they have absolutely no right calling people who commit suicide "cowards". If I had this guy as a professor I would drop his class immediately.
I hope that someone informed this professor's department chair of his comments. It is very likely that a number of his students had relatives or close friends who died by suicide. Some may even have attempted suicide themselves. For the professor to make this kind of thoughtless comment is totally outside the bounds of professional behavior.
Last edited by CarolinaMoon1; 01-10-2019 at 05:40 AM..
At least he didn’t come up with some melodramatic, Benatar-like, antinatalist statement that could inspire pseudo-martyr ideation in unstable minds.
You know; like a statement that could seem to normalize suicide? Validate suicide? De-stigmatize suicide?
I mean, okay; everyone must be SO much cooler than I am but I'm just trying to figure out how it only took a couple of the only generations in history that didn’t have to fight for their lives; before everybody forgot why they should.
Really? I thought old Aleutians ("Eskimos") were just put out on an ice floe to die when they became unproductive? You know, when they were eating more than they were worth? Was that murder or suicide? A little bit of both?
Absolutely. In about 1968, I was seriously dating a girl, and one day she came home, pulled her car into the basement garage, and found her dad hanging from a rafter. He had killed himself by wrapping a rope around his neck and jumping off a chair. She has never been the same since, and became so depressed over it that it totally ruined her life. She always blamed herself for not seeing any signs that he would do something like that.
That is why I said suicide is a very selfish act. It may end the suffering of the person who does it, but the pain just begins for everyone else, and lasts the rest of their life.
A great-grandfather on my dad's side killed himself. My grandfather was never the same after that. His drinking escalated. It impacted him in a lot of ways. My grandfather is now 84, and his dad killed himself over sixty years ago now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nobodysbusiness
The people who are left are often devastated and may never get over it.
No one can stop someone Hell bent on suicide, so know that you could not have done anything to prevent your friend from exiting in this violent way.
At that time, my own life was a whirlwind and I never really processed his death.
I don't think I've seen his family since the burial. Last I heard, his grandmother (who was around 80 then) basically fell apart after that. His mom never really got over it. He was never that close to his father.
What's sad is that the deceased was kind of the glue among our band of high school/college friends. He still lived with his parents, but they were affluent, his dad was rarely home, had a very large home and a lot of land, so it was easy to party and for him to host events over there. Once he died, that group kind of went its own separate ways.
Last edited by Serious Conversation; 01-10-2019 at 07:06 AM..
It is quite an eye-opener. They seem to have blinders when it comes to loved ones having to dealing with the aftermath. But it's not their problem and they will get over it.
Right - it's not only about whatever the person contemplating suicide is going through. There are externalities at play.
When my best friend committed suicide, he jumped off a small bridge into a lake with a backpack full of rocks on. Some nearby fishermen found him. They shouldn't have had to see that. The park ranger, police, ambulance personnel all saw it.
Someone blowing their brains out in a public place is going to emotionally damage potentially dozens or even hundreds of people.
I believe suicide is murder. I understand that the current mainstream thinking is that suicide is "fine," and no one should be shamed for doing it - it's a very pro-suicide environment.
But the major religions are not "for" it - and even in metaphysical studies, Delores Cannon talks about the ill-effects on the people who do it in the afterlife (it's on YouTube for anyone interested).
It is not a solution, if you understand the long term issues - and it is very passive-aggressive to create a horror movie scene for your "loved ones" (use that term very loosely) to stumble upon.
There will be a lot of responses that the person is "mentally ill" and "can't help it" (suicide apologists).
Please provide a link to the story.
It can't be murder, since homicide is the killing of another human being.
What religions think of it is irrelevant, unless someone belongs to that religion and faithfully follows its tenets (turn the other cheek, cut out your eye if it offends thee, etc.).
It does leave a disturbing scene for loved ones who are left...but that's not the case, if there are no loved ones, of course. And it can be more disturbing or less disturbing, depending. A person can also disappear and leave a note behind. Finally, suicide is a viable option for someone who is terminally ill, so the reaction of loved ones may be different in that scenario. A disturbing scene was going to exist, one way or the other.
Finding deceased relatives is a part of life. We all die.
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