Argument against suicide

[Homo Aestheticus]

I would be interested to know how you would respond to someone who argued that suicide is almost always wrong because the suicidal person fails to recognize that we as individuals are not 'islands'.   

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this specific reason against it.   

[Don]

I would be interested to know how you would respond to someone who argued that suicide is almost always wrong because the suicidal person fails to recognize that we as individuals are not 'islands'.   
 

I don't think of suicide in terms of right or wrong.  I do consider it a very selfish action, often cowardly.  But folks have the right to be selfish and cowardly. 

[Homo Aestheticus]

I don't think of suicide in terms of right or wrong.  I do consider it a very selfish action, often cowardly.  But folks have the right to be selfish and cowardly. 

Don,

I think it is very unfortunate to label a whole range of agonized and personal decisions with a dismissive "selfish" or  "cowardly.

I was being more specific: how would you reply to the dictum that "we aren't islands and therefore you should not take your own life"

[Kullervo]

Oh, hello Pink Harp!

[Holden]

The famous psychologist Eric Berne in his landmark book "Games People Play" looked at all interactions as just that - games - and he had labels for many of them.  He saw games as exisiting on levels with game players moving the level up if the game didn't produce the wanted results.

One game he called "Now You'll Be sorry..." and the player initiates actions (transactions in Berne's terminology) to hopefully produce that response from the targets of the game. He divided this game into three levels with level one resulting in a tantrum/walkout/pout/etc from the player. He labelled level three as suicide! (Now you'll be sorry, see what you've made me do?).

I suspect that many suicides are the result of people escalating the game to level three (wanting others to feel guilty) and if this is the case then HA is right. This is the ultimate selfish action - in  these circumstances.

However, not all suicides are motivated by this so to claim that all suicide is a selfish act beggars belief.

[vandermolen]

Difficult to be objective as my wife's best friend, a really lovely person in her early 40s, chose to end her life this way.

It always leaves misery behind it as those close to the person are likely to wonder/agonize if they could have done more to help (true in my case too.)

[Que]

Oh, hello Pink Harp!

Yes, hi Pink Harp aka Operahaven. Welcome back.

As a service to interested readers, here are the links to your previous suicide threads:
Have You Ever Suffered From Self-Hatred ?
Another Perspective On Suicide

Since there seems to be a different angle each time, I chose not to merge the threads.

As to the topic: suicide is IMO not much of a moral issue. At times a courageous decision - by people who want to end their unbearable suffering (when terminally ill), and at other times a symptom of serious personal/ psychological problems. Very different situations. The latter category should seek help and not try to deal with it alone....

Q

[vandermolen]

Yes, hi Pink Harp aka Operahaven. Welcome back.

As a service to interested readers, here are the links to your previous suicide threads:
Have You Ever Suffered From Self-Hatred ?
Another Perspective On Suicide

Since there seems to be a different angle each time, I chose not to merge the threads.

As to the topic: suicide is IMO not much of a moral issue. At times a courageous decision - by people who want to end their unbearable suffering (when terminally ill), and at other times a symptom of serious personal/ psychological problems. Very different situations. The latter category should seek help and not try to deal with it alone....

Q

Wise words. I agree.

[knight66]

Que has done what I was about to do as I read through the topic. Eric, can you explain why you return to this topic over a period of time?

Mike

[Mark]

Perhaps Eric is considering suicide?

[ezodisy]

I would be interested to know how you would respond to someone who argued that suicide is almost always wrong because the suicidal person fails to recognize that we as individuals are not 'islands'.   

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this specific reason against it.   

IMO the only argument against it is responsibility to people who need you for whatever reason. If there's no human obligation, then I think there's no objection to the act itself.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Perhaps Eric is considering suicide?

Holden and Vandermolen and Erdozy: Thanks for your comments.

Que: Thanks for the warm welcome.. 

Corey: Hello.

Knight and Mark: I returned to this topic because the other day an acquaintance of mine said that my reasons for contemplating suicide in the past were petty and that it would have been unethical because as he said.... "we aren't islands".

He even referred to deep in the future consequences of my act.

Islands?  What does that really mean ?

I had always thought that a person's life belongs only to him or her and no other person has the right to force their own ideals that life must be lived. Only the individual involved can make such decision and whatever decision he or she does make, should be respected regardless of his or her family or community.

Shouldn't suicide be seen as the most basic right of all ?

If freedom is self-ownership, ownership over one's own life and body, then the right to end that life is the most basic of all, yes ?

[ezodisy]

Erdozy

Why is it no one, anywhere, can get my username right?

Shouldn't suicide be seen as the most basic right of all ?

Two suggestions for you. Rent this film:

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Within-Criterion-Collection/dp/B00152VXU8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1220815631&sr=1-2

and read this or another book by him:

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Decay-E-Cioran/dp/1559704640/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220815676&sr=1-7

[johnQpublic]

Few people really are islands (An island means to me that you are in contact with no one else). Almost everyone has one or more family members and one or more friends, acquaintances or colleagues. In commiting suicide, you affect those people and often times deeply and negatively affect them.

My argument to someone considering suicide is to think about tomorrow. Not the literal tomorrow but the future. There will be better times, there will be new music to discover, there will be changes to you and those around you that could not be anticipated and will delight you in witnessing. Stick around as nothing ever stays the same.

[knight66]

Surely there is s difference between having rights and exercising them. In many cases people are not islands. So, the people left behind can be permanently damaged for all sorts of reasons.

This is a little like claiming the right to free speech; exercising that often leads to difficult consequences. People make their choices, but there will be after effects and to ignore them in favour of self determination can prove to be widely destructive.

Mike

[knight66]

My argument to someone considering suicide is to think about tomorrow. Not the literal tomorrow but the future. There will be better times, there will be new music to discover, there will be changes to you and those around you that could not be anticipated and will delight you in witnessing. Stick around as nothing ever stays the same.

With people who have serious intent in this; I don't think the future enters into it in terms of things getting better. They are in a present continuous place of misery. As with severe depression, it is unlikely a better future can be believed or contemplated.

Mike

[Mark]

What I'm about to post here I don't expect to be readily understood, or - if understood - readily believed or even granted the status of an interesting hypothesis, but I'll do it anyway because it makes sense to me. Be advised, however, that many of the terms used in the following paragraph will only make sense to those with at least an intellectual understanding of certain esoteric texts - in the case of this extract, Max Heindel's 'The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception'.

With all the foregoing in mind, here it is:

   The suicide, who tries to get away from life, only to find that he is as much alive as ever, is in the most pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being "hollowed out." The part in the ovoid aura where the dense body used to be is empty and although the desire body has taken the form of the discarded dense body, it feels like an empty shell, because the creative archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty mold, so to speak, as long as the dense body should properly have lived. When a person meets a natural death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the form, but in the case of suicide that awful feeling of "emptiness" remains until the time comes when, in the natural course of events, his death would have occurred.


I look forward to the ensuing derision and charges against my sanity.

[greg]

My argument to someone considering suicide is to think about tomorrow. Not the literal tomorrow but the future. There will be better times, there will be new music to discover, there will be changes to you and those around you that could not be anticipated and will delight you in witnessing. Stick around as nothing ever stays the same.

Though for some, such as people in third world countries, it never does get better. It all stays the same, or just gets worse.
Sometimes, for some people, their life can't get any better, so it might be unethical to except them to live in such pain for an extended period of time..... like watching someone physically torture them, but not letting them die because they "need them."

[Catison]

Oh, hello Pink Harp!

Do I get points for calling this just from the thread title?

[Joe_Campbell]

Do I get points for calling this just from the thread title?

Or the OP's name...



Or signature...