My question is this: Do you think suicide is a selfish act?

Personally, I do. I do not believe there is any reason for suicide, though I have wavering thoughts on people with terminal illness having humane assistance to the big sleep. Thats not my issue though.

I'm talking about traditional (if there is such a thing) suicide. Depression, self pity, chronic disease, bad luck, whatever. I dont think any of those things justify the taking on ones own life. I find it selfish and rather stupid of people to attemt this course of action.

I knew a guy back in tech school who would 'attempt' suicide about once a month. He did it for attention and he was also trying to get pity sex from me, my friends, random girls on the street, etc. Once he showed up with slash marks on his upper arms and he was perversely proud as he showed them to me. Apparently, he had taken apart his razor and used the blade to put shallow cuts in the meatiest part of his upper arm. And then there was the day he talked aobut how he tried to hand himself in the bathroom. From the shower curtain rod. Which was about eye level to me. And being 5'5", I'm not that tall. So I had a hard time trying not to laugh at the image of a guy who was 6'4" trying to hang himself on it. He was eventually discharged from the navy due to mental defect.

The only other person I knew who tried to kill herself was my brothers ex. She and he was dating at the time and she, being the mother of two and rather upset that my brother wasnt interested in marrying her within months of dating, wrote a suicide note and left it in their room. She walked out of the house and sat in the car with the ignition running as my brother and I watched, wondering what the heck she was doing out there at 3 in the morning. Then my brother found the note, and as soon as he did, she started backing out of the driveway. Police were called, her kids were scared, I was pissed, my brother was pissed, and suffice it to say it was a long night for all of us. The next day, my brother no longer dated her, though she continued to show up at our house begging him to take her back.

Fucked up thing was, she was allowed to retain custody of her 4 and 6 year old.

So yeah. I think suicide is the coward's way out and a sad cry for attention.

Reason I am asking is because some people are of the mind that sometimes suicide is the only road and so on and so forth. I have heard people say that suicidal people are blameless, that they lead lives so hard that continuing is agony, etc etc. I actually heard someone say that it is not the suicidal person who is selfish, but the person's friends and family, for being angry and/or upset at the person for the course of action they had taken.

Though the arguement can be made she wasn't thinking clearly at the time, but I think deep down she thought she had good intentions.

And yes, it is selfish. It's a choice you make for yourself, either with or without considering or caring about other peoples' opinions. You can love someone dearly (truly, not emo teenager angsty shit) and still choose to end your life. Keep in mind that by extension to the the "it's selfish" argument, people who have cancer and stop fighting for their life are selfish too. But then, people with cancer or some other heinous injury/disease are thought of as "letting go" or there's some wishful thinking that they're hanging on and you're giving them permission to go. Suicide is "Letting go" with a bang. Sometimes literally.

Likewise, I don't like the "coward" argument. Sorry. Not good enough. Seen too many people subsistence-living in shit lives to call them "brave".

Maybe it is a cry for attention, but that's only because these people don't want to kill themselves but at the same time they do, and the internal conflict is too much to handle on their own. Or this is all my experience. lol suddars emo, I know, laugh it up. This isn't just me, though, it's my friends too, but go ahead, be clever and post about how emo I am.

Of course some people "use" suicide for the wrong reasons. These people aren't really depressed and their actions probably stem from something else. Please don't color everybody with that brush, because I firmly believe that when you're depressed enough, you really can't think straight and suicide seems almost acceptable.

Because really, screw that, if I am in a horrible car accident and my neck is shattered leaving me fully paralyzed from the neck down, forced to breath through a tube attached to a machine and unable to do anything while being wholly reliant on others to do everything for me down to clean my diapers I am very much getting my affairs in order then offing myself by any means possible.

Or if I have some sort of horrible illness and for the next, who knows, 2 months I have nothing to look forward to but non-stop pain my mostly bedridden body slowly falls apart, nothing to be done... then yes, I am treating my death as 'right now', taking the proper steps and then saving myself and my family a lot of undeeded and extended grief.

Because to me, the only thing worse than seeing someone die is seeing someone suffer with no way to fix it.

Vorago fucked around with this message on 07-07-2006 at 11:50 AM.

Topic here is the boohoo or attention whoring type ;p

quote:

---

Led probably says this to all the girls:
Everyone can understand if you are dying from some sort of terminal illness or if you are seriously fucked up in a permanent way.

Topic here is the boohoo or attention whoring type ;p

---

Well, Aziakas included disease into the list of crap reasons so just wanted to be sure

quote:

---

Pvednes Model 2000 was programmed to say:
Yes it is. However, depression is a mental illness, not a weakness of character.

---

This is what I wish more people would understand.

quote:

---

Vorago thought about the meaning of life:
Well, Aziakas included disease into the list of crap reasons so just wanted to be sure

---

I didnt mean to include terminal illness like that. I would personally hate to suffer like you mentioned and I wouldnt blame anyone who wanted out in that case. Hell, I'm the one who will have to decide for my dad when the time comes to keep him on the machines or not, depending on how he goes. I dont think that humanely assisted death is bad as long as the circumstances warrent.

But my two examples in the first post, well, those were the 'poor me, give me attention' types of people.

quote:

---

Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
I don't like thinking of suicide in terms of it being someone else's choice as to when I check out. It's selfish? Well...yeah. So's breathing. You don't breathe for other people. You breathe for yourself.

---

Uh. That analogy doesn't work. You can't stop breathing. Well... you can, but then you'd die. Breathing really isn't a selfish act as your body requires you do to so, so that you may continue to function.

Suicide is completly optional, breathing ain't.

Anyway, I'm of the opinion that killing yourself either for attention, or because you've lost something extremely dear to you, is merely ending yourself early without thinking of further consequences to those around you. It's definately selfish, and pretty damn stupid. However, if something happens to you, and you can't really live anymore. (Like, stuck in a bed for the rest of your life.) Then I guess suicide really isn't selfish as much as it is ending yourself with some dignity and pride left in yourself, rather than continuing to suffer pain with no end in sight.

quote:

---

Willias had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
Uh. That analogy doesn't work. You can't stop breathing. Well... you can, but then you'd die. Breathing really isn't a selfish act as your body requires you do to so, so that you may continue to function.

Suicide is completly optional, breathing ain't.

---

Rather, that analogy doesn't work because the consequences of suicide and of breathing are hardly in the same category.

My breathing could hardly ruin anyone's day. Should I kill myself, however, that just might shake some people.

Suicide probably often is selfish, but the vast majority of human activity is selfish. One has no obligation to live for others. If someone want to off themselves, for whatever reason, it's their right as an extension of self-ownership alone.

quote:

---

Mod put down Tada! magazine long enough to type:
You need to make a distinction between suicide and attention whoring. That guy in your story didn't want to off himself, he was in the military, he could have taken a gun to his head and blown it right off or sat on a grenade if he had truely wanted to die.

---

Well, that never would happen unless he got beaten in his bunk after lights out with soap wrapped in towels. Duh.

quote:

---

Mod startled the peaceful upland Gorillas, blurting:
You need to make a distinction between suicide and attention whoring. That guy in your story didn't want to off himself, he was in the military, he could have taken a gun to his head and blown it right off or sat on a grenade if he had truely wanted to die.

Suicide probably often is selfish, but the vast majority of human activity is selfish. One has no obligation to live for others. If someone want to off themselves, for whatever reason, it's their right as an extension of self-ownership alone.

---

I have to agree. Failing a suicide attempt is the ultimate confirmation that you're a complete failure and should kill yourself, ironically. It's the one thing no one serious about doing should be able to fail except through the most bizarre coincidence.

quote:

---

Willias stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
Stuff

---

I think the analogy, for my purposes, suits just fine.
Suicide is something you ultimately do for yourself. And it's none of anybody else's business if you're doing it or not. The difference is no one cares if you're breathing, but if you suicide suddenly it's everyone's concern. Likewise, you don't breathe for your wife or your child. Breathing is a semi-autonomous function. If you didn't want to breathe you could arrange means to strangle yourself.

Now, by no means am I saying that it's an EASY choice, or one you can make CASUALLY. You want to stop breathing, you have to go out of your way, it's so "not easy" to do. BUT! Suicide isn't easy either. Very few people casually choose to load a gun and blow their brains out or hang themselves in their apartment. It's not something you just decide to do in a "Go see movie, eat dinner, hang self" sort of manner.

Why do I make this point? Because it seems like a lot of people in this thread have decided suicide is an easy topic to consider. If you've never wrangled that deep in depression it probably is. I, today, think of suicide and brush it off. Barring some insane injury or illness, I would never consider it. But I'd be lying if I said I was never so depressed, never so lost in my own morass that I considered it. It's only an easy topic to blow off if there isn't something wrong. If there is something seriously wrong, suddenly it becomes very tenable.

And I don't think it's a coward's way out. Why are they a coward? Taking responsibility for yourself, even in your end of life choices, is supposed to be a sign of maturity. Insulting someone's choice is fine...you're entitled to your opinion, of course, but blanket-statement insult analyses of people who commit suicide is just plain stupid.

I'm not saying that there aren't people who attempt suicide as a cry for help. I actually have pity for those people if they're hitting suicide like it's some sort of "pause/reset" button. People who do it repeatedly clearly haven't put their shit in order, and so I increasingly have less pity for them. And I certainly don't have any pity for people who repeatedly threaten to kill themselves and even do threat-woundings of themselves. I think we all knew kids in high school like that. I know I knew a bunch. It's the worst sort of attention-whoring tripe, and I would agree wholeheartedly if someone suggested they be taken out back, held by their arms, and kicked in the crotch repeatedly.

But serious suicides, people who actually go through with it, are in a COMPLETELY different category and you simply cannot apply the same logic to them. One is often adolescent-like inability to fit in or take responsibility for your own life. The other is either the result of mental illness (which in large part can't be helped), or it's a gruesome sort of taking final responsibility for yourself.

Now, having lost my step-brother to suicide, I can tell you that, all jokes aside, you need to leave a note behind. Ironically my sister (Jajahotep) wrote, in one of her "black humor" phases, a book about different ways of committing suicide. It was surprisingly clever. The different methods, undesirable side-effects, and "helpful hints". It poked at some very real oddities (people who commit suicide don't always want to do it in such a way they're mutilated in some fashion...I guess vanity can outstrip ego in some cases...so don't swallow a shotgun), it poked at some foul truths (look! no bowel control!), and (most pertinent to my point here) it had the running joke that you simply MUST leave a note.

My step-brother didn't leave a note. His roommates came back and found him. He'd hung himself. Waited until he knew he'd be alone, be in private, had it all planned out, and hung himself. They called the police, who sent local police where his mom and my dad live to their house at 3 in the morning, woke them up, told them the news. There was no note. There was no clue. There was no warning that he was that upset, or what built up to putting him over the edge. My stepbrother was a lot of things, but "coward" wasn't one of the descriptors I'd use for him. He did a lot of amazing things that he was genuinely good at that I would never even attempt. He was an excellent skiier, he was in phenomenal physical shape for a college student, he had explained to our parents that he wanted to skip college for a while and be a professional pilot, and there was no anger or friction there over it. He was going to walk his own way. But apparently there was something eating at him.

After the fact, because he didn't leave a note, we naturally tried to figure out what that was. He and his girlfriend had broken up, but it was a healthy breakup. They still hung out. She was, before being his girlfriend, one of his closest friends, and after their romantic dalliance ended, they remained close friends. He'd seen his uncle a month before, and had a cyst in one of his oil glands on the back of his neck. Was blocking the release of the skin's natural oil. It happens to a lot of people. My buddy Leonard had one. They stick a needle in it to drain the fluid and your body usually handles the cyst. My step-brother's father died from tumors along his spine...so maybe my step-brother thought his time was up and without talking to a doctor decided to not waste away like his Dad did. But he wasn't stupid, and as far as any of us were concerned he wasn't scared of doctors...plenty of memories of him getting hurt doing something silly like putting his weight bench together and us rushing him to the hospital and him trying to gross everyone out. It made us, in a gruesome sort of way, know that he was okay when he was trying to break the ice. He was quite the ham.

But there was no note. It was SO unlike my step-brother to even attempt to kill himself, much less go through with it and succeed, that I honestly would have suspected foul play, but the autopsy (which they have to do in a suicide in NC) didn't turn up anything unusual. So apparently there was something gnawing at him. And that's what I fault him for in all of it. I wish he were here but I can't hate him for his choice. It was his choice. I don't agree with it, and it's hard to respect it, but it was HIS choice. I just wish he'd left something behind to...TRY and make us understand.

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

Try to find a way to make
All our little joys relate
Without that ever present hate
But now I know that it's too late

And that suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

The game of life is hard to play
I'm going to lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
And to another give a seat
For that's the only painless feat

'Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works it's way on in
The pain grow stronger watch it grin

For suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
Is it to be or not to be
And I replied "Oh why ask me."

Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please;

And you can do the same thing if you please

(lyrics to the MASH theme btw)