What do you think of suicide?

[the-dude-abides]

Is it ethical? Should people have a right to die?

 

[Deleted member 3578]

Opens Agora Road:
Sees this as a thread:

 

[Deleted member 3578]

It is complex and a pervasive element of life on its way to an end.

 

[calico_jack]

idk i was born without my own permission i think i should be allowed to leave on my own accord

 

[Thereal]

I think everyone has the right to end their life, but I'm definitely not an advocate of suicide. Rarely is it the right answer. If you're useless and depressed, then killing yourself is just taking yet another easy way, and the easy way is likely what got you into the depression to begin with.

 

[Emmy Fitz]

I can't say i advocate suicide but i can definitely see a persons reason for it. I was extremely suicidal a few years ago when I was a teenager. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

i lost my cousin to suicide two years ago and his life was all fucked up. Drugs, lost a baby boy weeks after being born, wife in jail, family thinking he's a failure, multiple kids with multiple women. When you get to that point, fuck, how CAN you fix it? I miss him every day and wish something else would've helped.

 

[Grif]

It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

This in a nutshell.

 

[Jill Stingray]

Don't really have a problem with it. Known a few people who've died by suicide, and while my heart aches for them and I miss them, I can't weigh in on whether it was the right call or not. It's their life, they had shit they were going through and I don't blame them. I've attempted twice before when I was severely depressed, and while I'm pretty good now and my life's pretty stable, I'm still considering it as an option in the long-term future (after 50 or so). Like another person mentioned in the thread, none of us chose to be born so I don't see why we shouldn't have autonomy over when and how we die.

 

[赤い男]

Idk really, once i tried to jump from my college rooftop, some bad things happened to me at the time and i couldn't handle the situation (private stuff, but it was two years ago, so it's a thing of the past, so don't worry), i was about to do it, but at the last moment i decided not to, that i have much more to do in life, there is no need for this to be the end of the road, so i walked backwards and i sit, then i cried for a moment, was an experience i would never try again, what would my family think about it? They would be devastated for that, what does the future has to say? Idk yet if everything would be for the worse or better, what if i survive? A suicide attempt survivor always ended up messing his life even more, if i survive the fall, i would ended up paraplegic, this whole situation made me think more about myself.

I lost a friend that way, so i don't want to ended up like him, since then, i try so hard to improve my life the best i can, be kind and more caring with my parents, brother and sister, doing excercise and improving my body, adquire more knowledge, to improve my mind, and i go to to therapy to reinforce myself, it was a long journey, but i'm relief that i feel a lot better now, and with hope i would be feeling even better with time, my opinion on suicide is that people needs support and respect, our society has making them feeled ashamed for things out of their control, nobody knows how's the life of the person behind the monitor, even if i like to make some jokes, in the end i do care about people, so i try my best to be respectful and kind, because, who knows, perhaps all that person needs is being treated as decent human being.

So my tip is, if you felt really bad, don't be afraid, ask someone you trust, like your parents, a really close friend, or better yet, a professional, like a Psychiatrist, never lose hope, because after every cloudy day, a Rainbow Glows.

 

[赤い男]

Don't really have a problem with it. Known a few people who've died by suicide, and while my heart aches for them and I miss them, I can't weigh in on whether it was the right call or not. It's their life, they had shit they were going through and I don't blame them. I've attempted twice before when I was severely depressed, and while I'm pretty good now and my life's pretty stable, I'm still considering it as an option in the long-term future (after 50 or so). Like another person mentioned in the thread, none of us chose to be born so I don't see why we shouldn't have autonomy over when and how we die.

Tbh, i would like to die as a Mercenary, in 21 years when i hit the 40s i would say "fuck it, middle age crisis" and i would join some of those fancy private contractors, just to kick some ass with a sick Exoesqueleton, just to being gunned down in a desert in the Middle East (or eastern europe, who knows about the future specially with our lord god emperor Vladimir Rasputintin)

 

[FalseReality]

I think everyone has the right to end their life, but I'm definitely not an advocate of suicide. Rarely is it the right answer. If you're useless and depressed, then killing yourself is just taking yet another easy way, and the easy way is likely what got you into the depression to begin with.

I think that suicidal thoughts is more of an idealisation of an escape. Our brains try to calculate ways to optimise happiness and make ease so for some they must find that the only solution is suicide. Once it's found it's an easy solution to think of, out of all other solutions it is imagined easier and is recognizer this is the only one with no consequences to deal with after so long as it is done right.

So really a lot of the time suicidal thoughts aren't actually based on not wanting to exist but not wanting to suffer so much. Which means there are other solutions.

 

[Aral]

Anyone should have the right to exit if they want to. However most of the time, such a decision will be devastating for the ones who stay, so can't say it's very ethical, but I understand people who end up doing it for whatever reason. Losing a loved one to suicide is one of the most awful things possible and a lot of people who experience it don't ever really recover from the loss, because of how painful it is. It's painful to lose someone to illness or age, but when they die untimely, especially of their own hand, which implies a certain amount of most often untold suffering, it's worse. A former classmate of mine hung herself (officially it was that weird choking game thing, but it's not generally practiced alone and she wasn't mentally in the greatest shape already when I knew her) at the age of 13 and I can't help but imagine how painful it must've been for her family. She was a really sweet girl, we parted on bad-ish terms due to a minsunderstanding before I moved schools, but the news of her death shook me, I recall. I wonder what she'd be up to today. Might visit her grave before I leave the country, just to sit there for a few minutes before I close this chapter.

I've had suicidal thoughts for all my teenage years (from ages 12 to 20/21 I think, they were there all the time) and now even if they're pretty much gone, there's still an undercurrent of them even when I'm otherwise in a good mood. It may just be because I was so used on functioning like that, but I feel that once you have suicidal thoughts, you can't ever get rid of the possibility you might die like that someday. They spring back up when I'm very stressed or when I feel trapped in a situation. I never attempted, although I came dangerously close a couple times (13, 15 and 18 years old), but I still consider that this may be the way I'll go this time. The possibility is there. Right now there's just so much to do and I'm not in the "right place", so to speak, to consider dying already, but at some point I will be, and then... I don't know what will happen at that moment, if I'll just say "oh well, looks like the path is clear", disappear somewhere and do it or just keep living because I have a survival instinct, because I'd not want to hurt loved ones or have found stuff to distract myself. It could be in a couple years like it could be in 20 years. The thing that saves me is my ideals that I want to realize, the fact I don't want to be buried in my birth country and not having "lived" yet, although I may never get to live at all. It's no life to live in the world we are in now and if it keeps up like that, it will be no life at all for any of us.

 

[Aral]

I think everyone has the right to end their life, but I'm definitely not an advocate of suicide. Rarely is it the right answer. If you're useless and depressed, then killing yourself is just taking yet another easy way, and the easy way is likely what got you into the depression to begin with.

"EASY WAY"

Are you fucking serious? This is singlehandedly the most invalidating and asinine thing I've read.

Going against one's survival instinct is NOT easy. We have it built in for a reason. It's precisely what keeps a lot of people alive, at least the ones who have nothing to live for yet still live somehow. It takes a lot of strength to overcome that instinct. It's the desperate energy that gives people the will to actually do it. It's not "easy". Calling this "the easy way" is the most insulting thing to say in that context.

And who the fuck are you to say that it's the "easy way" that gets people into depression too? Go fucking say that to people who are suffering through hell and may have been doing so their entire lives. You don't know what's in their mind. You have NO IDEA what they are going through. You are judging without even knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

Because if I read between the lines here, you're literally saying that it's laziness that puts people into depression. The easy way, the lazy way! Well let me tell you, I don't wish you to ever be so plagued by a massive weight of pain that you can't get up in the morning, you hardly want to eat anything, doing even the basic stuff feels like an effort and anything that requires willpower just feels like climbing a mountain. I don't wish you to feel cold, weak, a weight in your chest, your throat constricted and an emptiness at heart every single second of your life. I don't wish you to feel like no one cares and will ever care about you and that the world would be better off without you, because just by existing you feel like a burden on everyone involved. I don't wish you to think of killing yourself all the time yet have no courage to even grab the first sharp object nearby. I don't wish you to completely disregard your safety and puT yourself in dangerous situations simply because you just don't value your life, so you don't care what risks you're taking anyway. I don't wish you to feel like life is that Chinese water torture when that little drop ends up feeling like a hammer on your head. Literally anything that comes feels like a blow to the head that sens you to the ground. I don't fucking wish you to be depressed because it's the most awful state a human being can be in. You don't fucking want that. You don't fucking deserve that, no one does.

The easy way my ass. There's nothing easy about killing yourself or being depressed. Everything about this is hard.

 

[darth shart]

I've always been innately optimistic with a penchant for the romantic, even if rationally I hold very nihilistic views on life. I'm not above suicidal ideation and have let the circumstances of my life affect my feelings on living (or moreover a potential for better circumstances) a few times but I've never come close to an attempt. I have extremely severe OCD and I've done a lot of cognitive behavioral work on it - now I tend to think what I was going through was more of an inability to banish an intrusive thought cycle than any sort of actual depressive episode. The thing about OCD is that until you go through the arduous process of self inventory and your distorted thoughts, your only way to escape an obsession is the compulsion part... there are lots of examples in my life but I can think of one cute anecdote from my childhood.

For some reason when I was 8 or 9, I became horrified of the fact that I could, in fact, just shove my hand down my mouth and choke to death. I could not stop worrying about it. I confronted my mother with it and she explained that I'd just vomit if I did that... eventually the only way I got over it was actually trying it. A less cute story, around the same age, is when I could not get it out of my head that I had the capability to stab my mother. I never have fantasized about harming anyone and it's difficult to convey these kinds of obsessive intrusive loops to someone who has never experienced it. My mother had a lot of experience with what I was going through... when I mentioned this to her she handed me a knife and said "well?" And in that instant I had satisfied the compulsion part of the obsession - I was no longer worried about it and haven't worried about it since. I obviously had no desire to kill my mom, what I was afraid of was that I had the desire. I honestly think if she didn't have Forensic Files on all the time it's not even something that would have ever occurred to me on my own.

As an adult who is very certain I don't want to hurt anyone else the intrusive thoughts tend to be more benign - how many times do I need to walk back up the stairs to check my apartment door is locked before I can leave to go to the grocery store? That kind of thing. I realize this thread isn't about this but I just wanted to give a frame of reference for what suicide ideation was like for me personally in my teens - I was never really depressed, I just had this obsessive fear that I wanted to kill myself. When I was older and I had more experience with others, namely a woman I was dating and living with for years, I realized pretty concretely I've never really experienced depression or a desire to end it. I now understand it's not something I really comprehend or ever can (hopefully).

That being said, if I did ever kill myself, yeah, that's my decision and mine alone, I definetly have a "right" to do it.

 

[Kolph]

I mean, I don't advise doing it but I've known people in my life that, to be honest, I would not blame if they did it as their life sucks that much.

Either way, don't forget to include Uncle Kolphy in your will if you do rope.

 

[lain is here]

Depression itself should be a wake up call to change your life and behavior patterns. Depression should be a motivating factor to try new things in life... instead society has it as a trigger word and excuse to keep yourself in a box and some how I'm a terrible person for not coddling "victims" of "depression".. even though I've dealt with it all my life as well.

This is the truth that sadly too many people ignore. Depression is (often) a symptom that something is deeply wrong in your life (sometimes what this issue is isn't immediately obvious, but often that's due to a subconscious fear of actually confronting the truth). Definitely when I was in my late-teens and described myself as depressed this was the issue. It was only once I forced myself to confront my deepest personal fears and conquered those internal battles that I stopped feeling depressed.

 

[Lemonade]

Suicide is Badass

 

[Sable]

Life is a gift and should not be wasted. There is no guarantee you will get to experience it again.

With that being said, nothing belongs to a man in the way death does.
It is experienced by all and depending on what you believe, it is the final experience of all.
So, seeing that death belongs to man I see no issue in man choosing how and when he experiences death.

Are you really in control over your own life if you cannot choose when to end it?

 

[Max Chill]

I won't be framing suicide with an ill intent, but in discussing such things I always approach it with indifference and a philosophical manner. I've already come into terms with that near traumatic past but I just tend to approach discussions with indifference for the benefit of my thought's clarity (for as long as it can at least).

Spoiler: PSA on my experience with suicide

I've been denied of the privilege of personal experience with suicide or being suicidal (kinda ironic to use privilege but just to frame it), but I can guarantee that I myself have had an experience with someone close to doing it MANY TIMES (and I've had extreme emotional responses to that). That experience almost destroyed me and practically consisted the majority of my life (at least in memory) when I was 18-19.

I've always approached this in an Existentialist manner (the social phenomena approach is easily accessible), as per how it should be in my opinion, and for the record I do not approach suicide in terms of ethics. Whether we have the "right" to it or not as that itself is like framing suicide as a matter of law; the law is an abstract and inanimate, a collection of rules followed by sovereign entities, which is dictated, interpreted, or carried out by someone who is qualified and authorized to do so. And to me, if we are to be fixated in framing suicide in an ethical manner it is like we ourselves are passively admitting to an indirect invalidation of the person's reason or stating we posses their final say to their decision in submitting themselves to life's ultimate pinnacle of truism, which is suicide. In short, to discuss in terms of ethics is like indirect selfishness, focused on how it affected others surrounding the victim instead of knowing the "why" of the victim. Ethics in suicide is just secondary to me but never ignored. You've read my 2nd PSA, I trust, so why not discuss it so you ask? Simply because we're often fixated on how someone's suicide/being suicidal affects us, we ought to know their whys and ways to deal with it.

Now I cannot recommend this to anyone, Absurdism is kind of a passive redpill, and proper therapy and care for mental health is first and foremost; philosophy, in face value, can only alleviate the burden or, worse, deepen it.

This has been my reference always. Albert Camus interjects:

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."​

Suicide, for what its essence is in the eyes of philosophy, is indeed the easy way out like Thereal frames it; or in nagol's brand consistent bluntness, lame. BUT that easy way out is never done, nor faced, nor achieved easily, as Aral responded; both are sound points, the philo approach of Thereal feasible and Aral's reaction is warranted by her experience with it.

Suicide to me is truism, a boring confession (an act entailing one's belief) that life is inherently devoid of meaning despite the options around us; a confession that you did not or aren't willing to understand it. And just to prove my point I won't even be explaining in length the flip side of committing suicide in honor of the truism. We all know that there is not a single universal method of recovering from being suicidal, nor would it suffice having a lifetime's worth of explanation to clarify with pinpoint unanimously agreeable accuracy. Suicide is suicide, and the recovery is but a matrix of hows. If I'm to put myself in the shoes of Mr. Insesitive: "Wouldn't you at least try to be as insufferable as Schopenhauer in his banter before at least confessing?"

Suicide is the result of a slow agonizing crawl under the weight of depression; But suicide performed in the name of higher purpose or philosophy is even more boring in my framework; what purpose is your suicide if you're not there to reassess the intended effect of your "display", or at least is there no one with the same mindset as yours to confir--- wait, you're dead, you won't know either way. I believe in the wonders of the remarkable regular people that's why I like hearing their stories, no matter how long or short; but as living mortals, unfortunately we would be bound to hear the stories of those who took their own lives.

Whether life is worth living is anybody's guess in their own right. There are plenty of reasons to live for, and there can be as much as plenty reason to not live as well. I can banter here all day preaching with my own framework but I would like to respect everyone's time reading posts.

But you know, it would be funny if it snaps to some of you that in living out life we might be in denial of the "truth" that life is inherently meaningless and not worth living; but to me, if it really is the case, it would be the best lie I ever held on to. Despite the fact that in our passing we are most certainly guaranteed to be forgotten, our works and contributions set aside, the world continuing its cycle of greed and conflict, I encourage people live nonetheless. Because to me, life is probably the only "lie" we're privileged to experience only once. In the face of this "lie", embark on your quest for purpose and make it your "truth".

Albeit I sincerely hope anyone here currently being crushed by the weight of depression would recover. If life is a lie, I can somehow assure you it would be the safest lie you can hold on to.

 

[the-dude-abides]

Depression itself is the easy way out. Using societies labels to justify bad behavior patterns is unhealthy and worsens the effects. (More so when taking pharma pills). The reality is depression comes from being unhappy with life, your situation, or abuse and instead of changing things in life people just carry on doing the same behavior patterns wondering why their "depression" doesn't go away. They fret over little things, create drama and hate inside their own life, and then wonder why they are miserable. They don't value the little things, let alone the life that was gifted to them. It's a cycle of self abuse based on the inability to actually change and do something about it. It gets super annoying when people play victim because of their own depression... especially when they don't do anything to change their circumstances. The real problem in society these days is depression is a cop out for everything. "I can't do this" "I didn't do that" all because of my "depression". It's a lame excuse and even lamer one for killing yourself.

Depression itself should be a wake up call to change your life and behavior patterns. Depression should be a motivating factor to try new things in life... instead society has it as a trigger word and excuse to keep yourself in a box and some how I'm a terrible person for not coddling "victims" of "depression".. even though I've dealt with it all my life as well.

In some cases it's merely the food your eating, the Netflix shows you're watching, the social media your posting in...

The man that gets held down and raped in prison by 5 black dudes.. yeah I understand him doing it.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/voices.html
But if you notice even these men have gotten through it.

Faith in Jesus Christ is what changed my outlook on depression and life.
https://nagolbud.com/lectern

What better way to troll Jesus Christ as a demon than to whisper suicide and depression in your ear 24/7.

There are plenty of people that lead lives that make others envious, yet still suffer through depression and up killing themselves. It's not as simple as people not wanting to change their own lives.