Suicide and Death
What means to die? Personally, i don t think that i will truly die; because that matter that i am (the body), will become something different, like ground, worms or whatever and that in our time that we perceive, will become another, something (like combining my atoms with another ones resulting something). Maybe those things smaller than atoms or what is smaller than those are just changing, not truly disappearing. But humans are more than a biological body that will become another kind of matter. There is consciousness...and i don t know what is it, but how consciousness dies? Well, i am not kinda into religious beliefs or life after death but they are welcome just to see another perspective. About suicide... There is no reason to live if you don t agree with people that are against suicide. I wonder why suicide is so obsessive. Is that I want to see what is it after death or just i was disappointed in life... maybe are both. I like to compare liberalism who sustain that idea of natural rights, and religious beliefs who claim that you are not in rights to do it because there is God. Human power, rational power vs Gods will beliefs power. What do you think is dying? Becoming something else? A passing between two worlds or many others? Complete nothingness like you came from nothing (you don t remember what you were before birth, if you were...and i m not referring that you know that you are from your mothers womb or God created you) and you go in that same place? Suicide is like the tool for discovering what is it after „death” or is an act of courage or cowardice because you were not satisfied with your life? ... but there is so more questions
Comments (35)
Suicide seems to be a selfish way to harm the people who are close to the person committing it. And a lack of thought of what life really is.
proof?
Quoting Lone Wolf
there is no proof that others exist, or will continue to exist outside of sensory perception. That is a belief based on the consistency of how much the same sensory experiences occur.
For instance, every day you wake up go to the kitchen and see your mum in there. -> therefore, your mum exists... until you swallow the red pill and realise that she never existed, it was all an illusion you believed based on your education conditioning from a young age in to naive realism.
My advice is, if you are that miserable then just leave the party... BUT BEFORE YOU DO... make sure you talk to everyone, and try anything possible to try and get you back in the mood... and that includes large doses of psychedelic chemicals that have the power to re-enrich peoples perception and understanding of life.
Either way it is probable that after death it is a win win. If there is nothing, then that is great for there is no one to cast value on anything anymore. If there is something then thank god we are out of the human form and that there is something beyond this absurd creation called human existence.
This question, if you consider history, is a pervasive (irrespective of culture or geography) preoccupation of the human psyche. Many have probed this question and some are still, and the answers range from complete destruction, annihilation to everlasting happiness in a place called paradise. These ''answers'' have a basis ranging from cold, impersonal reason to unbridled wishful thinking. To cut the story short we simply don't know. This is both good and bad. Good because we may, each one of us, initiate our own inquiry into the matter - the infinite possibilities we can explore can fruitfully engage our minds. Bad because such an important question that has relevance in the way we live our lives remains, sadly, unanswered.
The rest of my sentence (Life must be more than chemical and physical matter, as it ceases upon death event though all the substances remain) is what I based my speculations on, as there is no known scientific evidence regarding what allows life to continue. Life from nonliving matter has never been recreated in a lab.
Nonetheless, as information cannot be created nor destroyed, your mother obviously existed, even if it was just in the form of information. The theory is questionable in other ways; as humans would have never discovered anything beyond that of what was expected. Humans are not that creative to have thought of the everything in the universe, nor in such detail. By that system, we should still be believing the world is flat because that would have been our sensory perception.
As for committing suicide provided a lack of desire to continue to live, one had best be very sure that there is indeed nothing more after life or that it is good to be dead, as there is no way to reverse it. It is a final decision. What happens after death cannot be studied, therefore a way to prove any speculation remains impossible. Also, for those who believe in an after life, one has no way to know if the next form will be any better than the one we are in now.
You don't know whether substances remain. All you know is a vantage point from which you see other people disappearing and "apparent" energy being re-used and re-utilized by the universe. If you hypothetically knew reality existed in the way you conceive it currently and had grounds and evidence for it then sure, but at the moment your assertion that life must be more than matter because matter is never destroyed is not supported. You are confined to subjectivity and your postulations unto objectivity about the nature of it is only speculation derived from a limited understanding of the functions of the universe.
Quoting Lone Wolf
When you use the term "your mother" it doesn't have the same meaning as what I thought was my mother so therefore it is not my mother. In other words, if i think my mother is part of a physical reality with her occupying her own body with her own experience then that is NOT the same thing as her just being information like a computer code. Completely different.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yeah, agreed. The issue though is that believing in flat-earth theory uses assumptions based of sensory information. Believing that reality exist the way we assume it does is using assumptions based of sensory information and a few techno gadgets that are made FROM our conceptions of how we perceive reality that we use to confirm that our conception of reality is correct (minus disciplines like quantum-physics which very few know what the fark is going on).
Quoting Lone Wolf
The undiscovered country from whose bourn. No traveler returns, puzzles the will. And makes us rather bear those ills we have. Than fly to others that we know not of.
Actually, I always saw someone more thoughtful and somber. But even if someone was always outwardly happy and energetic, what do people expect? Do you think anyone who is fed up with life, or maybe just bored by it, has to sit in a corner, crying?
Another reaction that pisses me off is the jump to a “mental health issue”, often insinuating that he should have sought “help” and if he had done so, he would still be alive. It’s nobody’s bloody business if someone else wants to be alive or not. It’s their decision and their decision alone. The reason may not necessarily be a troubling psychological issue. The decision to end one’s life at a time and in a manner of one’s own choosing can be perfectly rational. I actually have a lot of respect for people who make that ultimate decision.
As always, people are looking for signs... "How could we have spotted it?”, apparently believing there is one tell-tale sign for someone harboring thoughts of suicide. There isn’t, and until people understand that not everyone thinks like them, they won’t ever be ready to spot those signs. If it’s possible at all. Because where someone sees a fulfilled life, someone else doesn’t. Where someone sees a point in living, someone else is bored. Where someone is afraid of death, someone else knows that suicide is the one decision you will never regret.
And don’t ever be distracted by someone’s “adventurous attitude” to life. After all, seeking out adventures (and eating crazy food) is a way of gambling with death every day and every dish.
Sometimes, I have the feeling as if suicide by adventure is the only socially accepted form of suicide.
Culture is most certainly a sublimation of death anxiety. Suicide is a tabu subject because the strength to face another day often comes from a group-think "everyone else is doing it." There is inertia to living, and it's put in check when someone kills themselves. The unspeakable option reveals itself as "there", as always being "there". Death is always a tragedy, but a suicide's death is marred with controversy.
"He always seemed so full of life" is quite simply a means for people to reassure themselves they are not to blame, that there's "nothing they could do", that it's the suicide's own fault for being suicidal. Same goes with referring suicides to suicide hotlines - "Here! Call this number so I don't have to deal with you anymore!" The failure to use suicide hotlines is construed as a failure of the suicidal person. The worst case of misunderstanding seems to be with the insistence that by simply throwing pleasures at someone, their problems will magically disappear. Telling someone "but your life is so gooooood!" or "look at all you haaaaaave!" or "you have so much to look forward tooooooooo!" insults the authority a person has over their life.
There are few things I staunchly believe in; one of these things is the unalienable right of any person to end their life when they see fit. The subjective, personal life of an individual is magnitudes greater in depth and complexity than anything else and it deserves absolute respect.
Yes, I agree, and this same reasoning is exactly what absolutely infuriates me about the idiotic cliche belief everyone seems to hold that suicide is a "selfish" act. Like, one person felt for whatever reason that they could not or would not go on living, while the other person has so little disregard for that person's will to die that they wish that other person to be trapped in life, and somehow the suicidal person is the selfish one in that equation.
Quoting darthbarracuda
For me, as with many others, the option of suicide is precisely what gives me the strength to face life. I've never felt genuinely suicidal because of this. Were it not an option, life would be much more of a burden -- I feel liberated to take risks and live the life I want because of this option.
But what I'd like your insight on -- since you are spot on in your post yet don't bring this up -- is how the empowering aspect of suicide is also a tabu subject. Like, my impression is that anyone with my philosophy of suicide who brings this thought up to people is immediately scolded to seek counseling, not to live alone, etc. And if you try to argue the point the mere desire to think abstractly about suicide is taken to be a sort of perversity; like, the group-think doesn't need to give you reasons, the demand for reasons betrays you as a headcase in need of re-programming.
There's no correct answer here, and in many instances some people decide to live their lives with that idealized intent in the back of their minds. But, to do so seems to remove the 100% purposeful desire of any actualized activity in life. In other words, life seems to be a matter of getting by instead of realizing intents and desires about some matter or goal. And even if they do get realized, their appreciation is diminished by the lackluster-haphazard lifeless intent.
You either commit or not.
Yes, he was so thoughtful that he decided to kill himself along with all of his thoughts, :chin:
Quoting Vinson
So bored he left his daughter now crying in a corner. What a guy.
Quoting Vinson
I think it's very likely that anyone who kills themselves in spite of their family and friends is indeed ill. Furthermore, the crux of self deception is not being able to understand that you're deceiving yourself with untruths. Helping someone break free from self deception is noble, not a vice.
Quoting Vinson
I can tell you've never loved anyone in your entire life.
Quoting Vinson
If my estimation is right, then your linking of Benatar in the past means that you're probably a wrist slitting antinatalist who hates himself and everyone else. Am I wrong, or have I a skewed view on your nihilism?
Quoting Vinson
Having reasons is categorically different from acting rationally, sorry, try again.
Quoting Vinson
You have a lot of respect for people who kill themselves? By the nine divines I hope you cultivate a little self worth, otherwise yOU mIGhT eNd Up DeAd.
Quoting Vinson
Let's see here, so, Anthony Bourdain: snorted cocaine, shot heroine, smoked x, y, z other drugs including tobacco, drank enough to be an alcoholic, traveled around the world living out of motels, ate whatever tasted good, and slept with whomever looked good. Heck...WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?! I NEED MOAR SIGNS!!!
Quoting Vinson
Yep, gotta get ready to spot those signs even though "it’s nobody’s bloody business if someone else wants to be alive or not." :100: :ok: :eyes:
Quoting Vinson
Probably not possible for you, seeing as you've all but given up on reading the signs, either in yourself or in others.
Quoting Vinson
Where you think you're a special snowflake, I see an ignoramus. Tomato, tomahto, y'know?
Quoting Vinson
You know that....hold on, sit down and look at me first. There, good. Okay, so you know that one can not be afraid of death and not suicidal, right? No? Oh.
Quoting Vinson
Yeah, it's a goddamned odyssey when I pour milk on my cereal. Shit keeps me going, man. The way my rice krispies crackle and pop, fuck it's orgasmic. After all, an adventure a day keeps the hangman away, :death: :up:
Quoting Vinson
Intellectual suicide goes on every day, every where. People can't get enough of it.
No one asked for a shitty metaphor, but to me suicide is like scoring an own goal in sports. You're definitely scoring, but you're also punishing yourself, your teammates, and the game as a whole. I think a lot of suicidal people just want to score, no matter how they do it, and don't want to think about a draw, or the possibility of winning the game. And although I don't think that life's just a game, if someone's able to idealize and romanticize suicide and death, then they have it in them to channel those same ideals and romances into living a life worth living.
Wonderful post. Passionate, funny, smart, sane, sarcastic, humane.
First of all, you misspelled good, have, and to. For many people who commit suicide, it is not a rational choice. I'm guessing very few weigh their options, apply reason, and conclude to exercise their authority over their lives. They're desperate.
If it's time to go. If your kids are grown. Knock yourself out.
It's true that you'll never die, but it's got nothing to do with the persistence of your carcass or its atoms.
You won't die. You'll go to sleep. "To sleep, perchance to dream", as Shakespeare pointed out.
The nature of that dream depends on your predispositions.
I suggest that if, at the end of this life, the reason why you're in a life remains, then you'll be in a life again.
You'll go to sleep, and then later you'll find yourself in a life starting out, quite bewildered, with very little or no idea of anything that came before.
In fact, in that next life, any such thing as previous lives will be, not only unknowable, but also completely indeterminate, neither true or not true. ...just as it is now.
Yes.
It's (You're) the experiencer and protagonist of your life-experience story, an "insubstantial" hypothetical story, which is entirely for you and about your experience.
No.
Religion is outside the verbal discussion & description realm of metaphysics.
Aristotle said that Good is the basis of what is. Not an assertion, but an impression, and that isn't discussable, describable, provable, arguable or assertable--in other words, isn't metaphysical.
I disagree.
There's a reason why you're in a life.
(It's because there's a hypothetical life-experience story with you someone like you (You, actually) as its protagonist. ...someone who needs, wants, or at least is predisposed to, life.)
So you're here, in a life, to address those needs, wants, inclinations and predispositions.
That's true regardless of whom you agree with or disagree with.
It's sometimes mistakenly perceived as a tempting evasion. Evasion won't get you anywhere. You're here for a reason, and that doesn't consist of evading. Suicide is a big mistake, and only makes things significantly worse.
(Ending one's life for a justifiable medical reason, because of a significant material medical loss of life-quality--I don't call that "suicide".)
If you get there by suicide, I assure you that you won't like what it's like.
Life can include (apparent) loss.
Life just starting out is new, bewildering, intense, and, at that time, we pretty-much don't know what we're doing, especially in regards to protecting ourselves in a hostile environment.
Life just starting out is vulnerable. (...and of course some vulnerability to harm and loss remain throughout life too.) Throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, new life often doesn't make it. That's just how it is.
Life just starting out...we all had/were that. Maybe we made it, maybe not. That's just one life. In reality, there's no such thing as losing or missing anything. As I discuss in other postings, it's all insubstantial and hypothetical anyway, so what's to lose?
Nisargadatta said that, from the point of view of the sage, nothing has ever happened..
There was a song ("The Rock and Roll Gypsies") in 1966 that said:
"To the motherless children who ride, on the shadowless highway of night,
"It's all just a game, it's all just the same, for the winner takes nothing and the loser gets all that remains."
...which could be considered a '60s re-wording of what I was saying above in this post.
Disappointment is the result of unrealistic expectations.
There's no dying...just going to sleep.
I suggest that, for most people, it eventually leads into a next life, in which you won't remember the previous one.
Sure, sequentially, according to Hinduism and Buddhism (and which i agree with).
Emphatically no. There's no experience of complete nothingness. You never experience an absense of experience.
Quite so. Newness and bewilderment, without clear memory of a past.
If you find out in that way, you won't like what you find.
Everyone will find out what the end of life is like, when it's time to.
When it's time for it, that going to sleep isn't a bad thing at all.
I woudn't call it either of those things.
There are people at this forum who express that dis-satisfaction. Of course you aren't satisfied. That's why you were born. It's why you're in a life. Most people probably won't really be satisfied at the end of this life either, and that's ok. But, in each life, we deal with the situation as best we can, to meet our needs and to live right, to the extent that we're able..
But, emphatically, it wouldn't accomplish anything to reject life. That certainly isn't what we're here for.
Hindusm says that life doesn't and needn't have any purpose or reason other than "Lila", which means "Play".
...but of course right-living means living considerately too.
It's said that we keep returning to a life for as long as we lack personal life-completion, and perfection of lifestyle. ...which, for most of us, is many lifetimes away. No problem.
Evidently, in previous lives, if there were any, there was some way in which you hadn't achieved life-completion or lifestyle-perfection--there was something incomplete about your lives. So you're here again. So we just do our best while here.
Michael Ossipoff
I thought of this paradox before and I don't recall any good replies.
A suicidal person's reasoning:
1. Life is too painful.
2. If life is too painful then I should take my own life
Therefore
3. I should take my own life
Non-suicidal person's logic:
Argument A
1. If x commits suicide then x is a coward (can't face life)
2. x commits suicide
Therefore
3. x is a coward
Argument B
1. If x commits suicide then x is brave (can face death)
2. x commits suicide
Therefore
3. x is brave
The point is the suicidal person's reasoning is closer to argument A than B. So, a suicidal person must be a coward.
Suicide is not an easy way out. Cowardliness is suggestive of looking for easy ways (like stealing rather than working, for example).
In to what?
Right. I don't know. If we don't know what exists, if anything, "on the other side", is it wise for us to encourage suicidal people, positively or negatively, to make one choice or the other, considering we lack certainty about what exists "on the other side"? Is it wise to hint that suicide is courageous, or to admonish that it's cowardly? Is either statement wise, or helpful?
[I]Death[/i] has clouded your thoughts on the matter. Forget the suicide and death link for thr moment and just focus on the truth that the suicidal person is looking for the easier way out. I guess we could call the suicide a good decision but not brave.
What brings you to the conclusion that the suicidal person is looking for the easier way out?
Has it just.
I haven't determined it as brave
I merely see it as one of countless ways of becoming dead. Brave or cowardly are unnecessary judgement statements.
To judge it in the negative is like judging a mental illness or mental breakdown as cowardly.
In retrospect, there seems to be two main decisive points for a person in emotional crisis or depression. First is the recognition that something is going on and responding to it. Denial and repression of feelings might just intensify the crisis and pain. This is analogous to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory on the stages of grief. Once acceptance sets in, the process of breaking down and eventually rebuilding the identity can occur. But this is easier said than done. At many points of the process, there is vulnerability and a chance to slip into madness (for lack of a better word).
The entire affair might feel to the individual like walking a tightrope across a river in the middle of an ice storm. But when that seems like the best or maybe the only way, then the risks must borne. The whole scenario and drama may be psychological, but as a whole is not non-existent or merely imagined.
I agree. And I think it is bad form to ask for proof when one knows no such proof is forthcoming or that the opposite is equally unprovable. Philosophy is not science. Every time a philosophical theory reaches a point where its claims are empirically provable, it ceases to be philosophy and becomes a form of science. But without philosophy, there is no avenue for entertaining those theories that eventually become empirically provable, i.e,. branches of science. It is anti-philosophical to apply scientific criteria to philosophical discussions. You made a philosophical claim supported by reason. Nothing more is required. Some people are uncomfortable dealing with that which can not be empirically proven true or false. Oh well.
The lens we use to view an event or object is our choice but without viewing something from all angles we deprive ourselves.
Suicide is a reasoned act usually brought about through a severity in circumstances. In India farmers commit suicide when they're unable to pay their debts. Isn't such a decision like water flowing down a mountain - finding the easiest route to the sea?
However, the "views" in this case do not necessarily come down to a choice between merely two options, such as "brave" to commit suicide or "coward" to have committed suicide.
Sickness happens. It is less inescapable than taxes. The brain is an organ and like other organs of the body is subject to fatigue and un-wellness.
Only sometimes. Is it "reasoned" to become unwell?
Drug addiction, for example, is not generally considered to have been constructed by "reasoned" means and so often leads to the sickness of desperation and despair. Very high incidences of drug addiction related to pain control for terrible accidental injuries.
It maybe time to get real, MadFool. Maybe you are quite young and yet to feel great pressures of life either from responsibilities or aging.
You're right. Suicide is a corecion if nothing else; by circumstances and people(:sad: )
And in the final analysis we don't even no what "death" is. It is not something we have experienced and it is not something we will get a report on from a dead person.