Why do suicides affect me more than mass murders?

[xisnotx]

When I hear about suicides, I just can't process it. I guess it never is meant for me to process, kind of arrogant of me to think so, but I can't help it. It's just too much...like if the guy saw no hope for anything...why would I? Maybe I don't...

But mass murder, that's just life, stupid people do stupid things...and people aren't invalid...so sometimes people will suffer because of those stupid people...but that's just life.

Suicide is just so sad.

 

[Haight]

"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." Stalin

 

[93JC]

I think it hits harder because there always seems to be a tiny glimmer of hope that you can reason with a suicidal person. If only you could talk them down from the proverbial ledge, you know?

 

[Vasilisa]

Do you feel for those left behind? In conjunction with what [MENTION=5837]93JC[/MENTION] said, is it because you sense the enormity of mental pain of both the dead escaped and the living enter into? Is it the sad seperation that the dead person must have felt during his or her life married to the real seperation created for those surviving ever after? You can imagine a whole villiage decimated, but perhaps you can settle it in your mind that at least they are together, that kind of thing?

These are things I feel. Two sides of a coin.

 

[Salomé]

It's because your fear (of mental illness and personal disintegration) trumps your compassion.

 

[Tiltyred]

Maybe because you think that if only ... whatever ... was done or said, their lives could have been different or at least tolerable.

 

[jixmixfix]

When I hear about suicides, I just can't process it. I guess it never is meant for me to process, kind of arrogant of me to think so, but I can't help it. It's just too much...like if the guy saw no hope for anything...why would I? Maybe I don't...

But mass murder, that's just life, stupid people do stupid things...and people aren't invalid...so sometimes people will suffer because of those stupid people...but that's just life.

Suicide is just so sad.

There are people with severe mental illness where suicide is justified I suppose. I knew someone with full blown schizophrenia it was sad because he was really young just starting out his life. He would tell me about the things he would see or is seeing and there is just no answer you could give to someone like that that would change anything.

 

[RDF]

When I hear about suicides, I just can't process it. I guess it never is meant for me to process, kind of arrogant of me to think so, but I can't help it. It's just too much...like if the guy saw no hope for anything...why would I? Maybe I don't...

But mass murder, that's just life, stupid people do stupid things...and people aren't invalid...so sometimes people will suffer because of those stupid people...but that's just life.

Suicide is just so sad.

Are you saying that the mindset of a person who commits mass murder is more understandable than the mindset of a person who commits suicide ("stupid people do stupid things")? Or that the deaths of the various mass murder victims are less tragic than the death of a person who commits suicide?

I'm not disagreeing; I'm just not sure exactly where you're putting the focus when you talk about understanding and accepting "mass murders."

[Edit: It's a minor point, but I bumped up against it when I started playing with the idea.]

 

[Wolfie]

You're more likely to kill yourself than to kill others. Relatable.

 

[jixmixfix]

You're more likely to kill yourself than to kill others. Relatable.

At least in today's society. I always wondered up until modern civilization things like rape and murder were probably considered normal.

 

[xisnotx]

Are you saying that the mindset of a person who commits mass murder is more understandable than the mindset of a person who commits suicide ("stupid people do stupid things")? Or that the deaths of the various mass murder victims are less tragic than the death of a person who commits suicide?

I'm not disagreeing; I'm just not sure exactly where you're putting the focus when you talk about understanding and accepting "mass murders."

[Edit: It's a minor point, but I bumped up against it when I started playing with the idea.]

I don't know, but yes. I think that's what I think...or was thinking...someone distantly close to me committed suicide and that news made me stop, as opposed to the Aurora incident where I hardly gave it a thought.

Maybe it's just that he was closer to me...but, admittedly, had he been one of the Aurora victims, I'm not sure I'd have thought much of it (or him, rather).

I guess I'm saying that with suicide, the emphasis is on you, and in other tragedies the emphasis is on the tragedy. Killing yourself, you are the tragedy...and it's sad that people think of themselves like that...indicative of a bigger problem than whatever caused the Aurora situation.

It's like at least the Aurora guy went out fighting...he didn't give up hope, he became impatient with hope...and decided he'd go out and do something...something stupid, yes...but something.

Suicide, it's like the guy didn't have hope...not even enough to have hope that he would have hope...and then, nothingness.

If he couldn't find hope, why should I be able to?
And if I can't, do I follow his path or the path of the Aurora guy?

Tempered, of course, to my situation...which doesn't involve life or death...not until I'm old and grey.

I can't decide who I'd choose to emulate more/less...who was more/less noble/cowardly...who should be considered more/less...because, I think at the end of the day the mentalities are simililar, just the execution different.

 

[RDF]

I don't know, but yes. I think that's what I think...or was thinking...someone distantly close to me committed suicide and that news made me stop, as opposed to the Aurora incident where I hardly gave it a thought.

Maybe it's just that he was closer to me...but, admittedly, had he been one of the Aurora victims, I'm not sure I'd have thought much of it (or him, rather).

I guess I'm saying that with suicide, the emphasis is on you, and in other tragedies the emphasis is on the tragedy. Killing yourself, you are the tragedy...and it's sad that people think of themselves like that...indicative of a bigger problem than whatever caused the Aurora situation.

It's like at least the Aurora guy went out fighting...he didn't give up hope, he became impatient with hope...and decided he'd go out and do something...something stupid, yes...but something.

Suicide, it's like the guy didn't have hope...not even enough to have hope that he would have hope...and then, nothingness.

If he couldn't find hope, why should I be able to?
And if I can't, do I follow his path or the path of the Aurora guy?

Tempered, of course, to my situation...which doesn't involve life or death...not until I'm old and grey.

I can't decide who I'd choose to emulate more/less...who was more/less noble/cowardly...who should be considered more/less...because, I think at the end of the day the mentalities are simililar, just the execution different.

Thanks for the response.

Okay, yeah, you’re comparing different ways of dying. In which case I totally agree. A victim of a mass murder or even a victim of a random car accident was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, whereas the person committing suicide has that whole mental thing going on.

And then you're extrapolating the suicide to the issue of whether anyone might make the decision that life isn't worth living: To fight on, or not to fight on.

Just to pursue the other idea:

In a way, I think it might be more germaine to take a person driven to commit suicide and compare him to a person driven to commit some heinous crime. Both of their heads are in a weird space.

But maybe that’s just me. Or maybe it’s because of the ambiguous nature of suicide: When one commits suicide, one is both murderer and murder victim at the same time.

Edit: Sorry to hear about your friend or acquaintance or whatever, by the way. One way or the other, it's always sad news when it shows up close to home.

 

[RDF]

Oh yeah, and to answer the OP:

I think it's just proximity. If one of the victims in the Aurora killings was a member of your family, you would wonder what that family member experienced in their last moments, whether they suffered, etc. You would fret more about that family member than about a random suicide in the news.

In other words, I think the tragic effect (mourning, etc.) is mostly about how close to home it strikes, and whether you know the person well enough to put yourself into their shoes (or the shoes of the people around them), even tentatively.