• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Is suicide justified?

Nicodemus

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
9,756
They have nothing, and will always have nothing, they are nothing. Your situation is bad, but at least you have life. At least you have yourself, no matter how bad you are. They have nothing.
You forget the important part: that they are nothing. Nothing has no regrets.
 

Blown Ghost

New member
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
279
MBTI Type
ESFP
I edited my post a little, you may want to re-read it.

I'm speaking on entirely 100% selfish ground. I explain it this way because when someone commits suicide they are being entirely selfish. In my explanation I am giving that to them... fine, you're gonna be that way. It's still a mistake for you, and the only reason someone would come to a different conclusion is because they are too scared to be totally honest with themselves and think through the decision fully before doing it. They don't want to think through it fully because they know they will not be able to do it were they to be completely honest about it, and in that moment where they want to end it all, they don't want to be prevented from doing so, so they don't even allow themselves to prevent it.

They want the decision to remain easy to make, because at that moment that is what they want. They want to be able to push the button and get what they want. Why make it more complicated by being totally honest and thinking it through, especially when doing so will most definitely convince you otherwise? That's not what they want in that moment!

So, this is why it is a mistake, a fallacy, for people to commit suicide... I know it's difficult to follow but please try. People who commit suicide have not thought it through with honest totality, else they wouldnt, therefore they are purposefully limiting themselves from doing so in order to make that decision, assuming once it's done it's done and the question itself ceases to exist. Forget about how it's going to effect everyone else, you're erasing yourself that's the least of your worries, right? The reason it is STILL a mistake is because this is making a with objectively permanent decision based on subjective temporary reasoning and/or feelings.

The reason there is no evidence because that is the only way one can fully consider such a decision before making it. and even if you're fully convinced you want to commit suicide, you must fully consider it before doing it because every other decision has temporary effects, no matter how bad they are. Dying, on the other hand, always permanent, always total, objectively so, with not a single subjective positive effect because you're not even existent to experience one.


You forget the important part: that they are nothing. Nothing has no regrets.

No, in fact, that is the very reason people commit suicide and I'm well aware of that. My point is, you cannot make this decision on the basis of what your non-existent self doesn't experience because you don't know what that is, and if you actually go there you cannot change your mind. Therefore, that leaves your existent self to decide which is better, and if your existent self is totally honest, it will never choose suicide.

This comparison is difficult to make because how can you conceive nothing? But regardless, it's simple cost/benefit analysis, and it is simply impossible for nothing to be the best decision. Therefore, it is the absolute worst. Contrary to mass belief, the suicide is not problematic from a philosophical viewpoint. I know this because I started with the exact opposite viewpoint and still ended up with this determination: to the fullest extent nothing can be conceived (or rather, total lack of conception) there is absolutely no benefit from it, leaving everything else as a better outcome and choosing nothing over anything to be the worst decision possible. This determination is made from an entirely, 100% selfish point of view where the only consciousness is the bare minimum thought required to reason out the decision. If you don't believe me, consider the proclivity of the nature of the universe and the fact that not a single animal (aside from humans, if you consider humans animals or equal to them) commits suicide.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

Guest
I think it's the emphasis on it won't matter anymore if you become nothing. I have imagined being nothing, I think of the color black, but even that is not nothing. Animal instinct for the most part is to survive, their is no compelling reason to change that so we'll leave it be. My question can literally never be answered, I find that more depressing then anything hahaha. Thanks guys. I think I'm going to let this rest now. If you wish you can continue. I think I'm satisfied for a lifetime or so :).
 

Nicodemus

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
9,756
No, in fact, that is the very reason people commit suicide and I'm well aware of that. My point is, you cannot make this decision on the basis of what your non-existent self doesn't experience because you don't know what that is, and if you actually go there you cannot change your mind. Therefore, that leaves your existent self to decide which is better, and if your existent self is totally honest, it will never choose suicide.
I am fully convinced that there is no afterlife. Therefore, I cannot regret killing myself after I have done so. Therefore, I can make the decision on the basis of what my existent self does and my non-existent self does not experience.

This comparison is difficult to make because how can you conceive nothing? But regardless, it's simple cost/benefit analysis, and it is simply impossible for nothing to be the best decision. Therefore, it is the absolute worst. Contrary to mass belief, the suicide is not problematic from a philosophical viewpoint. I know this because I started with the exact opposite viewpoint and still ended up with this determination.
If nothing is 0 and life is -10, nothing wins.
 

Blown Ghost

New member
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
279
MBTI Type
ESFP
If nothing is 0 and life is -10, nothing wins.

Right, I understand this line of reasoning and why many believe suicide to be a worthy consideration. I too used to think in such a way.

A true mathematical representation, would not be 0 vs -10. It would be more like life being any number and death being a complete lack thereof. Comparatively, any number no matter how negative is still an infinity times more valuable than absolutely no number at all.

A simpler way to put it is this: we cannot know what exists after death, which is why death is our greatest fear. However, we're we able to overcome our greatest fear, we would not choose death because it still remains the worst thing that can happen to anyone. So let's say you have no fear of death or what comes after death... why are you still alive, then? Why have you not chosen death at the very moment you were totally free from fear? because you know this to be true, and this is the reason this isn't circular logic even though it sounds like it:

Those who commit suicide are often still fear death, but they fear living until natural death more. However, we have determined death to be the worst outcome. Therefore, they have made a mistake, and one that only their post-death self (were it to exist and be able to converse with their live self) would realize and be able to tell them. It's too late at that point, though.


If none of this is convincing, or makes sense, I ask you this: why are you here reading this? Why don't you default to doing absolutely nothing aside from what is totally necessary to survive (or perhaps not even that?). Something is always better than absolutely nothing. Always. If you disagree, then I suggest you find somewhere comfortable and just exist there and tell me you don't eventually change your mind. Well, when you do, consider yourself lucky, because you had that option. Those who commit suicide do not. When they make the choice to end their life they do not realize fully what they are doing, which is why I can say with 100% confidence that it is a mistake for them to do so.
 

Nicodemus

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
9,756
Right, I understand this line of reasoning and why many believe suicide to be a worthy consideration. I too used to think in such a way.
You obviously do not understand this line of reasoning.

A true mathematical representation, would not be 0 vs -10. It would be more like life being any number and death being a complete lack thereof. Comparatively, any number no matter how negative is still an infinity times more valuable than absolutely no number at all.
Not so. If we want to value the desirability of things (activities or states of being), we can do it in numbers, positive numbers for good things, negative numbers for bad things; no or a neutral number for a lack of desirability or value. If, then, someone regards life to be a plight rather than a vortex of happy happenings, a negative number (such as -10) is a reasonable valuation of it. Since death involves neither good nor bad things, being dead has to be assigned to no or a neutral number (such as 0).

A simpler way to put it is this: we cannot know what exists after death, which is why death is our greatest fear.
We still hold strong convictions. Some are based on religious foofaraw, some on empirical observations. My conviction that there is nothing after life is strong enough to allow me to commit suicide.

However, we're we able to overcome our greatest fear, we would not choose death because it still remains the worst thing that can happen to anyone.
Albus Dumbledore disagrees with you; so do I. I also fail to see why you think that.

So let's say you have no fear of death or what comes after death... why are you still alive, then? Why have you not chosen death at the very moment you were totally free from fear?
Because I am not all reason; I have feelings, I even possess the ominous will to life. I do not wish to cause my family pain, although I know that this concern would vanish in the moment of death. Death concerns not the dead but the living.

because you know this to be true, and this is the reason this isn't circular logic even though it sounds like it:

Those who commit suicide are often still fear death, but they fear living until natural death more. However, we have determined death to be the worst outcome. Therefore, they have made a mistake, and one that only their post-death self (were it to exist and be able to converse with their live self) would realize and be able to tell them. It's too late at that point, though.
You have arbitrarily decided that death is the worst outcome, even though you previously said that death has neither positive nor negative value, representing "a complete lack thereof".

If none of this is convincing, or makes sense, I ask you this: why are you here reading this? Why don't you default to doing absolutely nothing aside from what is totally necessary to survive (or perhaps not even that?).
Because I enjoy doing some things.

Something is always better than absolutely nothing. Always.
For a subject experiencing it, for a living person; but not for nothing. Nothing is perfectly satisfied with doing nothing.
 

JocktheMotie

Habitual Fi LineStepper
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
8,491
Interesting article/blog post I read today precipitated by the recent string of homosexual suicides , about suicide as an adaptive mechanism with evolutionary roots.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-killing-yourself-adaptive-that-d-2010-10-11#

Some interesting bits:

... because there is convincing work—all tracing back to McMaster University’s Denys deCatanzaro’s largely forgotten ideas from the early 1980s—indicating that human suicide is an adaptive behavioral strategy that becomes increasingly likely to occur whenever there is a perfect storm of social, ecological, developmental and biological variables factoring into the evolutionary equation. In short, deCatanzaro has posited that human brains are designed by natural selection in such a way as to encourage us to end our own lives when facing certain conditions, because this was best for our suicidal ancestors’ overall genetic interests.

...Saying that suicide is adaptive may also sound odd to you from an evolutionary perspective, because on the surface it seems to fly in the face of evolution’s first rule of thumb, which is to survive and reproduce. However, as William Hamilton’s famous principle of inclusive fitness elucidated so clearly, it is the proportion of one’s genetic material surviving in subsequent generations that matters; and so if the self’s survival comes at the expense of one’s genetic kin being able to pass on their genes, then sacrificing one’s life for a net genetic gain may have been adaptive ancestrally.

And in particular, I found this equation interesting:

So let’s turn our attention now to human suicide. To crystallize his position, I present deCatanzaro’s “mathematical model of self-preservation and self-destruction” (circa 1986):

Ψi = ρi + Σbkρkrk

Where Ψi = the optimal degree of self-preservation expressed by individual i (the residual capacity to promote inclusive fitness);
ρi = the remaining reproductive potential of i;
ρk = the remaining reproductive potential of each kinship member k;
bk = a coefficient of benefit (positive values of b k ) or cost (negative values of b k ) to the reproduction of each k provided by the continued existence of i (-1 ≤ b ≤ 1);
rk = the coefficient of genetic relatedness of each k to i (sibling, parent, child = .5; grandparent, grandchild, nephew or niece, aunt or uncle = .25; first cousin = .125; etc.).

Personally, I have no ethical problem with suicide or euthanasia. I'm a big quality of life person.
 

Queen Kat

The Duchess of Oddity
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
3,053
MBTI Type
E.T.
Enneagram
7w8
So I had to be sacrificed for the sake of avoiding that people with my genes were born? What kind of strange cult is this evolution thing?! Fuck evolution! I don't do human sacrifice!
 

ColonelGadaafi

New member
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
773
MBTI Type
ESTJ
Enneagram
Si
Suicide

Have you contemplated the act of suicide. What meaning it has and what self-perception and view on life could ultimately lead to self-demise as a conclusion?.

I want to avoid giving any specifics just for the sake of an open discussion.
 

sleepy

Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
536
Not really. I'm not the murdering type, especially not myself. But sure. I play with the idea. Just don't see a point to it. I'll be dead soon enough anyhow. This is my little illusion of life. And I quite like it. Human an all. Could have been worse. I don't have big enough problems to justify such an act.
 

Snuggletron

Reptilian
Joined
Sep 25, 2009
Messages
2,224
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
10
when I was in a bad rut in 2006 I thought about it sometimes, maybe even often. I mainly just toyed around with the idea in my head, it wasn't a serious intention.
 

ayoitsStepho

Twerking & Lurking
Joined
Sep 20, 2009
Messages
4,838
MBTI Type
ISFP
Enneagram
4w3
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
Contemplated it and even planned it out.

Edit: Ok, let me make this known before I get more Reps. This is not of recent, this was like when I was 15. No worries.
 

RiderOnTheStorm

E. N.. T... :P
Joined
Aug 25, 2008
Messages
792
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Have you contemplated the act of suicide. What meaning it has and what self-perception and view on life could ultimately lead to self-demise as a conclusion?.

I want to avoid giving any specifics just for the sake of an open discussion.

Has anyone not contemplated the act of suicide? Life, imo, isn't for everyone. I have come to the conclusion that it is one of nature's ways of weeding us out.
 

Oaky

Travelling mind
Joined
Jan 15, 2009
Messages
6,180
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I have contemplated about the most creative ways to commit suicide.
 

Eckhart

New member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Messages
1,090
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
???
Thought about it, but never really planned to do it. Well, I wasn't happy with life and perspectives didn't look so well that it changes in next time. But I thought always that the small chance is worth trying still, I didn't want to depress my family and I had some little arrogance in me left which told me that I had to prove a point to myself :)
 

nolla

Senor Membrane
Joined
May 22, 2008
Messages
3,166
MBTI Type
INFP
I've thought about it, but never in a serious manner. Well, that's inaccurate. I've been seriously thinking about suicide without the intention to do it.

I do think that suicide is an important issue to ponder. Death is so repressed nowadays, I think it would be really healthy if people openly discussed about suicide and it's appeal to them. I don't see a better way to make the point that we are not here to serve the system and obey than to have a serious discussion about the pros and cons of living or dying. I've thought about the need for a new tradition of suicide party, where the people killing themselves will have the chance to make peace with anyone or speak their mind before leaving.

If this seems gloomy, think again. Life is not really a gift in any sense at all if we feel obliged to keep on living.
 

KDude

New member
Joined
Jan 26, 2010
Messages
8,243
Death is so repressed nowadays, I think it would be really healthy if people openly discussed about suicide and it's appeal to them.

I'd agree, but I always get the feeling that I have a lot to lose by talking about subjects like this. Just telling people that you're simply not an optimist is already bad enough. Talk about suicide and the clowns will kill you (which is kind of ironic, isn't it?).
 

Queen Kat

The Duchess of Oddity
Joined
Apr 3, 2009
Messages
3,053
MBTI Type
E.T.
Enneagram
7w8
I was in a severe depression between november 2005 and the summer of 2007. Considered suicide and I've been making plans on how to do it, but I guess I never really dared and I didn't know how I wanted to do it. I'm all better now, or at least when it comes to the feeling bad side. The whole thing made me socially handicapped.
 
Joined
Sep 18, 2008
Messages
1,941
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
512
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I am not sure how to respond to this thread. Are you talking about thoughts on a philosophical level? Or the reality of suicide?

I ask because I've contemplated it philosophically a few years ago and very seriously (because of clinical depression and anxiety) in the last year. They're very different situations, and the philosophical contemplation somehow seems a lot more shallow (in retrospect) when you have constant violent urges to stab yourself and are shivering with fear at 3am trying to stop obsessive thoughts of knives and sharp objects.
 
Top