Suicide as a Rational Option

Ekinodum said:
I'm not sure where I am going with this, except to point out that there is a big difference between suicide at the age of 21 when life is not progressing per your innermost fantasy, and suicide near the end of your natural life when suicide could be a rational option.
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I agree with you that there are definitely rational reasons for suicide, such as what you described above or the situation Lonewulf described with the Nazi death camps. My step-mom passed away last year from colon cancer which had spread to much of her body. There was no way she was going to get better and while she did everything she could to not prolong her life, such as refusing a nutrition tube and using a DNR order, because of her religious beliefs, she wouldn't ask anyone to hasten the inevitable. If it had been me in her place, I would have gone a little sooner.

Where I find my disagreement with the OP is in stating that where there's no rational reason against suicide, it should be a more attractive option for atheists and others to consider.

I thought he may have just been goading atheists in his OP, but if he's considering it as an option for himself, I will echo others here who have suggested he call somebody. Please.
 
Actually, as an atheist, I do consider it as a more attractive option than if I, say, felt that I was going to go to hell for committing suicide. Sure, being dead would suck, but then it's all over. Game Over, end of the line, I don't feel anything anymore. But if I was a Christian and believed that I was going to hell, and that hell meant eternal torment... yeah. Different deal altogether.

This isn't a very good argument against atheism, if that was the intent -- Argument from Consequences is a fallacy.

EDIT: Yay! Sun Countess actually spelled my name right! This makes her my favoritest person for today.
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
It would mean the complete and utter annihilation of my self.

If anything, a person who believes he is somehow immortal seems more likely to commit suicide.
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Its because of this (the part I bolded) that I feel suicide is illogical.
- The Ego (sense of Self) concludes there is a problem
- The considered 'solution' is suicide
- Suicide destroys the Ego
- The Ego no longer exists and so can not benefit from the solution
-Therefore, it is not a solution

Although, I can see an exception when someone has a terminal illness and they are in a lot of pain.

Some may argue that 'psychological' pain can be as big a burden as physical pain. While this may be true on some level, keep in mind that there are solutions to the psychological pain, whereas there may not be in the case of a terminal illness. The solution may be therapy, medication, or even just waiting for enough time to pass.

I can speak from experience here. Many years ago I had seriously considered suicide. I'm glad I never followed through, because I have experienced many great things since then, and I'm (generally) very happy now.
 
Pardon my repetitiveness, but:
maddog said:
I would highly encourage suicidal people to try treatment for depression (or, as Cain added, anxiety) before trying to commit suicide.
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To clarify, I would encourage this treatment regardless of one's motives or reasoning for being suicidal.
 
slingblade said:
I miss my mom so much, and it's so painful, I know I'd be a real dick to do that to my kids, my grandkids, and my husband, who all love me very much.

No, life isn't any fun anymore, and I have no hope, but damn it. I'm not a dick.
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No Slingblade you are absolutely not a dick. :)

My daughter's father commited sucide when she was 14 year-old, he was a dick.

Yes he was a drug addict and was in terrible pain from jumping out of a second floor window when the house caught on fire, but his suicide completely devastated his daughter and everyone in the family. No one was sitting around at the funeral weeping and saying how sad that was, we were all angry and torn to pieces. Some legacy! :mad:

I had another feeling that came from his suicide, it was that he had taken away from me the only option that I had of commiting suicide myself.
I have been living in agonizing pain for about 20 years, it's untreatable and I just manage to live as normal a life as I can without whining about my circumstances.
However, there is no way in Hell that I would ever leave my daughter with both of her parents commiting suicide, that is absolutely not going to happen to her.
So I was very angry at him for taking away that choice from me.

To be clear though, I don't believe suicide is a rational option.
I look at my younger child and am so glad that I am alive to give her squishy hugs,
and I have made friends that make me feel like there's nothing at all in the world I can't do.
If I had commited suicide I would be missing all of that love.
 
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Roma,

I understand much of what you are saying. The person I knew who committed suicide was not a dick, and had some genuine reasons for doing what he did, but that did not really lessen the impact on his parents (he was an only child) or on his closest friends. The death of a young person is always shocking compared to an older person, but suicide is the most shocking of all.

Just as a side note I thought I might mention Wittgenstein here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

His family also had a history of intense self-criticism, to the point of depression and suicidal tendencies. Three of his four brothers committed suicide. The eldest of the brothers, Hans—an early musician who started composing at age four—killed himself in April 1902, in Havana, Cuba. The third son, Rudolf, followed in May 1904 in Berlin. Their brother Kurt shot himself at the end of World War I, in October 1918, when the Austrian troops he was commanding deserted en masse.
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Geoff
 
I think you left out laziness. As in, I'm too lazy to kill myself.
 
At 14, I realized that if I had the courage to suicide, then I wouldn't need to.

I'm now 59.



M.
 
Zygar said:
I think you left out laziness. As in, I'm too lazy to kill myself.
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Probably just as well then, you wouldn't want to get it half done.

My friend jumped off a bridge many years ago but completely disregarded the fact that it was winter and the river was frozen. She spent months in a full body cast.

Could have been worse. People have been known to botch their suicides in remarkable ways that leave them in special places for the rest of their lives.
Better to just not, I think.
 
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A rational option for whom?

For someone suffering from a painful, untreatable, terminal illness? I can see why such a person might choose suicide as an option.

For someone suffering from severe, crippling, depression? Depression can often be treated. Sometimes it can't, but you don't know until you try.

For people in general? Does life really suck that much? I'm a pessimist who has been depressed in the past, and even I like being alive.
 
Ok, I haven't read through the entire thread so I don't know what people have been saying.

But as someone who has been suicidal and tried to do it, all I can say is that the urge to suicide is just to stop the pain. The pain becomes so overwhelming that you'll do anything to escape it. Most times, the things that stopped me from trying is that I had pets and I loved them and that they'd be abandoned and probably put down if I did it.

A weird thing was, much of the time, I knew that I really didn't want to die. The intellectual part of me knew I didn't want to die, but the emotional part of me couldn't stand the pain anymore. But sometimes I could cling to the knowledge that I was smart enough to find ways to kill myself (even though hospitalized) but the fact that I didn't indicated that I really wanted to live.

This is really a hard thing to expose, but I was hospitalized for 8 months because I was suicidal. The only thing that helped was when Prozac was invented. I vividly remember the day when I realized that I wasn't a bad/miserable/worthless person - it was like my brain could finally rationally function.

I still take anti-depression drugs and I will all my life. It's a biochemical as well as a learned thing - my grandfather commited suicide (and my dad found him hanging), my dad had lifelong depression although he didn't admit it, and I do. I think of anti-depressants as like insulin for diabetics - it's just something I have to take in order to live. They're a maintainance drug for me - I need them to face the world and not get sucked down into the black vortex of despair (my word for depression). I wish I didn't have to, but that's reality.

So that's my story. The urge to suicide is not simple. It's mostly because you're in enormous pain and the only way to escape it is to end your life. Some people say that the attempt to suicide is a cry for attention -- that's a shallow way to view it. It's a cry for someone to care and to try to help you out of the despair and agony that you're in, or as a last resort, a way to end the pain.

It's hard to admit what I've gone through. There's still a huge stigma against mental illness in this country. I'd never expose the truth to an employer because they'd think I'd be unreliable even though my depression is under control. I haven't had suicidal thoughts for about 20 years, but the cloud of stigma still hangs over my head.
 
Ugh. Thanks for that, supercorgi.

Kind of puts a damper on the thread, but it's about suicide, so it's to be expected.
 
Roma Hart said:
Could have been worse. People have been known to botch their suicides in remarkable ways that leave them in special places for the rest of their lives.
Better to just not, I think.
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Yes, when I was hospitalized, there was a girl who tried to suicide by hanging herself from a shower bar. They got her down in time to save her life, but she was brain damned and had to spend the rest of her life in a gerry chair (basically a reclainer with restraints). That was very scary and a good incentive not to even try. That would have been worse than dying. That was one other thing that kept me from trying.
 
Lonewulf said:
Ugh. Thanks for that, supercorgi.

Kind of puts a damper on the thread, but it's about suicide, so it's to be expected.
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Sorry, but I just had to talk about the realities of suicide. It's not about Pleasure, it's not about Emotional Responsibilities, it's not about Financial responsiblities or about leaving a legacy. You don't care about those things when you're in that mindset. I agree, except for the terminally ill, suicide is not rational, it's emotional. But there is help, there is relief, pharmapsychology has progressed to an amazing degree. For a while, I was like a guinea pig -- they were trying experimental drugs on me (with f**ing big needles) -- but things have progressed. There is hope, you just need to find the right solution.
 
tojohndillonesq said:
Sorry if this discussion is already underway... I searched and found nothing (to my surprise)

If you don't believe the moral stricture that suicide is a sin, what is stopping you? Some possible reasons:

OK folks... anyone have a rational argument against it? (Religious/moral reasons are, by definition, irrational.) Or are we all charter members of the "Right to Die" club?
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This seems like a really weird question, as if man's natural inclination is TOWARD suicide, and he or she has to rationalize him/herself out of it. Since suicide usually requires a conscious act, and most people don't want to die, the question should be: what is the rational argument FOR suicide? (Besides the terminal illness scenario, which I consider a humane, if not entirely rational, suicide.)
 
supercorgi said:
Sorry, but I just had to talk about the realities of suicide. It's not about Pleasure, it's not about Emotional Responsibilities, it's not about Financial responsiblities or about leaving a legacy. You don't care about those things when you're in that mindset. I agree, except for the terminally ill, suicide is not rational, it's emotional. But there is help, there is relief, pharmapsychology has progressed to an amazing degree. For a while, I was like a guinea pig -- they were trying experimental drugs on me (with f**ing big needles) -- but things have progressed. There is hope, you just need to find the right solution.
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You say that suicide isn't rational, but you're basing it on the mindset of someone who is going through a chemical imbalance.

Is it truly impossible for someone to come to the rational conclusion that suicide is the best option?
 
Axiom_Blade said:
This seems like a really weird question, as if man's natural inclination is TOWARD suicide, and he or she has to rationalize him/herself out of it. Since suicide usually requires a conscious act, and most people don't want to die, the question should be: what is the rational argument FOR suicide? (Besides the terminal illness scenario, which I consider a humane, if not entirely rational, suicide.)
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Er, not rational? How so?
 
Roadtoad said:
Another point is that a life belongs only to the person living it. It's not so, and never has been. The reality is that a life belongs not only to the individual, but to those who choose to share a life with them, regardless of the time or intensity involved. We simply don't know how a small contact with another person will affect them, and terminating our lives, not so much on our terms but based upon our own selfish intent, is destructive and foolish.
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RT, although I usually agree with you, I don't on this point. Sometimes hanging on is so useless that it's better to die. My father was in a nursing home for 6 years due to repeated operations for a brain tumor that kept reoccuring. He was immoble, he could feed himself, sometimes he couldn't recognize us. Then he had a stroke which made everything worse. He had to be on life support and was transferred to a hospice. We had to make the painful decision to remove the feeding tube and just let him go. This decision agonized me because I had the belief that he was still in their and aware and just couldn't communicate.

But he wasn't living any sort of good life and he hadn't for years. It hurt so much and I was tormented at the time. Now with time, I realized that the family made the right decision to let him die. Even if he recovered, it wouldn't be by much, and I don't think he would have wanted to live like that (although most of the time he wasn't aware of his condition).


Sorry, but this whole idea of suicide except when a life is nearing an end, and continuing it induces a far worse trauma, is selfish, foolish, and wrong.
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On this I agree, but understand, that someone in that state of mind, doesn't and can't comprehend those things. They're in such pain that it blanks out most other things and the only thing you can think about is ending the pain. It is irrational but you can't recognize that. Yes it becomes all about me, but you're not thinking rationally at that point and it's hard to consider the pain of others when your pain is so overwhelming. Your friends and family may be incredibly hurt and traumatized when someone commits suicide, but I think the emotion you have to cultivate is pity - pity for the person who despaired and couldn't control it anymore. Grieve for what you lost, but don't blame the person who took this drastic measure.
 
Lonewulf said:
You say that suicide isn't rational, but you're basing it on the mindset of someone who is going through a chemical imbalance.

Is it truly impossible for someone to come to the rational conclusion that suicide is the best option?
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No.I believe it is rational for someone with a terminal illness who is experiencing great pain and has no hope of recovery. Suicide for the young and healthy who are clinically depressed isn't rational because your brain is just not working right and although you feel despair, there is always room for improvement. Mental illness is not always caused by a chemical imbalance, it can be a learned viewpoint, it can be caused by horrendous things that have happened to you, but with therapy and medication these things can be overcome. At that point, you may be in terrible psychological pain but it can be alleviated, as opposed to physical pain the surity that your life is soon to end.
 
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