Posted on 09/16/2009 1:19:46 PM PDT by Revolting cat!
I am serious. Straight to the chase, hoping to provoke a lively discussion. Why do we consider suicide a selfish act?
Let's bypass if we can all the religious aspects of it. We already know the answer of the Christian texts - it's a cardinal sin, a no-no, a bummer to Saint Peter and all the Marching Saints.
Let us say you have experienced a series of catastrophic (to you) defeats, one after another, your life has become a country and western song waiting to be written. Let us say that these deafeats are all affairs of the heart - broken marriage, broken family, rejections from one woman after another, who have all told you that you are "nice and romantic BUT", and on top of that you have been accused and convicted of something called "sexual harassment" for holding a door open for a modern liberated woman, who said (this was an actual case in New York) that you did it only to ogle her butt!
You are losing, you're a loser, living in hell (which may be what we are all doing if Aldous Huxley was right and this planet is another planet's hell! On the other hand, if our favorite stalinist Jean Paul Sartre was right, hell is other people!) what are you to do but to off yourself as efficiently as possible, with special considerations for the environment?
There was a recent case of a man who went into a fitness club, murdered several women, and then shot himself. Turned out he was a lonely man who for years could not find a female partner despite all his efforts. I recalled the phrase that he did everything and even "smelled good". My super sensitive leftist in-law reacted on his Facebook page saying "loser". My highly literate FReeper friends reacted on these very pages by typing "looser!!!!!!!". (We like them exclamation points here!!!!) While one can't and won't excuse the murderous rampage, one can sympathize with the man's frustration with the world. He should have just shot himself, I think.
But we consider suicide a selfish act. Why? During a conversation about this that I witnessed very recently, one person said to the potential suicidee, "How do you think she'll feel?! She might even commit suicide herself!" (She in this story was the presumed immediate cause of the proposed act.) What was he to do, go on suffering in silence, while that She waltzes off whistling Dixie?
The world is a cold and cruel place, and we tell people we hurt, people who suffer, to suffer out of our sight, out of our happiness, otherwise they are condemned for being selfish.
>> hoping to provoke a lively discussion. Why do we consider suicide a selfish act?
Sorry, can’t help you there. I’m more the “homicide” type myself. :-)
In Japanese culture, it is not a selfish act, but rather a selfless act.
And of course in islamic culture, it is the ultimate form of religious martyrdom, if you take a few infidels with you.
Because you are forcing someone else to clean up your mess. In addition to the body, there are financial impacts associated with death, wills, trusts, then the emotional impact on others, legal issues, etc, etc. You are leaving the burden of dealing with you on others. Being dead, you have no control of what happens. What if some cop goofs during the investigation and thinks a family member killed you and tried to stage it as a suicide? What if another family member secretly struggles with depression and your suicide makes them 'snap'. You are not around to deal with the consequences of your actions.
With the experience I’ve been through over the past year and a half, I cannot agree more strongly with you! Those left behind deal with a HUGE mess, financially and other.
I never considered suicide so much “selfish” as cowardly.
And, in the end, stupid.
Life is a gift, and to waste it is inexcusable.
“He was lying there in the grass, hiding and thinking.
He had studied the little girl’s habits. He knew she’d come outside her grandfather’s house at mid-afternoon to play.
He hated himself for this.
In his whole miserable, messed-up life he’d never considered anything so callous as kidnapping.
Yet here he was, waiting for an innocent, red-haired, two-year-old child to come within reach.
It was a long wait; there was time to think.
Maybe all his life Harlan had been in too much of a hurry. He was five when his Hoosier farmer daddy had died. At 14 he dropped out of school and hit the road. He tried odd jobs as a farm hand, hated it. Tried being a streetcar conductor and hated that. At 16 he lied about his age and joined the army — and hated that. too.
At 18 he got married and within months, wouldn’t you know she announced she was pregnant the day he announced he’d been fired again?
Then, one day, while he was out job hunting, his wife gave away all their possessions and went home to her parents.
Then came the depression.
He tried selling insurance, selling tires. He tried running a ferryboat, running a filling station. No use.
Face it — Harlan was a loser.
And now here was hiding in the woods outside Roanoke, Virginia, plotting a kidnapping.
He’d watched the little girl’s habits, knew about her afternoon playtime. But this day, she did not come out to play, so his chain of failures remained unbroken.
Later in life he became chief cook and bottle washer at a restaurant in Corbin. And did all right until the new highway bypassed the restaurant.
He’d stayed honest — except for that one time when he had attempted kidnapping. In fairness to his name it must be noted that it was his own daughter he’d meant to kidnap from his runaway wife. And they both returned to him, the next day, anyway.
But now the years had slid by and a lifetime was gone and he and they had nothing.
He had not really felt old until the day the postman brought his first social security cheque. That day, something within Harland resented, resisted, and exploded.
The government was feeling story for him.
His restaurant customers in Corbin said they’d miss him, but his government said 65 candles on the birthday cake is enough. They sent him a pension cheque and told him he was “old.”
“Nuts,” he said.
He got so angry he took the $105 cheque and started a new business.
For the man who failed at everything was Harlan Sanders. The late Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. And as Paul Harvey Aurandt would say in that smooth baritone voice: “NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY.”
“Let us say you have experienced a series of catastrophic (to you) defeats, one after another, your life has become a country and western song waiting to be written. “
Write the song, man! Write the song!
Because the person who commits suicide to relive their own discomfort, shows little or no consideration for the loved ones he/she victimizes.
The suicide person has “an out” at the expense of loved ones and friends.
You can’t assume the family is going to be on board with the “choice”.
I know people who have been affected by a family members suicide—it is DAMAGING.
Besides, we do not side with the death cult.
My pal is starting to write a screeplay and says that Merryl Streep oughta play the woman, and Tom Hanks the hapless man.
It is still selfish (let’s get real, everything is based on selfishness of some sort and selfishness gets a bad rap). Financial burdens are just one aspect. There are also emotional burdens. What about the doctors having the opportunity to work with you through your illness so they may be able to help the next person with said illness better.
The fact is, you don’t know what the next day holds and you are cheating yourself and others out of that opportunity. You are making the selfish choice to assume what tomorrow holds and what the consequences will be.
That last comment will provoke more comment than substance.
As to making this personal, it's not an impersonal Act, certainly not when your Lonesome Heart takes innocent victims with him, or leaves a clean-up behind him.
How about Joan Crawford, at the end of the movie... Humoresque, when she apparently walks off into the waves as her answer to hopeless love with John Garfield, it's all very romantic and it's the sea that get's her, not being an amphibian. She leaves no mess the crabs aren't grateful for.
How about the Falling Man, all those who jumped from the World Trade Center "taking control of their fates," as they say, or driven off the edge by the flames, smoke and heat.
You need to be more specific, and to be useful, bring up physician assisted suicide.
But, taking your statement on face value, I think Suicide is an unalienable right, which does not mean it is either lawful or moral. As such, who needs a physician?
Hope you've opened up the can of worms you were looking for.
(From: K-Pax)
It does pass the test, if you were the only person on earth, is it a right you still have (ie, not needing the service of anyone else).
I hope I did, and don't making it personal by reading my mind and saying I don't want a serious answer.
“Let’s bypass if we can all the religious aspects of it.”
Ruling the religious aspects of suicide out-of-bounds is asking for 1/2 a discussion. Its like saying you want a lively discussion about the weather, but nobody can talk about clouds.
Once you do that, you open Pandora's box. A simple high school exercise to write about it caused a boat load of kids to do it. Do you want that over your head?
Job's wife counseled him "Curse God and Die" - how would you answer this question when tempted to take your own life?? Without Religion, you must use some weak moralistic answer.
But for the Christian: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" Galatians 2:20 : IT IS NOT MY LIFE ANY MORE, IT BELONGS TO HIM AND I AM TO HONOR HIM ALL THE WAY - THE REWARDS ARE GREATER THAN ANYTHING THIS WORLD OFFERS.
Blue, Red and Grey (Peter Townshend)
Some people seem so obsessed with the morning
Get up early just to watch the sun rise
Some people like it more when there’s fire in the sky
Worship the sun when it’s high
Some people go for those sultry evenings
Sipping cocktails in the blue, red and grey
But I like every minute of the day
I like every second, so long as you are on my mind
Every moment has its special charm
It’s all right when you’re around, rain or shine
I know a crowd who only live after midnight
Their faces always seem so pale
And then there’s friends of mine who must have sunlight
They say a suntan never fails
I know a man who works the night shift
He’s lucky to get a job and some pay
And I like every minute of the day
I dig every second
I can laugh in the snow and rain
I get a buzz from being cold and wet
The pleasure seems to balance out the pain
And so you see that I’m completely crazy
I even shun the south of France
The people on the hill, they say I’m lazy
But when they sleep, I sing and dance
Some people have to have the sultry evenings
Cocktails in the blue, red and grey
But I like every minute of the day
I like every minute of the day
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