Posted on 07/02/2023 3:38:02 PM PDT by Ozguy1945
Facing Suicide.
"The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places."
So wrote Ernest Hemingway in Farewell To Arms (1929)
Hemingway lived most of his life as an outstanding outdoorsman whose understated economical literary style was male to the core.
Like his physician father before him, Hemingway died by suicide on July 2nd, 1961.
"What is the sense of ruining my head" he said of the ECT treatment in his final year that left him a wreck, "and erasing my memory, which is capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient."
Six months later, Heminway used his favourite shotgun to end his life.
Many American conservatives hold it as an article of faith that their Second Constitutional Amendment, the right to bear arms, protects their freedom.
Does this include the autonomous right to legitimately decide when to end your own life?
Or is suicide a sin?
(Excerpt) Read more at freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com ...
“Both!”
e pluribus unum
Time FRiend
It takes time
“What does the 2nd say?
“A well regulated militia being necessary for................”
There are other words in the 2nd besides guns.
Suicide is a choice. Choices have long lasting effects. For you and others.”
thanks for this response ....... what the 2nd says is not the same thing as what it has become in people’s faith in their nation, a faith evolved over more than two centuries
America’s greatness in my eyes is in how her foundational truths persist and grow and change
“Our lives are either ours; or they belong to someone else”
I can live with the idea that my life belongs to god, but not to govts .......
“You don’t need a gun to commit suicide, so 2A Rights have nothing to do with the issue. (A.)
Is suicide a sin? Yes, I believe it is, as that is God’s decision when our lives will end. But I know there are those who suffer terribly at life-end, & in such cases, I’m sure it is forgiven.” (B.)
A. 2A rights means gun ownership is easier in the USA than elsewhere and pulling trigger of a gun is easier, therefore more likely to happen, than jumping in front of a train or off a building or bridge.
B. I think Hemingway was suffering.
If people really want to end their lives, they will. They can OD, hang themselves, slit their wrists, drown in carbon monoxide (so to speak), or leap from a building.
A bullet is at least quick and painless if done right.
If you want to use a tool to end your life, you will. Whether a knife or a gun, a tool’s a tool.
Wow, Hemingway's father also died by suicide on July 2nd, 1961? WHO KNEW?
I’m so sorry for your loss. That’s horrible, and I can’t imagine finding someone I love like that.
Having been un a similar mindset in the past (when I was at my worst in kidney failure), you’re convinced that everyone you love will be better off without you. It’s difficult to convince oneself otherwise, and some antidepressants can make this worse. Prescribing them isn’t a science, as it’s hard to get it right because it can take a few months to see any effects. Mixing them with alcohol makes it far worse.
That said, I don’t think he’d have given up on suicide if he didn’t have a firearm. Sadly, most won’t.
But if the world were perfect, we wouldn't need guns in the first place, now would we?
Hemingway's own family knew he was manic, depressed, and a danger to himself. His wife had locked up the guns and didn't think he could find the key.
She was wrong.
The 2nd Amendment is no more responsible for Hemingway's suicide than Ben & Jerry's is for Rosie O'Donnell being a fat lesbian.
Thank you for your reply. I’m almost 70 so my broken heart only has to go on missing him for 10-15 yrs. It’s worse for his sisters, his daughter, and his fiancée.
You are precisely right. I myself have stared into that abyss.
God gave me the realization that one’s heart and mind lie, and to not believe them, especially with such a momentous decision. That is what saved me.
That is all we need to know about the man. Anything else is mere preamble. He was committing suicide his entire drinking career. The shotgun was incidental.
I don't need guns. I like them. You're confused. Yours is a statist mentality that dictates when the citizenry will be allowed to own guns, viz. according to "need."
Wonderful point!
God gave all of us free will, and doesn’t control our actions,
Are you saying free will is absolute?
Or is it subject to God’s sovereignty.
The question remains, is it a sin for us to commit suicide? I tend to think so, generally, but feel uncertain is some situations. I have a feeling that “justified euthanasia of us elderly is coming down the pike soon, as we elderly are seen as expensive obligations.
There was a reason for kosher killing for the jews, to see the life given for them, the blood drained from a living animal. Now it is just a label on the hot dogs with no real meaning.
When my 98 year old mother was having surgery and there was a problem, they called me 200 miles away if they should resuscitate her. I remembered her discussions and said no. At the same time they found my brother who was there at the hospital, and he told them the WILL resuscitate her. He was there, I was remote.
She lived for 7 more days, mostly unconscious. But each of us kids received a “gift” during that time period. At the end, the doctor came in and said he could ease her pain by giving her morphine. Some of us focused on the easing her pain. I knew what the morphine meant.
It seems reasonable to consider the gift of life to be in a separate and unique category.
For example, life is non-material.
“Is your own life your own?”
Not in the sense that your shirt is your own, or your house, or that dollar bill.
After a modest amount of careful thinking, to claim your life is your own seems rather absurd.
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