Yeah, maybe it’s obvious but, thinking of the recent suicide of a good friend of a family member which really hurt that family member, you never know what people are really thinking.
This person had far left (by my lights) politics. Maybe that played into it, as in depression in part from how screwed up the world is (because everyone can’t realize how leftism offers the only solution, the kind of person who tended to think that way). Or a tendency to depression makes the person adopt that kind of overly political attitude toward life. If that was it, rather than lack of financial success (the person was ostensibly OK with that, but maybe not really) or all kinds of other baggage built up over time.
Not to get into a debate about whether suicide is ever noble or justified, when committed by basically healthy people with long life expectancy and not directly in the cause of saving others, it’s generally troubled people. And we can’t know what they are really thinking if they don’t or can’t tell us.
Right, a lot of suicides are impulsive. This article says 80%. It’s possible if there was a big leak in the garage and the attempt failed he’d never have tried again and would have figured out how to move on with his life.
I agree with others in that I wouldn’t connect his politics with this. And if you don’t feel sad then that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. But I also would suggest maybe not sharing your thoughts about him with other people who did know him and might be mourning.
I agree. He certainly sounds like he had bipolar disorder. The impulsivity is a huge clue. I can’t imagine the low he must’ve been feeling. That poor guy and those poor kids.
He didn’t have “everything”, obviously. I really try not to judge, but SamuelA, you’re coming off as almost gleeful, which is sickening. You weren’t any kind of friend to him.
Perhaps he was a moron, many people are, but he does not sound like a bad moron, just one that lacks common sense.
Dont really see where that gives open license to shit talk the poor guy, he’s dead, can’t even defend himself.
And obviously he had some kind of psychological issues you didn’t even know anything about.
Maybe he wasn’t a great friend and you dont know him that well, so you dont feel much beyond what any person feels when another human being had died in a sad way.
But you should feel like total shit for the way you are acting about it.
Fuck, i hope you don’t say that stuff in any circles that his kids might hear some of it?
Sometimes great advice is found in cartoons
“If you dont have nuthin nice to say…
… don;t say nuthin at all.”
*And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.*
"Should"s and feelings don’t mix. Your feelings are perfectly valid. If you view someone as an awful person, it is natural to feel what you do about their death. When someone is bad dies, the world becomes a slightly better place in their absence.
What is good, however, is to develop your sympathy and empathy. You can have all those feelings you mention, but also choose to have sympathy for the grieving. You can’t necessarily make yourself feel bad for them, but often that will inherently happen.
I used to judge everyone for this sort of thing, but I can no longer do so. All I say is that you should try to see the bad with the good, even if you can’t control your actual feelings. It’s important so we don’t become callous and lack sympathy and empathy, and thus become the monsters we hate.
I don’t want to be the type of person that people are happy is dead.
Seriously, guys? Of course his politics are relevant. They tell us a whole lot about this man’s character. Your politics are not like your favorite ice cream flavor.
Someone who supports Trump supports a whole lot of evil things. A lot of what he supports has no possible moral justification. It’s not some disagreement about what is best for the country, but saying that being as evil and corrupt as Trump is is perfectly okay. To only care about yourself and hurt others is okay.
We are at a new direction in politics. Gone is any pretense of wanting what’s best for the country. Gone are the moral arguments, since Trump does not fit any of them.
We’ve got to stop this myth that politics doesn’t matter. It is what allows very vile practices to continue. It is why Trump was able to rise in power. If we’d acknowledged what he was saying was evil and had a decent Republican run for office, we’d be a whole lot better off as a country. Yes, even if they won against Clinton.
This is not an either/or situation. People do need to acknowledge that there are awful people, and Trump supporters are supporting something awful. They need to also be able to sympathize for those who are hurt by someone’s death.
This guy sounds like an awful person, and his politics are those of an awful person. It is relevant, and pretending otherwise hurts our country.
Not gonna lie…I’d probably feel the same way that you do. But this is an aspect of my personality that I’m ashamed of and am trying to act against through mindfulness.
There’s no good using another person’s tragic demise as a source of validation–which, if you’re honest with yourself, is essentially the root of your feelings. For years you’ve seen this guy accumulate the best things in life despite having a personality and political beliefs that viscerally bother you. Perhaps deep down inside, you’ve always wanted him to fail. Because his failure would then prove to you that your negative opinions about him were right all along despite outward appearances.
Well, the truth is, him failing was never a precondition for you being entitled to your opinions about him. Just like him succeeding never meant the opposite. In other words, understand that your feeling of vindication says more about your own insecurities than it does it about him. Think of it like this: the guy sounds like he was done in by his own impulsive tendencies. Nothing more than that, really. You can choose to see this as a character flaw and loop in all the other stuff about his politics and lifestyle, but you could also see this as a product of faulty psychology and biochemistry. That you are choosing the former interpretation suggests you have a need to feel morally superior to him. Why do you need to feel this way, though? Ask yourself that.
BTW, I deal with these feelings on a routine basis with my boss. Years ago, both she and I competed for her current position and she was selected for it, despite me being an internal candidate with more experience and other advantages over her. But what is done is done, right? Well, yes and no.
I still deal with resentment over her working over me. This resentment has biased me, and I very much hate that it has. It means every time I assess something that she does, I have to take a couple extra moments to factor out my kneejerk negativity. When she flounders, I sometimes have to force myself to help her rather than pettily let her fend for herself. When outsiders criticize her, I have to fight off my impulse to agree with them. Because I know, deep down, these urges of mine are simply me needing reassurance that it was I who deserved to be the boss, not her. Even if that belief is true, I lessen myself every time I seek that reassurance, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. What is done is done.
Exactly right. In this life the wicked prosper and the good suffer, and the wicked suffer and the good prosper. As the man said, deserves got nothing to do with it.
What sucks is that a guy took his own life, 3 little kids no longer have a dad, and somehow, someway someone had to turn it into a commentary about the guy’s political point of view.