The issue of takine one’s own life has recently touched my life in several ways, and I stumbled across singer Judy Collins’s excellent book Sanity & Graceon the suicide of her only child, sonClark Taylor.
Collins makes three points in this book:
Don’t look at the way people die, even in cases of suicide. Look at the way they lived.
Unless the suicide takes out other people, I agree 100%.
We have to respect he right of adults to decide to comit suicide.
While I’m shakey on this idea, I see her point.
Some people are simply fated to die by their own hands.
When I certainly can see where Collins gains comfort from this idea, I don’t support it at all. Can people’s fate be suicide?
It’s pretty unlikely that humans (or anything else) have real-live free will, so everything that is going to happen was set in motion with the Big Bang (if not “sooner.”)
So yeah, her son was “fated” to kill himself, but no more so than I’m fated to go to the store tomorrow.
Some calls are easier to make than others though, so it’s possible to guess which people are more likely than average to off themselves.
It depends on what you mean by fate. Leaving metaphysics out of it, depression and suicide do run in families. I think that point is pretty thorough supported by research. To some extent this is a copout: can you be fated to take any specific action or make any particular decision? Having a predisposition to something is not the same as being fated to do it. But then again, it sounds like she’s giving a copout in response to blaming herself for the suicide. It’s not her fault to begin with.
I have some strong reservations on her second point as well, but I don’t know to what extent she is saying we need to respect that right.
As far as I can tell, the biological imperative that most living creature seems to follow consists of two things: a). stay alive and b). reproduce. Of course not every person feels these two urges, but enough do so that suicide is seen as something to be prevented and murder and child abuse are seen as abhorrent. So no, I don’t see suicide as just another life option. There are cases where it seems that allowing it to occur or letting others assist with it is the lesser of two evils, but I would never be so flippant as to say whoever wishes to kill themselves should go right ahead.
The bigger question, though, is what she means by “fate.” That implies that there is some cosmic storyboard out there where every event in each of our lives sketched out before we’re born. So that means that every horrific event–murder, rape, torture, whatever–is just destiny being played out.
No, we don’t. You do not have a “right” to commit suicide. It is by it’s nature a harmful act to the living left behind. There are a few exceptions where this may not be so (terminal illness, self-sacrifice to save others), but it always hurts others even when done for the most noble and justifiable causes. At best it’s the lesser of two evils, it’s never a good.
No.
Yes, clinical depression can kill via suicide, but it’s not inevitable. My sister suffered from clinical depression for 17 years before she killed herself, she was at high risk during that time, but it wasn’t inevitable that she kill herself. If circumstances had played out differently it might not have happened at all. There are people at high risk, but there is no one “fated” to kill themselves.
Is she using “fate” in a general philosophical sense, or does she mean some people are psychologically predisposed? The latter is less deterministic. I might have a violent nature, but not be fated to die in battle, or an alcoholic nature, but not fated to die of liver failure. Time and chance happeneth to them all.
If I believe there is nobody who cares for me, and life only has the meaning I bestow it with, why should I be looked on negatively if I want to “cut to the chase” and face what most people are afraid of?
This isn’t anywhere near the same thing. Cruzan wasn’t about suicide due to depression or some other mental illness. It was about the right of the individual to decide their own fate should they become physically incapacitated beyond hope of recovery. Nancy Cruzan, the plaintiff in that case, was in a car accident that left her in a persistent vegetative state. Her family wanted to respect her wishes, so they took it to court. The SCOTUS obviously held that the family had the right to withdraw Cruzan’s feeding tube.
In any event, I would think that the website of a group that represents those who claim they have been harmed by psychiatry is hardly neutral. Moreover, this is the opinion of an attorney who hews to the agenda of this group, and represents his application of the law. It’s by no means definitive.
I don’t know about fate, but if you take a cross section of 100,000 people and you separate them for various characteristics that are out of their control (being abused, having a severe mental illness, chronic unemployment, severe trauma/loss, losing someone close to them to suicide, social rejection, etc) the suicide rates are going to be higher.
So you can determine people’s suicide rates go up or down by various interventions (abuse, mental illness, unemployment make it go up. Medical treatment, close personal relationships, resilient genes make it go down). However I don’t know if you can zero in on one single person and say they are ‘fated’ to commit suicide. You can take 100,000 people with bad genetics, bad traumas and bad life experiences and calculate that their suicide risk is x% higher than another 100,000 with resilient genes, strong personal relationships and fairly care free lives.
But even in the latter group, some are going to commit suicide. Just not as many in the first group. I don’t think you can calculate who will do it and who won’t though.
To Point 3: this is only ever a reasonable thing to suggest after the fact of a successful suicide attempt, so it becomes a meaningless statement. Even then it serves mostly to assuage any guilt or hurt on the part of those left behind. The implication is that no intervention or alteration of external circumstance would have prevented the successful suicide. This may be true but cannot be known with certainty, ever, and certainly cannot be ascertained in advance.
To Point 2: Whether or not to believe the unfolding of your life is in your stars is sort of a matter of your belief paradigm itself. This is a philosophic issue at its most basic level. I happen to think we do have a right to take our own lives. It is my life, after all. Claiming that I have no right to suicide because it hurts others presupposes that my personal belief ranks not hurting others as the greatest good. By what right does another establish my belief paradigm?
I am unaware that the Constitution directly addresses suicide. Therefore like many rights supposedly “found” there (or not found there), what we have for “constitutional” law is essentially the superimposed philosophy of whatever SCOTUS was handing down a particular decision. (I’m always amused when proponents for a particular right pretend that it must be constitutionally protected because the SOTUS found that to be so. Well, yes, but…a different SCOTUS group at a different point in time might have had a completely different vote, so it becomes a bit of a farce to pretend something not specifically in the Constitution can still be “found” there.)
Currently the average law is written so that people who are a danger to themselves because they might commit suicide should have their opportunity to commit suicide removed from them, by as forcible means as necessary, including chemical and physical restraint (there are provisions, of course, to ensure that such an assessment of suicidal risk is correct, but basically you don’t have a legal right to commit suicide).
The reason for this is practical: if successful it’s an irreversible decision and it turns out many (but not all) unsuccessful suicides go on to live long lives and are grateful their suicide attempt was unsuccessful.
Over my years in medicine in the ED, I’ve dealt with dozens of successful suicides and hundreds of unsuccessful ones, and struggled with when to invoke the law to commit patients against their will. On average our system works fairly well and on average our patients are grateful we intervened in what would have been a bad decision. This does not affect my personal belief that the right to commit suicide still belongs to the individual at some deep philosophic level. In short it is your right to destroy your own life and it is the generosity of society which reaches out to you to prevent you from the successful exercise of that right, particularly so when the decision was undertaken in haste.
I disagree. I see suicide as the ultimate right of the individual. The fact that it may cause emotional pain in others does not negate the right, but is a factor to consider when deciding whether to exercise the right. I’ve posted before that I fully intend to die by my own hand, at a time and place of my choosing. I won’t do it as long as my parents are alive, unless diagnosed with a terminal condition. However, I have seen people die of cancer and heart problems…wasting away in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, dependent on others for everything from nutrition to personal grooming, and I simply refuse to go out that way. Oak rides alone. Oak dies alone. So mote it be.
The person who has to pick up your corpse for disposal and clean up and spilled bodily waste or fluids might have a different opinion. It’s not a pleasant job. Alright, maybe you’re unloved and unwanted and nobody will miss you, but you’re going to leave something behind that will, eventually, turn into a stinking mess. It’s hard to elminate yourself completely so that you will truly inconvenience no one.
Please. Of course you have a right to die, we’re all going to die at some point, you have the right to refuse medical treatment, but you don’t have a “right” to actively end your life.
My mother died at home and she wasn’t hooked up to machines and she wasn’t in pain. Sure, she didn’t get out of bed at all those last two weeks but she didn’t linger for months or years. Half the problem is our society is so effing terrified of death that we won’t let the doctors quit doing heroics. If there was more real hospice care in this country fewer people would be subjected to futile treatments and more would have some quality their last few days of life and feel less need to demand the “right” to self-murder.
I found out this week, unbeknown to her, that a now dear friend had attempted suicide several times when she’d only been a vague pleasant acquaintance that AFAIK had dropped out of sight for a while. If she’d succeeded at the time & I had heard, I’m have been kinda saddened but not deeply affected. Other than never knowing what a special person she is. If she did that now & succeeded, I’d be devastated. Even now, thinking that I could have missed out on her friendship, I’m kinda verklempt (Discuss amongst yo’selves…)
1.) I have no problem with.
2.) We gotta have some MAJOR qualifiers before I can respect a right to suicide.
3.) There may be people who for various psychological/biochemical reasons are prone to suicide & will eventually find a way. Doesn’t mean we can’t fight to keep them with us.
Baring the mess left behind by a gunshot wound to the head, this is a result that is no different from dying alone of a stroke, MI, PE, or any other of a multitude of natural causes. Death is messy and someone has to clean it up.
I think it’s extraordinarily self-centered to force someone who has lost the will to live to continue living. I don’t wish that fate on anyone and hope they take full advantage of the psychiatric and palliative resources available to them, but they have no obligation to live in a situation they find unbearable simply to avoid harming the emotions of those left behind.
I disagree anyone is fated. Grab a suicidal person by the throat. He/she immediately will start fighting you for air. People WANT to live. It takes a lot of doing before they lay down, give up and die.
Because death is final it cannot be compared to any other issue. Sure grown up people have a right to choose a mate, a religion, a new name or a new career. They can make stupid choices. Why? Because they can always undo them Or at least try to. It’s not a forever type of deal
But death is a one time thing.
And since no one knows what is beyond death, no one has enough facts to make a true comparison.
I don’t believe suicidal people WANT to die, as much as they don’t want to live.
Of course I am leaving out people with actual mental illness like schizophrenia and people in incurable pain.
Again because death is final we as a society need to judge this as a totally different thing form other rights adults have.
If you look at it broadly enough we’re all gonna die anyway, and we’re all dying even before we come out of the womb, so why not just get it over with? But you have to use a sound mind and know when to look at the big picture and when to look at details.
I don’t understand why you think this is the case. Is it because of the emotional effect it has on the people left behind? While it’s unfortunate, emotional distress to others isn’t sufficient reason to preclude someone from making the ultimate decision about whether they are going to live or die. While I don’t think suicide is ever the answer, and I would be devastated if someone I loved took his/her own life, that doesn’t mean I think they don’t have the right to make that choice.
I second this question - suicide is only one of numerous ways a person can effectively ruin their lives and traumatize those who love them - gambling debt, alcohol, and simply arguing too much being other perfectly legal ways to go about it. Do people lack the right to do these things as well?
The difference is that a live alcoholic, gambler, etc. has the possibility of making amends or at least apologizing if amends can’t be made.
When you’re dead you’re dead, and you can’t fix things or say “I’m sorry”. It’s unforgivable because you are unable to ask for forgiveness.
No, I don’t think anyone has a “right” to kill themselves anymore than they have a “right” to steal, murder, rape, embezzle, psychologically abuse, gamble away the rent money, steal possessions to support a drug habit, or otherwise inflict pain either financial, physical or emotional on other people. People still do that, of course, but that doesn’t make it right. In some cases punishment is warranted, in other cases treatment for illness, but once you’re dead you’re dead. Like I said, you can’t go back and say “I’m sorry” once you’re in the grave.