I don’t remember if it’s an official rule or just something the Mods frown on, but generally this is not seen as a good thing, because if you spell out explicitly how to commit suicide without pain and a high chance of success, this could lead people who are already depressed* to actually committing suicide offline.
People who are depressed and get help instead and manage to turn their lives around often are thankful later that their attempts were unsuccesful.
Several dopers have posted about their struggles with mental illness; and the posts can be read by any random passerby who’s not a Doper.
No, they’re not going out of their way, and that’s the problem. Walking in front of a train is easy compared to swallowing dozens or hundreds of pills without puking them up, or carving deep enough cuts into your unanesthetized flesh, or figuring out the proper type of gun and the correct angle, then setting about getting one. I listened to an episode of the Freakonomics podcast a while back about suicide - which did say that suicides are reduced if you don’t talk about them too much, and if you do, you emphasize the bad parts for the person - which mentioned the impulsiveness of the bridge-jump style of suicide.
The problem is that they’re killing themselves. Anyway, I think you missed the point here: I’m not commenting on the degree of difficultly of the suicides. I was saying they are not “going out of their way to inconvenience other people.” That phrasing says that inconveniencing other people is their goal, which of course it isn’t- the goal is the suicide.
I see what you’re saying. The reason I brought this up was that Clarkson’s major objection here seems to be that people who throw themselves in front of trains are traumatizing others, potentially scarring them for life, as well as disrupting mass transit, potentially endangering life. A while back I thought of a way in which I would be disposed to end it all if that course of action ever became necessary. Essentially, it would involve no linking of any location (such as my home) to the memory of my demise. The only people who would find me would be strangers already well-inured to such things.
“Take the last train to Clarkson” is now my earworm.
I asked my cop boyfriend what the goriest thing he ever saw was. One of them was a car that tried to outrun a train and missed. “The driver was spread over three city blocks.”
I’m wondering about the 10% that don’t die via this method. How messed up they must look after the run-in with a train.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Have you actually seen the whole clip in which he said this? He said some mildly supportive (but sarcastic, that’s his style) things about the strike, before saying something along the lines of “well, this is the BBC, so we need to balance things out”, and then talking about having strikers shot. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion by UNISON, a union that’s patently failing to gain any sort of public sympathy whatsoever from the general public for their recent strike actions.
I am sick and tired of hearing that suicide is selfish.
First, the idea is that you have a responsibility not to bereave all the people who love you. My question is, where the hell ARE these legions of people who love me? Probably, one of the things that tempt people to suicide is precisely that they really have no friends, no loved ones. Oh yes, we may have family members, but guess what? Just because my brother and I came out of the same womb does not mean he cares a rat’s ass about me, nor I about him.
It is inconvenient to others who have to clean up? So is any dead body, frankly. Did you know that the last thing we do when we die (suicide or not) is shit ourselves?
Marcus Jannes was a young (21) Swedish man who suffered from Asperger syndrome (see Wikipedia). He had a great deal of trouble with social interaction and making friends. Just over a year ago, in October 2010, he hanged himself in his apartment and recorded it in a video that you can still see [noparse]http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/10/video_marcus_james_21_commits.php[/noparse]
Warning: It is not bloody but it is disturbing. I do not approve of what he did, but I respect his right to make that decision. Lives vary in quality just like anything else. Is it absolutely impossible for a person to conclude that his is not worth living? Can he not rationally decide that without being considered mentally ill?
But what I find really significant is what Marcus himself said in his posting before he did it. I do not have the exact words (I believe they were in Swedish) but he basically said: “I am sorry if this saddens others, but pleasing other people is not by itself a reason to live.”
Put that statement another way. The suicide has decided he wants to end it, but is told he must not because it will inconvenience, sadden or traumatize someone else? And therefore he should remain living and suffering in a life he cannot stand just so someone else will not feel bad? Who is being selfish here?
I doubt it, and if you think about it, that’s a pretty hearthless thing to say to anybody who has lost a friend or relative to suicide. (That doesn’t include me.) I’m sure some people who committ suicide are more or less antisocial and on their own without family close friends. But it can hardly be a majority. I think most suicides are caused by depression and other mental illnesses, and people with those problems may often feel that they have no friends and loved ones (and it also hinders making them), but that’s the nature of depression and it doesn’t make it actually true. And that’s coming from someone who already agreed with your general position.
Nah, I think Clarkson is just an insensitive, tasteless creep. While nobody can ever know the mind of a suicide (unless they leave a note), I think it’s safe to say guaranteed & quick death combined with the need for only a moment’s discipline is at least as likely as “Ha! Now I’m important!” in deciding how to go about ending one’s life. Drug OD, gunshot, blades, pills, plastic, charcoal BBQ in a sealed bathroom all require planning, determination and, to varying degrees, a willingness to stay in the lethal situation once it’s begun.
I’ve almost stepped in front of a bus on a particularly bad day. My motivation? Was in a dark place for a really long time, got a bright idea and looked up and saw the bus, did some quick math and … hesitated because I’m a coward. Feeling important or being remembered wasn’t on my mind; not seeing another sunrise as a loser was. In that frame of mind, nobody else existed, it was pure narcisism–my needs trumped all others and the effect my actions would have had on the busdriver never figured in my math. He didn’t exist, it was a bus.
I think most people who self-liberate are either antisocial and on their own without family and friends, or are really unloved and isolated, notwithstanding the fact that they have family and acquaintances.
Do not confuse people who know you exist with people who love you. Do not assume that the existence of 4 or 5 relatives is the immediate equivalent of 4 or 5 people who love you.
After the suicide is dead, they will come out of the woodwork to wail and carry on how much they loved him (or her, but most suicides are men). “If only I could have reached him!” they moan. Good way to dodge any potential guilt.
But where were they BEFORE? I would love to see how many of the “bereaved” made any effort to really reach the deceased before he caught the bus.
I will probably never self-liberate myself because I am too cowardly, but if I did I am sure my funeral would be filled with relatives and others who loved me “oh-so-much”. So where are they now? I am sitting alone in a dark room at a computer writing this drivel to strangers I will never meet. Where are all these friggin’ people who love me so much and would be devastated by my death?
my own observation (while living in london at least) is how a lot of britons seem to take a suicide lightly. they throw quips in much the same way i throw racist jokes around. take this scene from the 80s “the professionals”:
cowley: “a man fell from the 15th floor.”
doyle: “that’s police business.”
cowley: “he jumped.”
bodie: “that’s his business.”
Please tell me that “a lot of britons” and “the scriptwriters of a TV show featuring some black humoured smartass characters” are not interchangeable in your mind?
