I didn’t answer the poll, because I don’t believe that one answer fits all cases. But I do understand the “suicide is an act of cowardice” point of view. It is, in at least certain cases, being a quitter.
I’ve never admired anyone for choosing to commit suicide. I have admired people for choosing not to commit suicide.
I voted “both cowardly and selfish” because that’s how I feel the traditional image of suicide is: a depressed person taking his or her own life, leaving family & friends behind with a lot of grief. Whether that’s statistically representative I don’t know. A lot of your responses have been insightful, especially WhyNot’s.
I want to add another perspective. I’ve been there too, having survived two attempts after emergency hospitalization, and I still feel that in some cases (like mine) it is both a selfish and cowardly action, but one that had to be taken regardless.
People don’t always understand is that suicide is usually a last resort, an act of desperation when all else fails. Would-be suicides don’t set out to spite their debtors or hurt the people they love for no reason, or because they’re just weak of character and habitually live cowardly lives. At a certain point, some sort of pain – whether it’s physical, emotional, financial, or otherwise – becomes too great to bear and death seems like the only escape, outsider judgment be damned. When I felt like that, I certainly knew I would devastate the people around me, but I was in no emotional condition to emphasize with their pain. I knew I was acting selfishly and cowardly, but I did what I felt I had to do, not because I didn’t care about anyone else, but because I was already too overwhelmed with my own pain.
In other words, regular people can be driven to a cowardly, selfish act out of sheer desperation, but that doesn’t necessarily make them selfish cowards on an ongoing basis.
Also, the ability to cope with pain is a very individual, subjective thing. People don’t all experience the same kinds of pain. People also don’t have the same innate tolerances or life experiences. While an X amount of suffering may be overcome with little difficulty by one person, another person may succumb to it despite their most valiant efforts.
Does that make the first person a hero or the second person a coward? Neither, really. It’s too individual and complex to generalize like that.
I voted “other” because it is not always cowardly nor always selfish. I can think of many “suicidal acts” that were, perhaps, acts of heroism.
Also, as a veteran of depression, I know how the mind can yammer at one to the point that it is impossible to see much of anything beyond the act itself. Is it cowardly to not want to be lonely, a victim, hungry, in constant pain, a nuisance to others?
Is it cowardly if you are schizophrenic and the voices in your head tell you that this is what you must do? Is it selfish?
What if you have a long-term terminal illness and your caretakers are straining themselves to help you and still keep their own heads above water?
Suicide has many causes. You may never know the reasoning of the departed’s mind. To call the person a coward or selfish is futile because they are no longer there to give you rebuttal. Perhaps if you give them some of your time when they are alive, they won’t try to commit suicide.
Been there. Planning it can make the present tolerable, barely. (As in, none of this matters because I’m going to take care of it.)
I was 4 1/2 the first time I tried to kill myself.
2nd time I was five.
I think we’re like Mars. With canals nobody can understand.
Among my attempts (yes, I suck at this, too) the ones I find most…odd are the times when I didn’t even know I was doing it. Until after.
Stressors can trigger it. But one time, during a “normal” period, this distinct thought popped into in my head: You know, you really ought to kill yourself." Like I’d heard the words out loud.
I had to laugh, hug it in recognition and concede That’s crazy. And…I’m gonna have to live with this somabitch for the rest of my life.
Please PM me. We could talk. It wouldn’t hoit.
I would say that it’s rarely cowardly. I won’t say never because I’m sure you could construct some scenario in which that description could apply, but generally I don’t really understand how it’s cowardly.
Selfish varies by situation. If you’ve got dependents, it becomes far more of a dick move than if you’re a loner. If you’re married or have other close relationships it’s worse than someone who’s taken care to deliberately isolate themselves from people to cause the least amount of damage.
But suicide is generally an extremely drastic act that requires extreme distress to seriously consider. If people have reached the point where it seems like a good option, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt about their decision.
That’s what bothers me about people who get angry at people who’ve committed suicide, calling them cowards and selfish. What they’re essentially saying is “I don’t care that your existance is so painful that ending it just to stop the suffering seems worthwhile to you - your suicide has hurt me, and I would rather have you live and suffer indefinitely so that I don’t have to hurt”, which is as selfish as suicide.
I’ve heard of a culture (can’t remember where) where suicide is accepted, but only if you basically wander out into nature and die to starvation or to the elements. The idea is that you’re not just having a massive overreaction to a temporary problem - you’re not some lovestruck teen that hangs himself when his girlfriend breaks up with him - but rather you’ve decided that continuing your life will lead to more pain than good, and you are in such long term, hopeless distress that you’re able to choose a long, unpleasant, painful death with lots of time to contemplate over continuing. If you do that, the rest of the culture accepts your choice.
I think that’s rather enlightened.
Other. There are many reasons for suicide, just as there are many reasons to go on living. Impossible to generalize.
It really depends. People’s reasons for suicide run the gamut. Sometimes teenagers commit suicide because of a breakup with a girlfriend. Sometimes elderly people kill themselves because they have a terminal illness. Sometimes people with severe borderline personality disorder kill themselves without REALLY meaning to because they were trying to get someone else’s attention but took it just a little too far. It’s hard to make generalizations about something that has so many different motivations.
I do think that there are some cases where you could say suicide is selfish. There are cases of people getting so angry at someone that they will make their suicide note basically a “Fuck you” note to the person, and you could argue that it is selfish to do that to someone knowing that they will be traumatized by it and never get a chance to respond to what you said in the note.
You could also argue that in at least some cases it is selfish to kill yourself if you are responsible for a minor child, since losing a parent that way is often very traumatic for a child. Plus a family history of suicide raises the risk the kid will grow up to commit suicide as well.
However, many people who commit suicide are clinically depressed, and depression has a way of warping people’s perceptions, so I am not sure that I can really judge any particular case.
I think the poll stems from an inability to understand that unending depression can be like being fed into a (very slow) meat grinder. Eventually a person can become so detached from normality and happiness that life becomes more painful than non-life. In these cases, I think suicide is logical.
Oh, sorry. I think you misunderstood me. After reading your original post in this thread, I already guessed you had tried everything, so I wasn’t making any suggestions that you “get help.” My history is very similar to yours, and I just wanted to let you know I understand and empathize without any implication that there’s something you should be doing about it. My comment about finding some relief was referring to some moments of respite, something that makes you laugh, whatever.
Of course, there’s always that scientific breakthrough that’s just around the corner or, as my psychiatrist and I call it, “Magic!”
The problem with the words selfish and cowardly is that they are pejorative - judgemental. We don’t like selfish people. Selfish is bad, cowardice is bad ergo the suicide victim is bad. This makes everyone else feel better. I know this because I recently hear a man describe his dead sister-in-law as being all about herself - she was selfish to take her life.
This man is a decent person but has never experienced depression and does not have the remotest conception of the pain and depths of despair the woman was feeling.
When a person is at their lowest, there is no sense of self. They feel irrelevant. They cannot feel empathy for others - this is a classic sign of clinical depression. They actually believe that their family and friends, everybody, will be better off if they die. It is the right thing to do.
Also the psychic pain is so bad that death is the only escape. It is actually a logical step. I’m not saying that we should easily accept suicide but I hear the word selfish so often and know that it simply makes depressed people feel worse. Not only are you in a black void but all the healthy people around you imply by default that you are a bad person for having suicidal thoughts.
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I know when I tried it, ICU and all, I really couldn’t stand the thought of going forward. Thinking about my little boy only made me feel worse about myself. But now that time has passed and I’ve worked on being closer to him and (sadly) distant from the rest of the world, I don’t think I could do that again. Not unless he were much older.
When my cousin did it this summer, I was a little relieved for her. She spent years drinking, doing drugs, and being a miserable narcissistic mess. It’s like she spent 42 years killing herself and finally succeeded via intentional Rx overdose/drug mixing.
I answered selfish but not cowardly, however I would qualify that by saying that I consider that combination to be the usual case - not even almost always the case, just usually. It’s easy to come up with non-selfish scenarios - consider a million dollar life insurance policy combined with a well thought out plan to disguise a suicide as an accident. Cowardly scenarios depend very much on your definition of cowardly so any such scenario would probably not be cowardly to some people - I am thinking an example of a cowardly suicide might be committing suicide as an alternative to a couple of years in prison.
I can’t think of anything more unselfish and uncowardly than suicide.
The earth has finite resources that every lifeform needs. When a person gives up their share of their resources by voluntarily killing himself, he gives every other life on the planet a better chance of survival.
Think of the planet like a lifeboat. If it is full and capsizing, would you call the person who voluntarily jumps overboard a selfish coward?
Neither cowardly nor selfish.
I have been a suicide hotline volunteer for several years, speaking with hundreds of people in New Jersey who have been depressed and were considering suicide.
I wish that it didn’t need to happen, but there are so many different factors that folks just don’t understand.
Sometimes I just want to say to the person “believe me, hang in there a couple of years and things will be different” in a convincing way. This is especially true when speaking with teenagers, who just haven’t lived long enough to understand how many of their problems will smooth out and disappear in the rear view mirror in a few years.
On the flip side, there are a few people I have spoken with where I was left pretty much speechless. Their circumstances were so dour that they had me convinced that they really would be better off taking their life. Of course, I wouldn’t admit that to them, limiting myself to voicing encouraging thoughts. For example, what do you say to someone who has a debilitating health condition and has driven all of their friends and family away by their moaning and whining to the point that they have nobody in their lives—and they have no money, no job, and a life filled with pain. It’s hard to encourage someone in that state.
When someone is considering suicide, their mind is not necessarily processing rational thoughts.
I once spoke with a woman who was planning her suicide. We always ask about family members and other people around who need the person or who can help. She told me she had two children, 8 and 10 or so years old. I asked if they were part of the problem and she said “but I love my children!”
I then asked if she know how her death would hurt her children. She simply said “I know they’ll understand.”
What rational mother can say she loves her children in one breath and say they will understand her suicide in the other? That is just one example of the state of mind a suicidal person may have.
I don’t think you can generalize. I read this article this morning about Danny Chen. I don’t think he was a coward. I don’t think he was being selfish either. It’s just one story in a myriad of tales.
She also may have felt that her children would be “better off without her”, a common thing for depressed people to believe. They really begin to see themselves as a drain on everyone around them; a waste of space. She may have seen herself as such a bad person that her kids would be happier with her dead.
From the outside, that’s obvious nonsense, but inside the depression it can seem completely true.
I voted Other, because I don’t like the straitjacket of choices imposed by OP.
Most suicide is caused by what used to be termed manic-depression, and is now
known as bipolar disorder.
Those afflicted are innocent of moral failure; they are the victims of a cruel disease
which modern medicine can sometimes alleviate but not cure.
I believe that when people wag their fingers and say “tut-tut, don’t be judgemental”
that they are usually bleeding heart types who are trying to evade facing up to the
destructive effects of morally untenable behavior which should be strongly discouraged
if not suppressed.
However, bipolar disorder is a legitimate clinical diagnosis, and it is legitimate to
say that the poor souls who are afflicted are not responsible for their self-destructive behavior.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to move out of New Jersey?
I chose other because there are too many reasons that people commit suicide for them to be so narrowly categorized.
I was so tempted to post that.
Back on topic, could it be that suicide is a lazy act, some people might have been able to fix their problems if they put in a lot of boring effort to solve them.