My way, they wouldn’t have to!
I was all ready after reading the title to say a betrayal was impossible. But he deliberately didn’t tell his life partner, who perfectly well expected to have him longer. Barring any sort of suicidal depression that took him out of his own mind, that’s a betrayal of her trust.
The idea that he made things easier on them is just a bunch of bullshit. A death you know is coming and can prepare for is much easier to handle than a sudden one you can’t. And the idea that he alone gets to decide what is and isn’t a burden for his family? Fuck that shit.
He didn’t even try to learn to cope with the problem. The first sign of hardship, he just ended it all. And, yes, he was selfish enough to get his lawyer involved, instead of, you know, sending a message on his phone or something. (He could even schedule a message.)
The only way he gets a pass is if he was actually suicidally depressed. This isn’t impossible to believe, as this type of grief can do that to a person. But it’s really not there in the hypothetical–everything he did is presented as just logical thinking, not the result of mental anguish where he just couldn’t stand living anymore.
He wasn’t even remotely there yet.
If he’d ever get there. This isn’t constant pain. It’s not a lack of hearing, taste, or smell. This has all the signs of grief, not an unbeatable depression.
The vast majority of people who have these things happen to them learn to cope. Sure, they often want to end their lives, but they get over it.
Hell, I’ve been there. I had a lot of my life taken from me, but I learned to cope. I fucking hate this idea that you would just end your life because you just assume everything is going to be horrible.
The family of the latter learned that, though the end result is the same for us all, it’s better to endure as best as you can and rage against the dying of the light.
The family of the former learned that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and if things don’t work out exactly as you hoped they would then you should just give up and damn the consequences.
Suicide is always the coward’s way out. He betrays himself by refusing to face the life left ahead of him. He betrays his family by abandoning them without notice and by teaching them that it is better to die than to suffer. He betrays his civilization by cheapening human life and promoting the idea that the sick ought to kill themselves.
Life is better than death. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
Tell me this after spending a decade watching a loved one’s mind slowly disintegrate into nothingness, forcing their devoted spouse of decades to care for them at the expense of their own health (mental and physical) against said loved one’s express wishes that they not be kept alive in such a condition.
Accept the possibility that other people make decisions you do not agree with that are still not morally reprehensible.
Done. I am sorry for your loss. I regret the toll it took on you.
It was worth it.
I do not accept any possibility under which suicide is framed as being permissible.
I appreciate the first sentiment, but my loss is ongoing. Every single day. I can tell you that even when you love someone, there are circumstances under which death might be the preferred option. Who are you to make such decisions on behalf of another person? Yes, the loss of a loved one is painful - possibly even particularly so in the case of suicide, but I can tell you with a clear and honest conscience that watching a loved one die painfully, slowly, day by day, by inches with their very self being whittled inexorably away past all reclamation is also particularly painful. The pain is inescapable and inevitable and omnipresent. It spreads into every part of your life, like black ink in a glass of water. I refuse to fault some people for choosing to have their pain all at once, as opposed to spread over the span of years of suffering for everyone.
I don’t question his right to make that decision (though I would certainly have recommended discussing it with a therapist and/or clergyperson in order to clarify his thoughts around the issue), and under such extreme circumstances the decision seems reasonable. Seems like it would have been better for the mental well-being of his family to fake an accident, though.
If you’re against suicide in all cases, state that and then step back. You’ve dug in; you’re probably indoctrinated into a belief system, and I’m not arguing with such people.
Can suicide leave others with mental anguish? DUH. YES. Young person, torn apart by a girl, maybe dabbling in drugs and alcohol… depression in the background… and he kills himself. That happens. That’s a life of people wishing they could have stopped him and wishing they could get him back to shake him and ask “Why?!”
For some others facing suffering, anguish, pain, horror, humiliation, withering, etc… and the worst: Being an utter burden on others… then if a reasonable group of family and friends are left behind, they will act reasonably and move on reasonably.
Don’t overestimate the ability of others to ‘‘be strong’’ and watch you die slowly. Many times, you’re saving other people more grief and horror than yourself. Many people cannot ever get over watching a healthy person be shrunken to 70 lbs of sickly, dying, mentally incoherent protoplasm.
It’s amazing how UNSELFISH dying people can be.
I am against suicide in all cases except one - a person who has committed crimes worthy of death, who has a guilty conscience, is permitted to commit suicide if the government is unwilling or unable to execute them. I am not “indoctrinated” in any belief system that holds this as a moral requirement.
So sick people should kill themselves so that others don’t have to be grossed out by them? I’m not surprised. I’ve been saying all along that this is what the popular feeling is going to become over generations if we continue to normalize suicide - we’re going to shift from “people shouldn’t have to suffer if they don’t want to” to “people who insist on lingering on when they’re sick are being selfish”, and from there it’s going to be “we need laws to stop sick people from wasting our money by refusing to end it”.
I see you’ve already got the ball rolling on that transition.
Smapti: You don’t see me getting the ball rolling on any transition, so take your strawman argument elsewhere.
I clarified my position, and I offered real-world examples.
I said ‘your probably indoctrinated’ in general terms and generally to people who might be. You said you are not. FINE. Attack you I shall not.
Don’t put words in my mouth and spare me the strawman arguments.
I’ve given my opinion, gave examples, lived them and understand that life has grey areas. And I am comfortable with that.
Understand?
Why? On both points–always wrong except when the guilty want it but nobody will give it to them. I’m not planning on arguing the point with you, I just want to understand where you’re coming from.
This is not the argument being made at all. The argument being made is that there are situations and circumstances under which death is a blessing and your harsh blame of people who have made that decision is neither justified nor compassionate. I mean, congratulations on applying the slippery slope argument in such an aggressive fashion, but I’m just really not seeing much validity in your stance.
Why is it always wrong? Because there is no afterlife. Death is the complete and permanent destruction of everything a human being is, ever was, or ever could be. It is infinitely better to exist than not to exist, so human life should not be destroyed needlessly. Any person who would choose to destroy themselves is not thinking rationally and does not therefore have the capacity to make that decision.
In cases of criminals? Some crimes (like, for instance, murder) are such an egregious offense against mankind that death is the only appropriate punishment. Governments are often unwilling to recognize this fact; therefore, the criminal who kills himself when the state refuses to is merely administering justice.
This is an opinion, and you will find no shortage of people who see this as a blanket statement, which is one of the hardest positions to defend.
How do you feel about people who jumped to death from the World Trade Center? Rather than being roasted alive, with their lungs, flesh and eyeballs melting, they jumped to avoid an incomprehensible and torturous pain of being roasted alive.
So… they should have hung in there?
.