Do doomsayers inherently encourage suicide or other extreme action?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

First, clarifying that I am NOT considering or encouraging any of the acts I’m about to mention. I’m taking extreme examples to demonstrate the instinctive emotional angle I’m taking about.

So there are plenty of people who see doom on the horizon: “we’re screwed” when it comes to climate change, “American democracy is over.”

I react strongly on an emotional level to such proclamations, and I think I’ve realized why: to me, whether intentional or not, such messages inherently encourage hopelessness, which in turn inherently encourage extreme measures like suicide or smothering your kids in their sleep. After all, if it’s all over, why do anything? Why is it not rational to just swallow a bunch of pills or shoot up RNC headquarters or telling your daughter how wrong she was for being pregnant? And more importantly, why should I not assume that the doomsayers themselves think that way?

I’ve discussed this from another angle before, but this is different enough, IMO. I’m pretty sure my view isn’t, ah, mainstream, and yes, this is something I have discussed with professionals, but this has been weighing on me enough to ask.

2

It isn’t easy to not project you way of thinking onto someone else and instead suppose that they might think in a different way than you. For instance, it would never have occured to me to that “We’re doomed” should be assumed to mean “We’re doomed so you should commit suicide.” That’s a whole lot of projection on your part, I think.

3

Don’t I have enough in common with Magda Geobbels as it is?

4

Doomsday cults are not a new thing at all and, often, they result in the deaths of their followers via suicide or some other means (blaze of glory). Yes, they usually push for extreme action.

5

You can be very concerned about things going to crap and never even think of suicide.
The concern can help you prepare to help yourself and/or keep you safe.

I don’t mean to go out and dig an underground shelter and packing it with silly things like zombie knives and duct tape.

Nothing wrong in stocking up on non-perishables and keeping family close.

Smart moves like recycling and curtailing frivolous behaviors only serve to help everyone.

Suicide? No, I don’t think that’s ever a good plan.

If you feel suicidal, call someone. Tell someone. PM me.

6

You’re quite right, because I can’t think of many ways that “the world will burn to a crisp within your child’s lifetime” and “American democracy is dead” could inspire anything but despair.

Yes, but I’m not talking about “very concerned.” I’m talking about outright saying, often repeatedly and loudly, that it’s all over.

7

I might be unclear on the question.

Are you asking if there are singular people out there advocating that the end is nigh and people should kill themselves or engage in some destructive action?

Or are you asking about despair a person might have about the future which leads them to suicide or some extreme action?

Or is it groups you are asking about? Liberals/conservatives/whoever telling you the world is in a crisis and it will all end soon unless you vote for them and send them money?

8

Apocalyptic ravings have been going on since we were tree climbers. Ever been to the monkey house at a zoo?

Raving about the tiger walking by is probably in our DNA.
I don’t think it’s new.

1000s of “doomsday is nigh” religious types have been on soapboxes since, I don’t know, forever.

There are always gonna be those who believe it in their core. Believe the crack-pot. Drink koolaide and die.

9

TLDR: The OP’s mindset is prone to catastrophizing. AGW and the almost certain coming of RW authoritarian racist nationalist government to the USA for the next century plus is not good news. Whether those things mature in 2024, 2028, or 2128, mature they will.

But millions upon millions of people will live through those setbacks successfully, growing up, raising families, loving each other, and living out their term of years on Earth.

“Despair” is for quitters. Don’t be a quitter. Just like 95+% of the rest of humanity.


Long form:

IMO @Darren_Garrison nailed it.

@Leaper’s comeback here is a very key insight into what’s going on in his head. Which is not a unique head; there is some small minority fraction of the populace that reacts just as he does.

Conversely I can’t think of any way that

“the world will burn to a crisp within your child’s lifetime” and “American democracy is dead”

could inspire anything remotely close to despair. In me.

In my view those outcomes are like the daily local weather.

It’s gonna happen, there’s not a god damned thing I can do about it in the main, and I’m gonna live through it. I certainly have a preference about the daily local weather, and in these cases I’m not going to get my preference.

As such, I’m going to live through this crap with less happiness and convenience than I might prefer, but that’s the luck of the draw. Life sucks some and is glorious some and then you die. As Beck said, that’s been true since we were tree-climbers.

I have zero scruples against suicide. In my ideal world it would be legal and stigma-free for anyone anytime to kill themselves for any reason or no reason. IMO society has exactly zero legit interest in “managing” other’s desires to kill themselves. Be those desires “well-founded” or not in anyone else’s opinion. Not you? Butt out. Period.

And, facing debilitating illness or infirmity I’d sure like to have the option to off myself, with active physical help if necessary. The way we treat our pets via euthanasia mostly on demand is far superior both morally and practically to how we treat our parents or our spouses when it comes end of life.

But that sure does not mean that my psychological reaction to AGW, or the first American Reich will be to say that being me being dead is to my benefit.


Further, the “world burning to a crisp” is ridiculous over-the-top hyperbole versus the very dire reality of AGW’s consequences over the next e.g. 80 years of a newborn’s life. Or even over the next millennium.

If you are imagining a world uninhabitable by humans, or one unable to sustain modern technological society, you are dead wrong. It’ll be vastly more inconvenient, violent, and costly than life is now. But WAG 80% of the current population of humans will still be alive 100 or 200 years from now.


As to the larger question of whether folks advocating despair are hoping to encourage despair and even suicide in others, I will argue “no” for most of them, but emphatically “yes” for some small percentage of them.

The vast majority of catastrophizing depressive personalities just want to crawl in their hole and be miserable inside their head. Recognizing that by “want” I don’t neccessarily mean “voluntarily desire”; rather something closer to “the mental state that produces the least psychological discomfort”. As my brother once wisely observed:

People do not do what makes them happy. By and large they do what avoids the most short term pain. For whatever they think of as “pain”.

Those folks are the majority of depresssives / despairers albeit a small minority of all humans. External crises just pile onto their individual default mental state of personal despair over their life, and, well, everything else. These folks at the limit become doomsday cult followers.

Conversely there are some psychos who figure out it’s fun to lead the depressive catastrophizers off a cliff and watch them die. These are the doomsday cult leaders. They might themselves sincerely believe in their doomsday prophesy. Or they might not. But in either case their reaction is not to crawl in their head and be despairing. Their reaction is to go out in the world and vandalize as many other lives as they can.

In that they’re no different than the many rural “preppers” laying in vast supplies of ammo and positively salivating at the possibility of mowing down hordes of former city dwellers after society collapses due to [whatever their favorite trigger is].

They want to watch it burn for the sheer anarchic thrill. And they’ll be happy to help lead unfortunates like our OP right onto their designated pyre.


Despair is a choice. Depression isn’t a choice; if you’re wired that way you’re wired that way. But untreated depression is a choice here in the early 21st century. That wasn’t true for much of human history but it is true now.

10

Or you can realize that the cup is already broken and has always been broken.

https://www.stevenkharper.com/thiscupIsalreadybroken.html

11

Doom porn is appealing to those who get a charge out of wringing their hands and wailing on the Internet about the hopelessness of it all.

Rather than encouraging extreme action, it’s an excuse to be inactive. Noisy, but essentially doing nothing constructive.

12

If you know you’ve inherited a predilection for alcoholism, it’s smart not to drink.

If you know you’re allergic to a food, it’s smart to avoid that food.

If you know that too much attention paid to current events or the state of the world drives you to despair, depression, or suicidal ideation, it’s far better to spend your time on more positive endeavors and to consider asking for professional help.

Periodically, somebody starts a thread about their need to back away from SDMB or social media in general.

Taking a news fast – similarly – can sometimes pay tremendous dividends. Realizing that you need such a break can be difficult, but it truly is the first step.

That’s the generic “you,” FWIW.

I’m still trying to decide if it’s about to rain. My plan is to take the dog for a walk. It grounds me, pulls me back toward the present, and brings me great joy. And movement is good for mind, body, and soul.

We all need something analogous to that in our lives.

13

I have a friend who likes to be a doomsayer. I think it’s because she likes to exaggerate things in general, and negative things especially. I don’t think she really believes that disaster is on our doorstep, this is an expression of her mental framework, which is that most things go wrong (for her) most of the time, and the few positive things that happen aren’t enough to make up for the bad things.

Lots of people like the be the first one to “call” a disaster, and are happy to point out “I told you so” on the rare occasions when they turn out to be right. Lots of people are worriers who always assume the worst is about to happen.

I don’t think any of these types of people are especially desperate or suicidal. I think this is just a widely occurring frame of mind that we all recognize in some people we know.

14

To be fair, the news lately has been more grim than usual. And not the regular glurge you get on the nightly news of, “If it bleeds, it leads” kind of journalism. Anyone paying any attention can see some unusually dark clouds on the horizon.

That said, it is hardly the first time in history such things have happened. It is common over the span of history. And people muddled through. While those times are scary and dangerous and nothing anyone looks forward to (except, maybe, some very few) humans tend to get better and usually better times will come again even if it takes decades or longer.

15

Zactly. e.g. It sucked to live in Europe during the Black Death or WW-II. Even though one hell of a lot of folks there then survived whichever era semi- or completely unscathed.

As a child in the late baby boom era I came to believe that a trouble-free nearly effortless life was my birthright. By the time I was 18 I’d realized intellectually that that was BS and always had been, but the idea was still emotionally resonant. By the time I was 30 I was past all that silliness.

The vast majority of people on Earth today have it better than kings of 300 years ago. Yet somehow all those the masses being trod upon by those few kings lived on to eventually produce us.

Humanity has, can, and will survive calamity and hardship. Everyone gets at least a taste along their path through life.

But if somebody wants to panic early and jump ship now by killing themselves, feel free. Not my monkeys; not my circus.

16

Or watching/reading news. If I were someone that never read/watched news in any way, there have been almost no events in the wider world that happened during my lifetime that I would have noticed having any effect on my life whatsoever. In a newsless bubble the Covid lockdown would likely by a wide margin be the most noticeable event in my 52 years, but none of the wars big or small, none of the presidents, Democrat or Republican, not even 9/11 would have likely been even a blip on my radar.

17

Some good points I’m musing over. I guess it all comes down to one question I’ve asked myself a lot: when someone says (especially repeatedly) things like “American democracy is over” or “if Trump wins, he’ll start rounding people like US up” and he does win, what does the speaker want me to do and feel in response?

18

Maybe they are just stating what they see as a fact, with your feelings being irrelevant to that statement of fact? Maybe they don’t expect you to do anything? Maybe what any individual chooses to do with information they are given is up to that individual and not the responsibility of the other person? Maybe they just aren’t that into you?

19

And those of us of a certain age would recall, the idea that the world could burn to a crisp… not in a generation’s lifetime. In 40 minutes.
Yet hasn’t this Age been a time of amazing creativity and achievement?

But yeah, some of us in our privilege sometimes lose sight that safe and protected is not the natural condition. Some people despair about “the end of America”. Today there are still Americans who grew up seeing that “America” meant they were deliberately and explicitly excluded from democracy, freedom and Protection Under Law. They may be able to tell us a thing or two about not just surviving but rising in such conditions.

20

They are selling you on the news(and their ad content).

They, of course want you to watch more. Boost their ratings, get your thumbs up clicks.
Avoid it if bothers you so much. Get a good newspaper. The news is easier to take if you read it instead of listening to breathless talking heads and CNNs incessant Breaking News banner.