My life is pretty crappy now. It has been since my divorce a year and a half ago. I have some health issues and lack of emotional connections to anyone so often I feel like there is not a lot of point to my life. I have even considered the steps I might take to just end my life. And one of the things I realized was if I were to end my life, I place a burden on others. Someone would find my body and that might be traumatic to them. Also friends who hear about it will feel a sense of loss even if we are no longer as close as we were in the past. So that leads me to believe that we have sort of an obligation to each other.
What are your opinions on this matter? Do we have an obligation to others to live?
It depends upon how many people know you. If you have seven kids and they depend on you for basic sustenence, you have a moral obligation to them. If you live alone, you can pull your trigger tomorrow and give the funeral home some business. Most people fall in between those extremes, however, giving them varying degrees of responsibility. It all comes down to you in the end. If you are living in pain and you want an end, feel free. Those who know you will understand. If you are just going through a rough spot and you have some friends think about why you want to die now. Often problems can be fixed in a less dramatic way. Debt consolidation services can work wonders even if you have lousy credit, and legal aid services, not to mention lawyers working pro bono, can really help in the wake of a divorce. Health problems can be treated even if you are dirt poor. Don’t be afraid to go on welfare if it’s the only thing you can get. As long as you keep going, nobody worthwhile is going to look down on you. Sorry about the long post. I just don’t want a member here, someone I might well debate with, ending himself because his life turned ‘crappy’ for a while. In conclusion, your biggest obligation is to yourself. I have an assignment for you: Watch a sunrise. Do you really want to lose that forever? Think about it. Think about it and get help somewhere.
Regardless of whether a person has this sort of obligation to others, each person has an obligation to themselves. I base this pretty much on existential grounds, the fact that we are fundamentally alone and we are known by how we respond to whatever life throws us. If you’re afraid of abandoning your friends, why would you want to abandon yourself?
FWIW,
It changes. One of the easiest ways to get depressed is to view life as an all or nothing (now or never, etc.) affair.
Course you have an obligation. We are all members of a society, no matter how apart from it you feel right now. It doesn’t matter if you have no living relatives and don’t know your neighbors, and few friends. I mean, who’s to say that you aren’t the guy who’s going to cure cancer in 10 years?
Also, on a more serious note, if you have thought about the steps to ending your life, you need to speak to someone. Electronic friends are only good to a certain degree. If you want to speak to someone and don’t know anybody, email me and I can try and find a good therapist in your area.
One of my friends killed herself a few years ago. She might have thought she had no obligation to live, but that’s not what I, her family, her friends, or anyone else who came to her funeral thought. Before I met her, I hadn’t had any real friends in a long time. I was even beginning to think I might be in love with her. Now that she’s gone, I’m back to having no real friends. But, hey, I’m used to it. No matter how depressing my life gets, though, I never considered ending it. Why? Because I’ve got things I want to do with my life, damn it, and I don’t intend to leave this Earth until they are done! My life matters to my family, to my God, and, more importantly, to me! It doesn’t matter whether you have an obligation to live for others or not; you have an obligation to live for yourself! Choose life; you’ll be glad you did.
No, I don’t think you have any responsibility to your friends and family here. They would be sad, but I don’t think they would have any right, or inclination, to be indignant – and, ultimately, it’s none of their business.
However, since you brought it up, I may as well throw in my two cents worth on this whole business of offing yourself in the first place. If your really determined to end your life, then do so metaphorically. Get out of bed one day, helth problems or no, liquidate everything, welsh on your debts (if you have any), and, I don’t know, hitchhike across America. Backpack Europe. Become a blackjack dealer at an Indian casino. Trade in everything about your old life for your new one; maybe you’ll have better luck with it this time around.
If, on the other hand, your “health problems” amount to: “I’ll be in stuck in bed, in horrible pain, for the next six months, then I’m goiing to die,” then forget everything I just said and figure out how you want to go.
Many people who attempt to shoot themselves in the head end up only horribly wounding themselves, spending the next 50 years in a vegetative state. Given those odds, I would say, “Yeah, you have an obligation to go on living.” It’s not fair for my tax dollars to go towards dealing with your failed suicide attempt.
I think Varlos’ idea of “metaphoric suicide” is the best one I’ve heard in a long time. Change of air, change of scenery, change of expectations. Might work.
I’m probably going to upset a couple of people here, but I feel I need to contribute to this discussion.
I have had to walk in on a few suicide scenes and attempted suicides during the course of my employment as an ambulance officer. This includes having to deal with distraught family and friends present at the scene, who are usually in a state of bewilderment, shock and denial.
I have come to the conclusion that suicide is an extremely selfish act. It may conveniently remove the “victim” from a world of despair, but it fairly dumps everone else around them into turmoil. Family and friends suddenly have a huge millstone of guilt placed upon them, the feeling that they should have been able to prevent what happened. This is in addition to coping with any personal or financial problems the victim had left unresolved.
It can also have repercussions on the emergency workers who are called to attend the scene. I have personally witnessed a colleague become distressed while attending a teenage suicide that resulted from a family argument. Sometimes we come across situations that hit too close to home, and it brings us undone emotionally.
The last one I attended was a someone I knew from high school. My reaction was that of anger towards him for being so selfish. His problems were not insurmountable, yet he has left behind a wife and a very young girl who will always ask why her Daddy did what he did. Can you imagine the emotional carnage unleashed in that family every time she asks where her Dad is? It cuts me up just thinking about it.
This is why you can’t simply opt out. There is always an emotional cost to someone who is left behind.
I’m with VarlosZ on this one. I’m not anti-suicide. I think there are most certainly times when it is the preferred option (you go, Dr. Kevorkian!). But as long you can’t change the fact that you are going to die sometime, why not give yourself the chance of a new one? You can always pick up the gun again in a year or so if it doesn’t work out. Look at it as starting a temp job. If you don’t like it after a while, you can always do something else. Sell everything, buy a camper, sit in the wilderness, go to music festivals, live for a while like you had a fatal disease and only a year to live. Then take stock again and do what feels right.
Yes. IMHO.
I’ve always thought that we all owe a duty to make the world a better place, or as I’ve heard it put, “to pump some power back into the grid.” There are many ways to do this, and you certainly can’t do it if your dead.
I’ve also been of the opinion that (barring some kind of debilitating terminal illness) that one is better off in the middle of the desert stark naked with nothing to his name than dead. I don’t beleive in an afterlife, and even if you do most religions look down on suicide. Being alive, as far as I know, and I haven’t seen credible evidence to the contrary, is the only game in town.
I appreciate everyone’s advice about carefully considering suicide, but that wasn’t really why I posted the OP. I mentioned the information just as background as to how I had come to consider the question.
The points expressed by edwino and VarlosZ seem to represent two of the most common answers I hear against suicide and yet ironically they are somewhat opposed to each other. edwino’s view is that suicide cheats society so it shouldn’t be done and VarlosZ’s view is that you should cheat society so you won’t do it.
My view is that I don’t care about cheating society in the manner expressed by edwino, but I don’t think I am comfortable blatantly cheating society in the manner Varlos suggested either. I feel people should carry their own weight and the weight of their decisions but in accepting the responsibilities of that weight, I think they also get to decide what is and isn’t best for them and have the right to act upon those decisions unless those decisions directly hurt others. So I don’t feel an obligation to society in general but to individuals in that society I am less sure. I no longer have any family and few friends so there really is no one who would be directly affected by my death, but I am sure there still are people who would be affected indirectly and it is to those who my concern is directed.
Derleth, as an aside, your point about a sunrise is a good one, but you have to realize that sometimes life becomes so painful emotionally or physically that a sunrise no longer brings any pleasure. And when what ails you can’t be fixed you start to wonder if the fight is worth fighting.
Do you have an obligation to live? As someone who has tried killing themselves several times and is a diagnosed manic depressive, let me take a stab (always go for full disclosure).
You do not have an obligation to society. You may have an obligation to your parents. You may have an obligation to a spouse. You definetely have an obligation to any kids you might have. The obligation to your parents goes like this. If they are expecting you to care for them when they get too old, and you off yourself, you are betraying your obligation. Of course if you are so messed up that you feel you won’t be able to carry that out, and instead be a burden on them, that pretty much nullifies that argument. Same goes with your kids.
Of course now I’m going to go and lecture you. Don’t kill yourself, it’s stupid. I’ve gone through periods of three years where it didn’t get better, it just got worse and worse. It’s finally getting better now. It can indeed get batter for anyone. It can be hard. But, I think it’s worth it.
Thanks for sharing that oldscratch. I am glad to see things on the upswing for you.
I guess I will explain some of what has me in a state where I would contemplate the ramifications of suicide.
My problem is largely physical with emotional repercussions because of the timing of the physical problems with other things going on in my life. Just about the time I divorced a year and a half ago I started developing a condition called peripheral neuropathy. The nerves in my feet are dying and I am in excruciating pain on a daily basis. I have been to 3 sets of specialists and no one has a clue why it is happening. Most often it is caused by diabetes or liver disease but I have been tested for and cleared of both. So they don’t know the cause, don’t have a treatment and there is nothing that relieves the pain.
After my divorce I left the state where I lived so I lost what family I had, my friends and soon after was saddled with this physical problem. The pain in my feet makes wearing shoes and even walking painful so I stay in most of the time. This means I don’t get out to meet anyone, am alone all the time and in pain, often excruciating almost constantly.
I haven’t given up, but I don’t know that my physical condition will improve. So far it just continues to get worse. So far I am still able to work. I have a high threshold of pain and just more or less will myself through the days, but it is very tiring and who knows how long I can continue to bear the pain.
A very close friend of mine has had very bad emotional problems, and several times my friend has expressed to me that there was no longer a will to live. These conversations ended up going for several hours. If my friend had committed suicide, I realized how wrecked my life would have been. I told my friend this, and the realization of how much it would destroy those that were close helped my friend to find the desire to stay alive and be with those who cared.
This being said, I believe people do in fact have an obligation to others to live, primarily to those that are of closest relationships. If someone does commit suicide, the people closest to that person could be horribly affected by it. That person would always give up the chance at happiness. Close friends have always been there for me when I was depressed/upset, and went out of their ways to try and help me find happiness. I’ve helped many of my friends find renewed happiness in a world they thought was devoid of it. If any of those friends had killed themselves, they would have taken a lot of other perople’s happiness with them, as well as their own chances for it.
The only thing that has kept me from getting my death-trap car up to 80 and wrenching the wheel to the right when I come up to a particular overpass is my grandparents. 3 of the 4 are in frail health and my death would kill them. Since my death will hasten their death I currently choose not to do this. Since it is well known in my family that I always wear a seatbelt they would wonder why I didn’t just this once. I have also chosen to see a professional head doctor because I was thisclose to ignoring my previous decision.
My situation is only slightly different from Wanderer’s, but as this is his thread I will not hijack.