But that doesn’t make sense. How can someone who has no obligation (not just no legal obligation, but no moral/ethical obligation either) not to do X be considered selfish for doing X? If you think, for example, that it’s selfish not to help one’s child pay for college, or not to help one’s elderly parents with their financial struggles, doesn’t that mean you think that such help is a social obligation, even if it’s not a legal one? And in cases where we can agree no such obligation exists–say, a wealthy 50-year-old twice-divorced career woman wants her elderly mother who lives on social security checks to pay for said 50-year-old daughter’s third lavish wedding-- you wouldn’t call the mother selfish for refusing, no matter how much the daughter’s feelings were hurt. Right?
This seems to hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
Maybe it would help you to consider that a very important part of my ethics is to not hurt other people to the extent possible. I do, in fact, think people have (or should have) an ethical obligation not to engage in actions that hurt other people.
If you hurt someone else I see you as acting unethically. Is it that hard to understand? It’s wrong to go around hurting other people with your actions.
My experience with periodic suicidal ideation leads me to feel most people don’t have much control over it. For me it’s like a switch flips on in my brain where the biological imperative to die is as urgent as any other physiological need. With time and distance I can recognize that my death would have been tragic, because I am loved and generally find living to be worth the pain. But not everybody feels like this, and some are burdened to be miserable no matter what. At what point is a person’s tormented existence enough to justify their exit? Apparently if you’re suffering from cancer or something, it’s okay, but the commensurate amount of psychological pain is insufficient rationale. If you’ve been living in psychological hell for fifty years, that’s not a good enough reason. I don’t get that. I believe most suicides are tragic and should be avoided because most suicides are more like my situation - a life worth living with occasional dangerous forays into suicidality. But I also think it’s unfair to expect people to endure relentless agony for the entire duration of their lives in order to satisfy their loved ones. Then there are the people who are so miserable they dedicate their lives to spreading that misery around. The Brian Laundries of the world. Or people like my mother, who nearly killed herself when I was 14 and is just as miserable, and making others miserable, as she was that day the police came to try to help her. What do we make of them?
Well… no. Just having cancer is NOT a justification for suicide in my opinion. Having terminal, untreatable cancer with uncontrollable pain, yeah, that is arguably a justification for ending your own life.
Likewise, if a person with unrelenting clinical depression and suicidal impulses has actually tried the available treatment modalities and there is no realistic chance of improvement… yeah, maybe then, too.
But for someone like you, when the suicidal state is not permanent? No, I can’t agree with that. I feel we have an obligation to try to “flip” that “switch” back for you.
Do you think the assertion “suicide is not selfish!” encourages people to commit suicide and to value their lives less? Is that what you’re worried about, here?
Well, yes. Because that ethic does not correspond with your responses in this thread. The main reason you’ve been asked to stop is that what you are saying is extremely hurtful. People explained how your position would actually lead to more suicides. Your rebuttal is to say that your feelings matter more and to argue against positions no one has taken.
Suicidal people are not selfish. That is a hateful stereotype that has been used forever to attack anyone with any mental illness. The result has been that people don’t seek out help, because they don’t think they’re worthy of it.
Had you said something like “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. It has always seemed selfish to me because […]. Why do you think it isn’t selfish?”—that would make sense.
Honestly, the only reason I haven’t pitted you is that I presume that this topic is causing you to relive trauma and preventing you from realizing how horrible what you are saying actually is. I’ve been there, where anger means I can’t think straight. (And, yes, the lashing out tells me you are angry.)
But I do have an ethical duty to make it clear that everything you have said here is wrong, to try and undo the damage you are causing. I’ve also made it clear that I will always defend the mentally ill. I can easily see a suicidally depressed person saying you are right, not having the ability to defend themselves due to their illness. And I will defend them against those who want to call them selfish.
If I were to call you selfish, I know you’d see it as an insult.
It’s possible that they would. It does seem more likely that what would bring them comfort would be a trial’s very public fundamental statement to the world: that murdering Gabby was not ‘tragic’ or ‘romantic’ or ‘Brian’s and Gabby’s personal business’—no, murdering Gabby was wrong. It was wrong in the sight of the law and it was an act that calls for accountability under the law.
Even more helpful to Gabby’s family might have been a public declaration by Brian that he knew that what he did was wrong. He denied that, too, to them.
That’s right. I’ve appreciated your posts on this subject. I agree that committing suicide should not be romanticized or valorized. In some cases–the existence of uncontrollable, persistent pain, for example–suicide is understandable.
But a cultural tendency to romanticize both murder/suicide and suicide is unfortunate and harmful. We see the romanticizing of suicide in movies such as The Hours (as well as in the novel it’s based on)–the message of the story is that some people are simply too sensitive and noble for this world, and their best course is to kill themselves. I find this message to be both pernicious and regrettable.
And of course the romanticizing and excusing of murder/suicide is everywhere in our culture. “It’s their business” tends to be the excuse; “at least he paid for his act” greets the suicide, who is thereby excused for having committed the slaughter of his (usually) partner.
All possible support should be given to those who feel impelled to suicide: medical, psychological, social—all of it. But it’s important to refrain from telling them that ‘they are doing it to spare others’ and other similar messaging seen in works like The Hours. Telling people that suicide proves they are noble or sensitive or artistic or special, and should be embraced and lauded and praised for killing themselves, is bad and wrong.
A better message: we see that you are in pain and we want to help (for example).
Telling me my feelings are wrong is also extremely hurtful. Why are my feelings valued less than someone else’s?
They explained that was their belief. Please provide proof that that is a fact before telling me I can no longer express MY belief.
Yes, they are.
Um… no, it hasn’t.
One of the problems of suicidal people is that they don’t seem to think they are worthy of anything. If you tell them they’re not selfish that won’t stop them from trying to kill themselves because they still (apparently) don’t think themselves worthy of life. Or of being helped.
I did not intend to hurt anyone by speaking my truth. No one seems to care about the pain it causes me to be told my feelings are wrong, or the pain it causes me when people insist I change my feelings to match those that they approve of. I am not going to lie to you and offer you an apology for something for which I am not sorry.
Please provide your educational professional credentials for “diagnosing” my mental state. I am not “lashing out”. I am expressing my sincerely held belief that the vast majority of people either attempting or succeeding at suicide are committing a hurtful act that will harm not only themselves but others.
Again - what are your educational and professional credentials to make such a statement? Are you yourself a psychologist? Psychiatrist?
My, my, my - you are quite the mindreader.
If a person’s selfishness harms no one else I do not view it as unethical and I frankly do not care. If it does harm someone else I do care and I do see it as unethical.
Frankly, I’ve been called far worse than “selfish” in my life. It’s a pretty minor insult as these things go, really. I don’t feel compelled to change my thoughts to conform to those of the majority - if what you believe even IS in the majority, which as far as I’m concerned is not proven.
Stating my belief HERE is not attacking anyone. If someone randomly encounters my posts I am not responsible if they then decide to harm themselves as a result of words that were not directed at them that they randomly encountered.
It is as if a person for some reason finds the color red traumatizing and scary. One day I go outside wearing a bright red scarf. The person then randomly encounters me on the street and has a flashback to whatever trauma caused their issue with the color red. How am I then responsible for that? I had no notion that I would encounter this person, or how it would affect them. Had I known, I would have worn a different color. But you’re saying that because I might randomly encounter such a person I must NEVER wear the color red ever again.
When I state my viewpoint you continually try to shut me down - you tell me I’m wrong, that I need to “admit” my “error”, that I must change my personal thoughts and feelings to accommodate YOUR viewpoint, that I must NEVER speak my true feelings or my mind because I just might, maybe, possibly have my words encountered by someone vulnerable.
You are attempting to coerce my thinking, to forcibly change my own interior thoughts, and I find that absolutely abhorrent and unethical. Coercing another to change their beliefs is a deep violation of my ethics, and you are repeatedly subjecting me to this.
I am not telling anyone else to agree with me. If you don’t think suicide is a selfish act I think you’re wrong but I’m not telling you to change your beliefs, your thoughts, or demanding you apologize to me. But YOU, @BigT, are doing that to me. How is that right or ethical in your view?
Yes, that is very hard to understand. And I don’t think it would stand up to scrutiny.
Was the boyfriend who dumped me and broke my heart acting unethically? What about the guy who asked me out and I turned down; was that unethical of me? Is our only ethical course to marry the first person who expresses an interest in us? And what about once we’re married; can we turn down new romances then, even if it hurts their feelings, or is it more ethical to cheat on our spouses so we don’t have to hurt anyone ever by rejecting them?
I hurt my mother by deciding not to have children. I’m her only child, so this means she’ll never have the grandchildren she wants so much. She would be a wonderful grandmother, too, just like she’s a wonderful mother who has never given me grief over this. But is my choice to remain childless unethical?
Can you honestly say that every action that hurts another person is unethical? Can you really not see that there is a middle ground of actions that hurt others, but that the person nevertheless has the right to choose, and that this choice is not unethical or selfish? In fact, it is selfish to expect people to give up things they have a right to, just to avoid causing you pain?
It takes a special kind of self-centeredness to accuse a suicide victim of “selfishness” for seemingly not sufficiently considering outsiders’ feelings before ending their life.
And yes, I have had immediate family members and 2nd degree members who have ended their lives. NEVER did I consider blaming them for making me feel bad. Because that’s not how mental illness works. It’s not about me. The world doesn’t revolve around me. Some people seem to have difficulty with this concept.
Do you have issues with eating? I don’t mean allergies, I mean your gut not working right anymore. To the point where a few bites of the wrong food leaves you shaking in pain for the rest of the day? To the point where you almost blew off appendicitis because that kind of pain is “normal” for you, the only reason you went to the ER is because the after hours doctor talked you in to going? Even though the pain was making you yelp you were resigned to it? Because although you DO avoid the foods that you cannot digest anymore some of them are so ubiquitous that you do end up eating them more often than you’d like? Do you have constant pain all over your body? I mean level 7 out of 10 pain as a given. Are you so used to pain that when you do go to the ER, and call your pain a 9 but explain that the spikes are leaving you stunned so the doctor rates it at 10, and later you realize that it was a 10 after the fact? And the conditions that might be causing all of this have no cure but you have no diagnosis yet? If you cannot honestly say yes to all of this, then tend to the log in your own eye! My shoes do not fit you, you are not on this path! You are not God and you have no right to judge me or guess at any motivation I might have for any action I might take! For the record I’m stubborn and I’m here til the last bitter breath. But it does not mean there haven’t been times I’ve just wanted to make the pain stop. To just get to sleep, and stay asleep because maybe then I won’t register the pain. Unless you also accept terrible appendicitis level pain as merely your lot in life, you have no way to grasp my life, and no authority to even consider judging it!
Yeah, I’ve been diagnosed with more than one chronic health condition and have at least one probable autoimmune disease that has not been diagnosed yet. I still laugh, and honestly smile. (Though I am so tired of feeling I have to put on a brave face so I don’t have to wind up comforting people once they realize how bad it is for me. It’s easier to smile and not grimace each time the pain spikes though it drains my energy.) Even though I’m in agony. But even with the smile there are times I would do many things just to make the pain stop. Just so I could remember what it feels like. Not even opiates clear kill my pain. The level 10 pain was brought down to a 6 by Dilaudid. I can’t even remember the last day I was at a 6 but my pain journal would tell me. What scares me is I’ve been having more level 8 pain days. I have Tylenol extra strength for pain at home. I cannot take NSAIDs.
Many people who are suicidal will simply claim that the people who try to guilt them into staying alive by calling them selfish are in fact the ones being selfish. Maybe everyone is being selfish? Is it altruistic to demand someone stay alive for their benefit?
Some people who kill themselves probably do it due to them being selfish. Most suicides are probably not (very) altruistic. One thing I will say though is that saying suicidal people are selfish and making it clear to those around that you judge most of them as bad people because of it (what it seems to me you are doing) will I think make it less likely those close to you will talk about their suicidal thoughts to you. If you care about that it might be something to think about.
Of course you might believe that openly describing suicidal people as selfish will make them less likely to kill themselves. I’m not sure about that. There is a reason an increasing amount of jurisdictions have decriminalized suicide. The same logic applies I think.
I’m pretty sure it’s very uncontroversial that past suicide attempts are the number one predictor of subsequent ones. If you have a source that suggests otherwise I would love to see it.
Also consistent with previous research […], in the present study the presence of a past attempt was significantly and uniquely predictive of a future attempt.