Inspired by the Hunter thompson threads. Like Kurt Cobain a few years ago, it seems a number of people feel the need to tell everybody how “cowardly” it is for an individual to end his own life.
My question is whether this sentiment has any real merit. What makes it “cowardly?” Cowardice implies fear. What is the individual supposedly afraid of?
Does a person have some sort of moral obligation to stay alive if he doesn’t want to? Why?
I’m trying to understand why suicide is supposed mean anything about “character.” Why does staying alive make you a better person than not staying alive?
Also, is it fair to make moral judgements about people who make these decisions because of mental illness or depression? Can we say that they’re making a decision which is truly lucid and informed at the time they make it?
I’m not saying suicide can never be an act of cowardice. There are instances where people do it to avoid consequences for criminal actions, for instance. But is any act of suicide always and necessarily an act of cowardice?
I think it depends on the circumstances. If a person kills himself because he is afraid to face something, I suppose that would be cowardly.
If a person does it because he feels hopeless towards life, and sees no reasonable chance to be happy, I don’t really see fear being an issue so ‘cowardly’ wouldn’t apply.
I must say, I’ve also found such a viewpoint puzzling. “Cowardice” describes an action in which one seeks to avoid harm to oneself in the face of some kind of threat. Sitting there with one’s finger on the trigger, adrenalin pumping, seems to me to be far more about overriding one’s cowardice and going ahead and doing it.
“Selfishness” I could perhaps understand (and even then, if someone had made a conscious decision to not exist, surely I’m the selfish one if I insist tht they continue existing for my piece of mind?), but “cowardice”? Those who use such a word often seem to me like they do so because suicide simply does not ‘fit’ into their worldview.
Dunno about ‘cowardly’, but it can certainly be quite a selfish act, particularly when there is a dependant family, but it needn’t necessarily be either cowardly selfish; there is probably quite a range of circumstances in which it would be courageous or noble.
I posted this in the Pit thread that motivated Dio to open this thread, but will add it here:
Speaking as one who has suffered through depression deep enough to have me contemplating throwing myself under a speeding bus, I can tell you that rational assessment of one’s circumstances is beyond one’s reach at such times.
I’m one of the fortunate ones whose depression did respond to medication, in fact to the first one I went on. The difference in perception, in capability of rational thinking, was profound. I can look back now and understand clearly how distorted my thinking was then. But when I was shrouded in that suffocating darkness, I could see no way out, and only a few tenuous lifelines to reality kept me alive.
I would never pass judgment on another person’s suicide.
Further comment: Even in cases of what appears to be rational suicide – in the face of incurable disease, overwhelming shame at exposure of criminal or immoral conduct, and so forth – who is to say that the decision to die rather than face the consequences is cowardice? Or a careful assessment of consequences leading to a choice of the lesser of two evils? Or even the product of an underlying depression that the sufferer had successfully hidden from the world, but under such stress could no longer hold at bay?
A mate of mine commited suicide last year, apparantly over a girl he had been seeing for a few months. I couldn’t see the point in it but I couldn’t say if it was cowardly or not. He left behind so many devastated people afterwards I could say it was selfish certainly, but I don’t know about cowardly.
I wrote this to ex-girlfriend of a kid I know who recently took his own life:
If a person were trapped in a burning car, knowing that they were going to die an excruciating death, would anybody consider them a coward (or selfish) for attempting to end their life as quickly and painlessly as possible?
Were the 9/11 WTC jumpers cowards?
Emotionally, that’s the kind of choice that many people who commit suicide due to mental illness face. The fact that some people make judgements about the character of the victim based on the act is a testament to the trivialization of mental health issues in our culture. It’s far easier for most people to come to terms with taking the “easy” way out when staring a gruesome death in the face.
I’m not saying there aren’t people who do it (or attempt it) for reasons of control, melodrama, or whatever. But IMHO, it’s far more selfish to demand that a person in pain suffer through the daily agony of their own existence.
Cowardice is not really what I would use to call it, but Selfishness definitely.
I think sometimes those who are contemplating suicide are only thinking about ending their pain, and fail to realize they can’t come back after things after things have blown over. Other times I think the people don’t realize how those of us who are left will be effected. Sometimes it’s vengeful and they are trying to make someone else feel their pain, especially those who have caused that pain to them.
I haven’t personally KNOWN anyone who has taken their life, although my husband has lost two friends this way. It was hard on him and there was nothing he could do. The guilt that’s associated to those who are left behind to pick up the pieces can be very overwhelming and makes the grieving more difficult.
I’m not one to tell someone how they want to end their lives. I just think if that’s the road you choose maybe (and I know during that mental state this can’t happen) if you let those who love you know it’s not their fault, but on the other side if you let people know they might have you committed and that might not be what you want. There’s just no simple way to solve this.
Suicide is so tragic and so sad. When I had suicidal thoughts, I wasn’t thinking of those who would be left with questions and guilt, I just wanted my suffering to end. I also did not have a healthy grasp on what it meant, that I woud NEVER come back. But now that I’ve realized that I enjoy life, the good and the bad, I have learned to cope better. I think those who have severe depression or another mental handicap may not be able to overcome their demons so easily, so maybe suicide is their only option.
I don’t know what has to be done to help people cope with this, many times the reasons and emotion behind it is so tangled and confusing.
Anyways, Hunter was a talented man. I still love “Fear and Loathing” and find new things any time I revisit it. It’s tragic and sad, but he seemed to be very troubled, maybe he just couldn’t escape his despair. Sometimes great artists and intellects (of which he was both) are tortured by their own minds and that seems to be magnified as they get older. A very, very sad bit of news.
I used to think suicide was noble and romantic because of Hemmingway, etc. I don’t think that anymore. I think that the greater nobility is in sticking around and surviving. I have been very depressed in the past and contemplated suicide many times. But I didn’t do it, and perhaps that’s what colors my feelings about the act now.
Cobain’s suicide was a big thing for me. For a long time, I thought he essentially did it out of cowardace. He was a person whose whole identity had been built up on being an outsider, and suddenly everyone loved him and he couldn’t take it. I thought he owed it to us to stay alive and be our leader (by “our” I mean “rock and rollers”), or at least owed it to Francis Bean Cobain. But I know he was a junkie (something else I used to think was noble and romantic until I saw it up close and personal) and had a sickness that caused him constant pain. I listened to In Utero on a long car trip on Thursday and realized it was (to use a totally appropriate cliche’) a big cry for help, although at the time it came out it seemed like a dead-on expression of the rage and beauty in my own life. So, Kurt was sick, as surely as if he’d had the Black Plague or something. Was he selfish? I don’t know anymore.
I think in some cases, suicide is necessary and right, but usually if you get to that point you’ve fucked up big time and passed up many opportunities to avoid it. My classic example of this is Antony and Cleopatra. It was time for them to check out, but they made many mistakes to get to that point.
Hunter’s suicide is hard, too, but less so. He was an old man, and sick. Many are speculating he had gotten bad news from a doctor. I think he probably took the Hemingway thing too seriously. But I don’t really feel qualified to criticize him or call him a coward. He was twice the writer I’ll ever be, and if the good Doctor thought it was time to check out, then it was.
When you’re young, you think maybe you’ll learn more about life, increase in wisdom, and have a greater understanding when you get older. My experience is quite the opposite. Things that seemed very certain to me when I was younger are now tinged with qualification, uncertainty, and nuance. Maybe that’s what wisdom is.
Suicide is cowardly when you make somebody else do it for you. There is nothing more loathesome to me than suicide by cop. I have problems with cops as much as the next raging hippy radical guy, but most of them (at least 75%) are just guys doing a tough job. If you’re going to take your own life, take some fucking responsibility for it. Punch your own ticket, don’t make some poor schmuck do it for you and have to live with it for the rest of his life.
It’s difficult to say, mostly because it’s so different for everybody. I think you have to look at exactly what makes a person get to the point where nothing is worth living for anymore, where they simply can’t go on, before you make any judgments on whether it was cowardly or selfish.
It’s like the old proverb: walk a mile in a man’s shoes…
I think it’s an interesting concept. Consider Objectivism, for example. Ayn Rand would have probably said that the only important thing is one’s own happiness. Forget loved ones-- you need to think for yourself first. Her objection would be that many instances of suicide are wholly irrational and thus not in one’s best interest.
I don’t agree with her on everything, but I think I would go with that line of reasoning in this circumstance. “Cowardice” is such an inappropriate word.
Like EddyteddyFreddy, I too had a nasty bout with clinical depression (due to bipolar II).
My thinking, however, was very rational.
My mental pain was extreme. Not due to sadness or loss or anything like that, but due to a feeling of hopelessness due to chemical imbalance. Until you experience it, it’s difficult to understand how incredibly painful it can be.
This was my thought as I drove home one day:
“This pain is so intense I can’t shake it, I’ve tried everything, suicide might be an option”
Fortunately my next thought was “I need help”
In cases like mine and Eddy’s:
Cowardly? Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with fear, everything to do with pain.
Selfish? Probably. But understandable.
My thoughts on this -
One’s life is one’s own. The voluntary ending of it should be in the hands of the possessor. No moral judgement attaches to suicide itself. There is no cowardice nor is there selfishness other than the inherent selfishness that arises from our solipsistic nature.
Having said that, it is possible that there may arise ancillary moral complications from e.g. the material suffering of dependents. So thereto some charge of selfishness may be attached. But it is my materialistic view that after someone has passed away, all chance at moral judgement is so much pissing in the wind. The subject is gone, beyond recall or rebuke. Any moral evaluation is done solely for the benefit of those still living, a dumb-show for the quick, a futile exercise.
I cast no ethical or moral judgement on suicide. “The power to destroy a thing is the power to control that thing”. I see it as the ultimate expression of control…sometimes the last a person may have.
Like most things in life there is no simple answer… it could be seen as cowardly in some instances and in others not. I certainly do feel that sticking around as nasty as life can be is more “brave” than a quick exit. At least you should try doing something different or change your life first… just going on the same way won’t solve anything nor will suicide.
Overall I think society needs to demonize suicide… and in a way that is good… after all you don’t want people viewing suicide as something normal IMO. Especially teenagers.
Just a further thought (this isn’t a reply to Rashak ):
The whole “brave”/“coward” rhetoric smacks to me of misplaced machismo. Life isn’t a battlefield or a bullfight. You are not Ernest Hemingway. In the end, even Hemingway wasn’t that man. Life just is, and to treat it like a game of winners and losers, or of heros and cowards, is to diminish it slightly.
I think it’s a mistake to accept that those are the appropriate descriptors in the first place, and then argue that “suicide isn’t cowardly, in fact it’s brave”. Better to trash the notion that such words apply at all, in my opinion.
Following this principle, I shouldn’t, for instance, date a good-looking girl or have a good meal because it could make other people jealous. On the other hand, would also be immoral for me to be lonesome and poor because it will make my friends feel bad.
Should I do everything with other people’s hapiness in my mind? Should I marry only a woman of my mother’s choosing in order not to piss off mom, or at the contrary any woman who wants to marry me, even if I’m not attracted to her, because otherwise she could be sad?
If I’m not required to do/ not to do something just because it makes other people feel bad, why should it be any different re. my desire to end my own life?
Personnally, I don’t think that commiting suicide (by the way I don’t like the english “commiting suicide” . It makes it looks like a crime) is a cowardly act. At all. It’s a choice, generally made for very bad reasons (depressed people in particular), and sometimes for very understandable, or even at times noble reasons.
I can’t see any reason why people should commit to a life of suffering just to avoid that others could feel bad. Does it works te other way around? If for instance I’ve some terminal nasty disease and have no intent to off myself, should I nevertheless kill myself if my relatives are feeling bad because I suffer so much and would be relieved if I died quickly?
I have a friend who recently was very depressed (I also had two friends, one very close, who actually commited suicide, but none had dependants) and entertained serious thoughts about suicide. He has a (wonderful) little 4 yo daughter.
What did he think about his daughter? He felt so bad about himself that he thought that she only could live a happier life if she got rid of a father like him (and apart precisely from the fact he was depressed, there was nothing wrong with his parenting skills and he love his daughter. So, it’s not like it was an objectively true statement). Of course his daughter would have been devastated, but he wasn’t able to realize it.
I would say that in his mind, regarding his relatives, he probably felt it would have been an unselfish act.
Dammit everyone’s so agreed on this issue. Well I’ll take the contrarian view.
Suicide is wrong. It’s bad. You may need context to know if it’s the lesser of two evils, but it certainly is an evil. It’s not just a “choice” without any moral consequences. Society and your family spends decades investing in you, educating you, raising you, socializing you, feeding you, housing you, sheltering you and just plain humoring you. That’s a whole lot of effort, love, care and resources invested in creating an adult theoretically capable of contributing something back. Plus almost everyone has created bonds and attachments with others who rely on them in one way or another. If you sever those ties by killing yourself it’s they who are going to feel the pain, not you.
I think some of you (cough clairobscur cough) are confusing issues of freedom with issues of morality. We can’t force people to use their lives productively; we can’t force them to be healthy and maybe we can’t force them to stay alive. But we can certainly comment on whether what they choose to do is right or wrong. I mean my God if people can moralize to me about smoking which they do every day (and they’re absolutely right) then they certainly can moralize about suicide.
If they truly are in overwhelming pain and they honestly believe it’s not going to end then slamming a person who commits suicide is like slamming a terminally ill person who chose to end life-support. It’s vicious. But it does not follow then that suicide is a morally neutral act. If you did it on a whim because it’s “your life” then it’s absolutely a slap in the face to everyone who’s ever helped you and cared for you and to my mind is not much better than murder.
And for those who say it’s not cowardly. Context is important, but I offer this: life can be utterly excruciating and there are times all of us would prefer throwing ourselves under a bus rather than dragging ourselves into the world one more day. And that’s when it takes *courage * to carry on. So what do you call it when you choose not to carry on? If not cowardice then, what? Un-courage? Dis-couragement?
