It depends on how you look at suicide.
There certain animals where the runt of the litter will stop trying to feed and go off to die if there is not enough food. On the level of the individual that is a pretty selfless act. It is helping the others in the litter to survive. From the level of the gene it is a different matter.
Well as someone who indeed went through just such a period of despair, looking back
it was indeed a case of Divine Egotism turned inwards and backwards.
No. A person contemplating suicide does not generally think “Gee, I sorta feel like killing myself today. Who cares if it upsets anybody - it’s my life and I’ll do what I want.” Rather, he or she sees no other way out from the constant pain (mental or physical). The amount of suffering is literally unbearable, and to make matters worse people who are severely depressed literally cannot imagine getting better. It is like there is no hope.
Having said that, there are some people who come close to it but don’t because of loved ones. Those people are heroes in my book.
Commiting suicide is not selfish, but preventing oneself from doing so is a selfless act.
Suicide is a permanent solution to what is frequently a temporary problem. The survivors are stuck with the pain and guilt for the rest of their lives, knowing that there quite possibly could have been an alternative.
Yes, it is a selfish act.
Person A is in enough emotional pain that they consider suicide to be a good choice.
Person B cares deeply about Person A and will be hurt badly if Person A commits suicide.
Whose pain is worse? Person A’s if they keep living, or Person B’s if they die? I’d say that Person A’s pain, being bad enough to make an end of life desirable, is worse. That’s why I believe that people who decry suicide as selfish are themselves more selfish.
However, from the point of view of the person committing suicide, it is a permanent solution to what is perceived as a permanent problem. It seems to me that this is one case where the true facts don’t matter - if a person truly believes that there is no solution to their problems other than the final solution then they very well be making a grave (pun intended) mistake, but I don’t think it is fair to blame them for causing other people grief when they feel that their own expected permanent grief if they don’t commit suicide outweighs what they likely feel is temporary grief in others.
Well, that is the very essence of the tragedy. To the disinterested observer, the pain of the victim is temporary and could possibly have been relieved (counseling, medication). The pain of the survivors is permanent.
I don’t think you can make that blanket statement. The state of psychiatric medicine is not such that we can say that all patients can be cured. A potential suicide’s pain may very well last their entire life, even if they don’t cross that final line of killing themselves.
I would also disagree that the pain of the survivors is permanent. You make it sound like they’ll be in endless suffering. Grief fades over time. Will they have an occasional moment of sadness in later years? Sure. But it won’t be a constant or even daily pain for the survivors after a time.
You’re talking to someone with firsthand knowledge.
And frequently it’s a permanent solution to a permanent problem. All the determination in the world won’t stop Alzheimer’s from destroying your mind.
Or . . . not. Maybe they really don’t care about him. Maybe they are secretly relieved at not having to spend years of effort and lots of money caring for someone who’s degenerated nearly to mindlessness or insanity, and who’s last coherent words were “kill me”. Or maybe they will never realize it, but their grief will be short term and mild compared to what watching their loved one degenerate and suffer that way would feel like.
Not always. Besides the cases where doing so is ratianal and altruistic, it’s perfectly possible to kill yourself for a stupid reason and not be selfish. Like someone who truly believes his/his friends or family will be happier, or even someone who’s trying to kill himself so his wife gets the life insurance ( without it being known as suicide, of course ). Those are foolish things to do, but not selfish.
But if they are still alive, it probably isn’t as bad as the suicide’s. Besides, they don’t own him, so if his choice hurt them, that’s just too damned bad.
I’m sorry for your loss.
I have lost loved ones, but not to suicide. The grief took a long time to fade, but it did fade. I still have teary-eyed moments, but they’re not constant. Are you saying that with suicide it’s different to the degree that the pain never fades? It’s a constant burden for the rest of your life? Please forgive me if my tone doesn’t sound correct – my motivation is an attempt to understand.
And both my parents died of the effects of cancer within a little more than a year of each other. I got my mother’s blood in my mouth trying to give her artificial respiration.
I got over it.
Yes, suicide is different. I also lost my father to cancer; you do get over that, as Der Trihs so cavalierly states. But the pain for a suicide survivor fades, but never goes away. It’s like a scar; it heals, but it’s always there and it often hurts. It is the shock of losing a loved one unexpectedly and tragically, coupled with the guilt of always feeling that you could have done something to prevent it.
I really hope this is just an example you came up with, and not something you’ve experienced. If it’s the latter, I’m so sorry for your loss.
Most of the time I think suicide is indeed selfish – especially the type described above. It shows no thought whatsoever for the loved ones whose lives you are going to destroy.
Euthenasia I don’t have a problem with – if you are incurably ill, constantly racked by pain, and facing nothing but further decline, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong or selfish to end it.
What if you’re a child/animal molester and mass murderer?
Or someone who doesn’t like black liquorice?
What you describe of a survivor’s pain could easily be applied to the person who is hurting enough to commit suicide, though. That person is quite likely depressed, and while meds and therapy can help manage that pain, they very, very often can’t make it go away. Depression for many people stays with them their whole lives, despite the best of care.
Neither person’s pain is a good thing, clearly. But I do think it’s not realistic to state that the potential suicide’s pain is probably temporary while the survivor’s is permanent. After discussing this with you, I suspect they follow similar patterns in many cases. Something for me to ponder, certainly.
In my own case, when I’ve been verging on the edge, it’s been more akin to an animal in a leg hold trap, gnawing it’s own leg off to escape. There’s no thought other than making everything stop.
Well, no one really knows.
I tried to commit suicide, and after the fact, I know it was selfish (and by the way, mean and vindictive too). I was only protected from the act because complete strangers valued my life more than I did.
But, I do not feel sorry for anyone who does commit suicide. I will try to comfort, and encourage them if I know about it before hand, and make reasonable efforts to bring them back to the task and eventual joy of living. But if they kill themselves, (assuming that we are not talking about throwing yourself on some sort of metaphoric hand grenade in the playground) I will remember it as a mean and selfish thing they did. That doesn’t mean I will never forgive you. I just won’t be able to look at your life the same way.
Tris
I’ve known suicides as well, and unless it’s a case of feeling that you drove them to suicide, the pain still fades.
I always bring up this fellow, but one of the suicides I’ve known left a note. His entire family was mentally ill, in and out of mental institutions, with one brother a violent felon who was on the lam. This guy was a husband and father. No treatment was working, he was getting worse daily, and they had tried everything. He said in the note that he felt his control slipping. He didn’t want to be hospitalized the rest of his life, and he didn’t want to follow his brother’s violent footsteps. He killed himself.
Frankly, if anyone says that was selfish, or a permanent solution to a temporary problem, they are being glib.
And you know what? His wife is remarried, and so much more stable. His children don’t remember him much but talk about him with affection.
He didn’t have any good options. The idea that he just should have stuck it out is abhorrent. He was in agony, and now he isn’t.
Even if the alternative is years of agony then death, or a slow degeneration like Alzheimer’s ? It seem to me the ones being selfish are the ones who demand that he live, no matter how much he suffers, no matter how much he longs for death, no matter if his life contains anything at all besides suffering.
Frankly, there are fates worse than death, and demanding that people suffer them is sick.