Think how much worse off society would be if something like this really took off. How many parents would feel justified in killing themselves because “everyone else is doing it,” leaving behind friends and family who honestly cared for them, and wanted to help them.
I say “discourage.” You come back with “force the teen to live with his pain.” There is a difference.
But even if we actively prevent teen suicides:
Are teens in a position to decide for themselves? Depends on the teen. Is too much at risk to be cavalier? Absolutely. Are some teens trying to get attention and affection through suicide threats? Yes. Do those teens need help? Yes. Can we tell the difference between a teen being overdramatic and a teen who is in serious pain? Not easily.
We should do our best to protect people who are unlikely to be thinking clearly, just as we should do our best to allow those who are thinking clearly to decide their own fates. The majority of minors who contemplate, attempt, or commit suicide are in the former category, not the latter.
Will you also admit that “things they might not necessarily appreciate” is a huge understatement when we’re referring to forcing someone to live with so much pain that he’d rather die than continue through it? This is not like mowing the lawn or writing a thank-you note at Christmas.
Fair enough. I guess it depends on how far you’re willing to go to discourage them.
I don’t think so. What’s at risk is mainly their own life, which belongs to them and no one else.
In cases where we can’t tell whether someone is “thinking clearly”, I think we have to err on the side of assuming he is.
Don’t you think the majority of all suicides are in the former category? If we’re going to divide the group of all potential suicides into those who are thinking clearly and those who aren’t, it only makes sense to divide the group of potential teen suicides as well, and in cases where we can’t tell, I think we have to give them the benefit of the doubt: allowing someone to decide his own fate should be the default.
Someday you idiots are going to convert me from atheism. The value of human life is a value - it’s not something you can argue. Either someone can see human beings as superfluous or a “net drag on society” - or they instinctively value human life. It’s the only benefit I see to religion - that the sanctity of life and other humans is an a priori. So you don’t have to argue with people who see nothing wrong with sacrificing individuals for an abstraction like “society.” (Unless that abstraction is God, of course, but that’s another thread.)
Ultimately you have to ask yourself. Are individuals for society or is society for individuals? Stalin came down on one side of the argument, non-sociopaths on the other.
The title of this thread begs the question: who cares if suicide is good or bad for “society?” It’s bad for individuals - and the welfare of individuals is the only purpose of “society” if such a thing can even be said to exist.
Perhaps for an adult. Perhaps.
Not for a teen or a child. No one should die for something they will grow out of, and chances are just too good they will grow out of it.
Good point, I will admit that there is a difference between doing things they might not appreciate and being in such pain that he’d rather die than continue with life. Then again I have to take into account what I remember about being a teen and what I’ve observed from dealing with them now that I’m older. Often times teens lack any sense of perspective and tend to blow things way out of proportion, they are still trying to find their own identity and figure out who they are, and they very often times make decisions that they wind up regretting later.
Marc
When you say “blow things way out of proportion”, it seems like you’re focusing on some objective definition of pain, where we can say this person is feeling the right amount of pain for his circumstances, while that person is feeling too much. But isn’t pain subjective? Isn’t what someone actually is feeling more important than what some outsider thinks he should be feeling?
Who doesn’t?
I heard that some rabbi shortly after the 9/11 attack said that the jumpers were not committing suicide because they had a better chance of surviving by leaping from the building than remaining inside - nobody would survive being inside the building collapsing, but there have been rare cases where people have fallen from extreme heights and lived.
Hense the " sanely wish to die and who are and always will be a net drain on society". It wouldn’t be a ‘stylish’ thing to do, it would be announcing to the world that you have no value and never will have much value. It would be almost impossible for parents with non-adult children to be considered as “a net drain on society” only for child abusing or totally incapable parents might this be true.
I could not see it become a popular choice to be able to…
Prove they are completely sane, and not suffering from depression,
Show that they contribute almost nothing to society, and that this situation won’t likely change in the future,
Take the informed and concentual choice to stop living, and act upon that choice.
Long-term depression is one of the most painful conditions a person can ever be expected to endure. Treatment does not work for some people.
There are much more painful conditions, but granted long term depression can be plenty painful enough that you’d rather die than keep suffering it. I should have included being sane with incurable depression would be a sane reason to consider suicide. Then again new techniques for countering depression are rapidly being developed (electrical brain stimulating devices being an interesting new development), so being certain you are uncurable is difficult and not something a person with depression can rightly determine for them selves.
With depression I am completely fucked off and disparing of finding a long term solution. Just now I’m again going through the difficulties of changing medication to see if I can find one which will work for a significant time. I know quite well the wish to give up on the whole idea of trying to find something that helps, but luckily for me I have enough knowledge and willpower to not give up. I have friends who quite possibly could have good results from medication, but who gave up on the entire idea of medication after having bad effects from the first medication they tried. It’s so easy to give up when depressed, and that makes the depressed person poor at chosing what is good for them. It’s a vicious f’ing circle.
I have the feeling that commiting suicide should require the same sort of rigours as having a sex change. If it is what you want, you should prove that you are sane, and that you have tried the alternatives, and only then should it be considered ‘the right thing to do’.
Then how do you judge a person’s sanity level? Even if you could, none of that would matter to the not-sane person who does not speak up about their choice before they make it probably wouldn’t pay attention to the “laws” set up to regulate it. And how do you judge a person’s worth? How does a person who is not in the right state of mind know what they’re worth? Do you know what a recipe for disaster is? A society that is willing to accept suicide because they don’t want somebody to be a “drain” on them. For the child-abusing parents; that is why it takes a village to raise a child.
Everybody contributes something to society, in at least that the society can see the person’s plight, and learn from their mistakes. The most successful society sees those who are hurting, and wishes to help them. In your hour of darkness, ouldn’t you want to recieve the same? Or would you want everybody surrounding you to say “Yeah, he’s a drag. Let him go.” ?
Since there are no accurate pain-o-meters I’m just going to have to rely on the “reasonable” man rule. Again, from my own experience as a teen and from dealing with teens as an adult I believe they have a greater tendency to blow things out of proportion then adults because they are not emotionally mature.
I think we have different ideas on how we should treat minors so I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye. I suspect this thread might be hijacked and turned into a teen rights debate instead of remaining focused on suicide in general.
Marc
If I were a rapist or a murderer I’d like to die and for them to say “Yeah, he’s a drag. Let him go.” Personally those are the only times I would think it right for a healthy individual to commit suicide.
I wouldn’t deny the right to suicide to anyone who is healthy and who could show that they sanely wish to do so, but I wouldn’t condone it either. It just seems cowardly to me. And if the person could have been capable to contribute to society it would seem selfish as well. As I try hard to neither be cowardly nor selfish I doubt this would ever be my course of action, if it was I’m sure I would desrve people saying “Yeah, he’s a drag. Let him go.”
If I or someone was suffering from uncurable bad health, whether it be from depression, scitzophrenia, cancer or injuries. Then if they sanely make the choice to end there life I would not hold that choice against them, it would be neither cowardly nor selfish from my own point of view. If I were in this position I would hope people say “Yeah, his life was full of pain. Let him go.” .
Well, I’d say there is an accurate meter: ask the person what he’s feeling. He is the only person who can really tell you what’s happening inside his head.
I’m still not sure exactly what you mean by this. Do you mean they experience more pain than you believe they should? Or that they react to the same amount of pain differently?
[quote[if it was I’m sure I would desrve people saying “Yeah, he’s a drag. Let him go.”[/quote]
I don’t know you Bippy, but I can honestly tell you that nobody deserves that. Anybody who feels that way must have their own faults, whether they show them or not.
The brains of some teenagers have not fully formed. They are unable to comprehend that they can actually die. That’s one of the reasons that they can be such reckless drivers. They also tend to be more impulsive than most adults. How about waiting until the judgment centers of their brains have developed.
And although clinical depression is very painful and sometimes difficult to treat, it also affects that part of the brain which we use to judge and make decisions. So a depressed state is not the best time to be deciding whether or not to off yourself. (But if you are depressed, who cares about this bit of logic?)
Often, we are they. Their contributions to the arts are legend… They make us feel superior. Compassion redeems us. Who said the world is overpopulated?
The one who knows the lyrics to Lydia the Tattooed Lady.
Saving themselves suffering is one thing. Concern for saving the rest of us money shows a serious lack of imagination and creativity. They deserve to live to 110 in Caribou, Maine.
“And I can take or leave it if I please.”
No, what I mean is that they lack perspective. Teens are dealing with new social situations, emotions, and ideas, but they don’t automatically come with the mental tools to best deal with whatever obstacles these new things present. As I said earlier, I don’t want to hijack this thread into a “teen rights” debate so this is the last time I will make any comment about it.
Marc
It is very understandable for a teenager to find it difficult to imagine himself as a fully grown competent adult living a separate and fulfilling life separate from his family and community of origin. That’s particularly true of homosexual teenagers who know deep in their hearts that they may never have their parents’ approval.
That concept is hard enough to deal with in your thirties and forties. A youngster must have a hell of a hard time dealing with it in his teen years.
As he ages, he will gain self approval which is where the real joy in living comes from. And he will build a community of approving friends. He will develop ways of dealing with those who don’t approve. And he will, if he is fortunate, be able to find that his parents love him as he is. His parents may be stronger than he thinks. It happens!
All of this takes TIME and that must be his gift to himself.
That’s a new one. Cite?
If true, I wonder what these suicidal teenagers think will happen when they pull the trigger. The bullet will just bounce off? They’ll go on living with a big hole in them, like in Death Becomes Her? I mean, you’d have to be comically dumb not to comprehend that you can die, and it’d make no sense for someone like that to consider suicide, since it’d be an impossible act for someone who’s immortal.
Fair enough. We seem to be going in circles with no answer to my question in sight anyway.