I’m surprised people have been arguing in favor of this for so long. In this world there is only right and wrong, and which one do you think is letting a person who feels so lost and lonely kill their self? When you could have done everything in your power to comfort them. No, it’s too much of an invconvenience. They are taking up space on our Earth, breathing our air, eating our food, and spending our money. Better to let them kill themselves, right?
No, if we accept this in our society then that’s wrong. If you can honestly tell yourself that you think that this is right, then you are lying to yourself, or ignoring the consequences of your actions, or so many other things. People will lie to themselves to justify the things they think and do, just so they can increase their very own personal comfort level that little bit more.
Nobody wants to help their fellow man out anymore these days. What happened to that? Do they honestly believe that we can continue to allow ourselves to spiral downward further and further? Puh-lease. People need to be helped, not left behind or culled from the herd, or else our society will find itself in ruins.
Fonz sociopathy is a condition in which a person does not feel guilt or empathy. The term used to be psychopath. Guinastasia is actually agreeing rather strongly with your position, saying that only a person without a conscience could support the position you detailed.
So, is it better to force someone to live? Someone who has no will to live? Someone like the person I’ve talked about on the Dope before who was a young man from a family with a history of mental illness, including institutionalization and violence, a young man who spent his entire life under treatment and felt that he was becoming a danger to himself, that he was losing all of his control?
I knew that young man, and he killed himself. The tragedy was the life he led, and the life he would have had to continue living. There was no cure for him, no other treatments, just a life behind walls like one sibling, a life on the streets like another.
There is no comfort anyone can offer some people. It’s all hollow. “I love you” isn’t enough. “God loves you” isn’t enough. “It will get better” is a lie.
I will give all the food, money, or air in the world if I could bring comfort and ease to the people stricken with these horrible diseases. And if we as a society continue to spend money in research, someday we may be able to say “It will get better” and not be lying. But right now, for so many, it won’t.
I know what you’re getting at, and you’re right. You can’t force someone to live. All you can do is tell them, reassure them, and hope that they’ll see. If you can’t comfort them then at least you know you tried and gave them a chance. Move on to the next person, and hope that you can help them.
Tell them what? Reassure them of what? Hope they’ll see what?
I think suicide is a rational choice for some people. I hate it, and it’s terrible, but it’s a rational choice. There is no reassurance possible if someone has terminal cancer and is in pain. There’s nothing to be said to a Tommy who knows he has an untreatable, violent mental condition. There’s nothing to be said to Jill who has had depression for twenty years and who has tried therapy and drugs and is so tired.
I’ve felt the emptiness in one of my friend’s parents last night. I stopped by to talk to my friend, and I saw that his dad had changed so much from the last time I saw him. He was a real good, hardworking man, but when he opened the door I saw he was high, maybe on crack or meth. He was real cool with me at first and greeted me with a smile, but when I asked to talk to my friend he caught something in my tone of voice. He asked what I wanted to talk to my friend about, if it was religious, and I said, yes, no, well kinda. He said that they were all atheists, that they don’t believe in that crap.
He still had a smile on his face, but I felt him change. I asked to talk to my friend and he said I was “trippin”, but luckily my friend was there and told him that HE was trippin and told him to go inside. I told my friend what I wanted to tell him, but his dad came to the door again, with that same disturbing grin, asking if I was still trippin. I said bye to my friend, that I might talk to him again later, and apologized to his dad.
I looked back over my shoulder, somewhat expecting to catch a bullet in the back. I was scared, but it made me real sad at the same time. It’s hard to understand how talking about something like that can make people so angry. Moments like that are discouraging.
You know, I don’t know how this fits into my crazy, crazy beliefs. I don’t think I know enough about the anything to answer this question. On one hand, I thought I would get sucked straight down to the lowest level of hell if I died in such a sate. I don’t think this is something a society should practice, at least… I’m stumped.
Graduate school developmental psychology course from the Dark Ages.
Generally, teenagers have somewhat romanticized notions about dying. That’s why a trip to the morgue and the viewing of an autopsy is sometimes used in teen suicide prevention programs. It takes some of the “glory” out of suicide. It helps to remove the idea that it’s a good way of getting even with someone, for example.
I was a high school teacher for twenty years. My word is my cite or you have detention duty!
Treatment for depression does NOT make you into a “shiny-happy”. You still have the personality you did before treatment, and the concerns about the world.
For me, at least, “depression” and “being depressed about the state of the world” are two entirely different things, and it’s unfortunate that their names are so similar.
“Depression” meant that, when I woke up in the morning, I was hit with waves of helpless and hopeless feelings, so that I couldn’t get up and do anything unless it was something I had to do, like go to school or work. I was not thinking about the way the world is during those attacks- I could only think about how stupid and terrible and worthless I was.
I’m on medication for depression now. Tell some of my co-workers, or Mr. Neville, that I’m now a “shiny-happy”, but be ready to call 911 when they’re laughing so hard they can’t breathe.
I do support people’s right to die, but I’m not sure that we as a society are ready to have that option for things other than terminal illnesses. There’s still some stigma around that attaches to seeing a psychiatrist or admitting that you’re mentally ill. We haven’t (hopefully yet) expunged that horrible and horribly mistaken idea that mental illness is a sign of weakness of character. When the day (hopefully) comes when there’s no more stigma in going to a psychiatrist for depression than there is now in going to the doctor for the flu or a bad back, then maybe we will be ready for something like that.
Actually, I did see something like this. (I posted about it at the time, but can’t find the thread.)
Flipping through the channels, I happened to watch part of a preacher’s sermon in which he said that the WTC jumpers had gone to hell. In his opinion, they had “defied the will of God,” and had exchanged one fire for an eternal one. He said that they should have accepted their fate-- perhaps God would have preformed a miracle and if not . . . well, it must have been God’s will that they burn to death.
OK no one with a brain suggested that the jumpers were commiting suicide.
There are many accounts of people surviving very long distance falls, the noly account of surviving inside a furnace was a couple of saints. Given that the jumpers probably knew they were not saints, then they took the path of highest chance of survival. That is the absolute opposite of suicide.
The tricky bit seems to be how people conceive depression. Basically people dont tend to see depressive thoughts as ‘insane’ in the way that you might view someone seeing purple spiders on their arm as ‘insane’.
Which means the path you take from there in regards to how you view suicide in that scenario will vary considerably. Is it a rational decision to escape pain, or is it just another manifestation of what they’re experiencing? The person experiencing it of course will tend to think what they’re seeing is ‘real’ either way. Which is why discussions with people currently experiencing severe depression are fairly fruitless because they by definition will tend to see it as an entirely rational decision making process. And they would of coruse argue that my position that they’re probably just not thinking rationally is simply arrogance and who’s to say Im right.
The only problem being I have spoken to many similar people saying that kind of thing who then completely reversed their position a matter of months later after getting some good treatment and couldnt believe what they were saying and thinking back then, and thank you for helping them.
So the problem becomes one of distinguishing between these people and the people who ‘really’ want to die.
I’m reminded of this exchange from Futurama (“Raging Bender”):
Which brings up an interesting philosophical question. When someone expresses a desire, when is it acceptable to respond by trying to change his desire–by directly acting on his brain, rather than by persuasive argument–instead of fulfilling it? And if you succeed in changing it, are you really making him happy, or are you just replacing him with someone else who’s easier to get along with?
