Not everyone lives near railroad tracks either. Most people have access to things like water, and electricity, but I’m not terribly interested in going down this road. I’m not judging suicide, I’m judging your assertion that a method that damages another is justified. You haven’t convinced me otherwise. It’s okay to damage the conductor’s mental health because the jumper can’t get a hold of barbiturates?
Emphasis added. Are you saying this line of thinking is justified? Or that it simply exisits?
How do you know what delight he gets? Perhaps harming others is easing his pain…or he thinks it is. For that matter, using your karmic debt principle, who’s to say he’s not justified? Maybe someone out there envies his life, the way you envy the engineer for ‘only’ having to feel the pain of playing his part in suicide by train.
I don’t hink so, by the way. Just like I think the jumper is wrong in the way he chooses to end his pain.
I didn’t care about his situation after he put my wife in harms way. Also note my use of the hypothetical…”If she was assaulted.” In reality, I am saddened by loss of life and what may drive one to suicide, but I wasn’t in a position to offer any kind of assistance in this case. For that matter, I did nothing against this person either. I didn’t wrong him, his choice (potentially) wronged me.
There’s a bit of hypocrite in all of us. I’m within my rights to be angered at circumstances that put my loved ones in jeopardy. I’m often angry at LIRR for it’s service interruptions that dump my wife off in potentially dangerous places, and I’m justified. I was angry at the jumper that day for putting my wife in harms way. Points scored or no, I don’t feel the slightest bit out of line for thinking that.
You cannot justify the actions of causing harm to others, even if you don’t seem to think it’s all that bad. The engineer had nothing to do with any of it.
I’m all in favor of “Euthanasia On Demand” but these suicides are not completey blameless either.
Most suicides, while depressed, are not legally insane at the time of their act. They are still capable of understanding that others are going to be severely inconvenienced (especially the conductor) if they throw themselves in front of a train.
If you’re willing to throw yourself in front of a train, it’s obvious you don’t mind leaving a huge bloody mess. Firearms and Tall Heights are similarly lethal and readily available and won’t expose others to commuting delays, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and years of litigation.
Funny. Car-in-the-garage worked quite well for my sister. When did people start thinking that pollution controls made car exhaust carbon monoxide free? They don’t.
Doesn’t sound so bad to me. Certainly, it’s better than having nightmares about your mother trying to smother you with a pillow as a child, or telling you that getting fired from a job is a sign that you’re going to hell, since you’re not praying to Jesus enough.
What type of car was it? An old junker would be far more effective than say, a brand-new Hyundai.
At my most depressed, I had difficulty caring in the least about anything really.
Nope. No PTSD at all for the discoverers of self-inflicted bullet to the head suicides or partially decomposed remains in a ravine. Suicide is damaging in any form.
If more peacefull methods of dying were readily available, the trauma to those who find the body would be reduced. Not eliminated. But reduced. Even to those who die peacefully in their sleep at 100, somebody’s going to have to encounter the dead body.
We all must die at some point. Making it happen earlier just moves the date somewhat.
I don’t disagree with you. But the methods you suggested can be considerably graphic and therefore, much more potentially traumatic for the discoverers than someone who dies peacefully in their sleep. The obvious difference is that not as many people are affected by someone who jumps into a ravine or shoots themselves in the head in their bedroom doesn’t impact/traumatize as many people.
What I object to most is that delaying commuters is among the justifications for calling a suicide an asshole.
Doesn’t matter. ANY car gives off sufficient carbon monoxide to kill someone if runs in a small, confined space for long enough. While I would expect a 1965 behemoth muscle car to generate more of it simply because it burns more fuel per unit of time, the idea that a modern car can’t kill you is ludicrous. Well, a hybrid running solely off the battery would probably be safe, but if it burns gasoline it generates carbon monoxide and it doesn’t take that much of it to kill a human being.
As I said, someone can be in a sad state and also be a selfish asshole. The death alone does not earn them a hagiography or retroactively excuse their behavior. Would you object to calling someone an asshole who interrupted rail service / blocked a major highway / otherwise needlessly inconvenienced hundreds of people in order to advertise a website or do some performance-art shtick?
Sorry, but this has long been one of my major irritants on this board: the apparently depthless ability of some to rationalize any bad behavior that falls beneath the colossal (and ever-expanding) penumbra of mental and behavioral disorders. If that makes me a heartless asshole, then henceforth call me Tin Turnip.
There are ways that we as a society can reduce this kind of negative behavior. It would be infinitely more constructive if we had Universal Healthcare which includes care for mental health than for us to type away furiously on a message board being recreationally outraged.
Right, because advertising and odd art is akin to suicide.
I’m not rationalizing suicide by any method. I’m just saying that jumping in front of a train isn’t a choice an asshole makes, it’s one an ill person makes. Assholes get struck by trains because they are trying to beat it so they don’t have to wait a few minutes.
Sheesh. I’m not saying that ill people can’t be assholes either. I don’t know how to make this much clearer, but it is not the asshole part of the personality that decides to jump in front of a train to end the life. It is the ill part of the brain that makes the need to end life a reality. How it’s done is left to the perception of the living. It makes no difference to the dead. It’s merely the opportunity presents itself at the moment rationalization becomes secondary.