Geez, this thread about suicide is getting kinda morbid…
Sure, in the sense that not having children is a kind of murder.
Which is why you should think of others: kill them first, then yourself. Wait…
Thank you for your concern, but believe me I am not rushing into anything. I’m not some teen who just got dissed by his sweetheart. I’m someone who has been thinking about this for years, and yes I’ve had therapy.
A lot of this depends on the method. I’m not after a grand death myself, and the only people who should see my body are people experienced in doing so (and even if they find it traumatic; I have to die eventually).
I’ve thought about suicide on and off for 40 years. I can closest to doing it at age 15, and thinking very carefully about it at the time, made probably the most mature decision of my life up to that point. I decided that I didn’t know enough and hadn’t experienced enough of life to decide to chuck it all away at my age, and that I would wait until I was at least 30 before making a decision like that.
I’ve found other reasons since, and I still think about it quite a lot, but I don’t think it ever entered my head that it would be immoral as an isolated act. In recent years I’ve gotten very close to one of my sisters, and suicide is right out while she’s alive. I agree with others here that causing distress to others is the major reason not to do it.
Have you (those considering suicide) tried medication options? I ask because I was suicidal for most of my lift- I never made any long term plans after middles school because I never planned on being around for a long time. Several years ago, I found the right meds I (I am now 39) and I haven’t been seriously suicidal in about 5 years. This took a lot of wrong meds before finding the right ones, but when I did it made a huge difference. Not saying you experiences will mirror my own, but I encourage you to at least try medication options if you have not- with the knowledge that the first several tries will not be the right ones.
While I don’t think suicide is unethical on its own terms, I do think the harm suicide causes to other people (and there are always other people) is real and that people who are considering it owe it to themselves to get help and view things from a perspective that might not be suicidally depressed.
Inherently? I don’t think so.
Because of the survival instinct, for one thing. It’s a very strong impulse and it can make suicide difficult to comprehend. I’d say another reason is the permanence of suicide, and I think on an emotional level people may feel that it devalues their own lives when someone they know decides to end theirs. And from a selfish standpoint it’s impossible not to be wounded by the suicide of someone your close to. If nothing else I guess it’s impossible not to think, at some level, the person chose death over a world with you in it.
I’m always a little confused when people take shots like this at people who were so depressed they killed themselves. A suicide attempt might be a plea for attention (although I’d exempt it from the accusation of attention whoring, which implies phoniness), but I think the message of suicide ‘forget me,’ not ‘pay attention to me.’
I’m in favor of any reason to give someone who is suicidal a reason to pause and reconsider. But really, do you have to stay alive because someone else loves you when you don’t? I’m not convinced of the reasoning there. Why is someone else’s opinion of what you should do with your life more important than your own? I think that’s particularly true in the case of people who are terminally ill, for example.
I have to say this is hilarious. It’s true, and certainly I’ve heard about people stuck on subways and trains complaining about the person who’s decided to kill himself by jumping onto the tracks. But it’s also pretty funny to try “Don’t kill yourself, you’ll make other people late” as an argument.
I think a lot of people who condemn suicide don’t understand just how seriously one has to suffer before considering such a terminal act. Think about it: the survival instinct is perhaps the strongest drive in any living being. To act against this primeval urge requires an extremely strong motivation. Most people would not judge somebody taking their life if they spend it in unbearable pain, or have terminal cancer; however, just because the suffering in the case of clinical depression is internal, is emotional rather than physical, doesn’t mean it is less severe – quite to the contrary, perhaps. It’s just harder to see from the outside.
Almost exactly a year ago (this thread has a somewhat uncanny timing), my ex-girlfriend (meaning we were long separated then, but still had some friendly contact) took her own life. I did not then understand – and don’t really understand now – the trajectory that life took to bring me from being with her, from her being the most important thing in my life, to me being at her funeral. These two points just seemed part of entirely different universes, with no possible connection in between. The intrusion of death – in whatever form – into our lives is always something alien – death is not a concept you can fully grasp from within life. It is all the more upsetting if that death was invited voluntarily, rather than being, as usual (to the extent there is anything usual about death), a violent intruder – an adversary we can at least pretend to be able to fight, if not overcome. That is perhaps one reason that suicide is so universally ostracised – that it represents the voluntary opening of a door to something we essentially spend our whole life fighting to keep out.
So, besides just being violently sad, of course I was pissed at her – for making me feel that sad, for hurting her friends and family, for making me feel guilty. But, knowing how bad she must have felt in order to go through with this, I can’t call her actions selfish; indeed, expecting for her to continue suffering just so that I don’t have to feel bad is at least as selfish. I wish, though, that she had found another way.
And yet, you posted this here, where it can’t be erased, and thus have – inadvertently or not – made new contacts, left new traces. Now, I don’t want to meddle, or trap you in some kind of ‘gotcha’ logic (however, if it helps – if you care at all – I’ve enjoyed most of your posts :)), but this decision is a hard – if not impossible – one to make in an informed way: you can’t conceive of your own non-being, and nor can you imagine a world without you (this is why prophesied doomsdays are always right around the corner). So it is not really a decision that can be made rationally, as you can’t adequately foresee its consequences; but then, any ‘rational’ reasons one might have must be immediately suspect.
This may not affect your decision, and I don’t want to question your ability to decide for yourself; however, given the irrevocable nature of suicide, every little bit of doubt should be considered very carefully. It’s not something one can afford being mistaken about. 
Actually, it’s at least as valid as the argument about diverting police attention, when one considers that the “problems for many other people” could include effects up to and including someone dying who otherwise would have lived (e.g. one of the many people stuck in the subway traffic backup experiencing a sudden medical emergency that otherwise would have happened after they had arrived at their destination and thus easier for emergency services to reach).
It could do that in theory. I hope I don’t have to explain why it’s funny wording, though.
I heartily recommend Judy Collin’s excellent book “Sanity & Grief” about the suicide of her only child, son Clark Taylor.
The “shot” was against the suicide, not the person. The “Get help” was directed to the person. The demographics of suicide pretty well demonstrate that being noticed is generally a part of it. The suicide note is a cherished part of this ritual. The note is for someone. It is a set of cross hairs for this mega tantrum. Yes, it is often out of focus, misdirected, and fueled by dysfunctional self perception and a whole host of other real world problems. But everyone has real world problems. Aiming your death at someone else is vicious, mean, and me pretending to be “ooooo, poor thing” about it won’t change that.
If you are thinking about killing yourself, you got issues with someone, maybe only yourself, but more likely someone who either does care about you, or that you wish cared about you. Get help. If they don’t care, the still won’t, and if they do care, you are being selfish, vicious, and mean.
Up until you kill yourself, I can care about you, maybe even help you, certainly try to comfort you. Afterwords I won’t bother, you were a selfish, self centered vicious bully. I will try to forget you, and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Tris
If this is a ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’ thing, I don’t think it’s working.
Most people who kill themselves don’t leave notes.
I want to die by my own hand. Not now, but someday, just to prove that I am in charge of myself. It may seem a little inane, but that’s my way of dealing with life. No pain seems so great knowing there is a sure-fire way to end it.
Aside from involving others in your death, I don’t think there is anything unethical about suicide. Obligations? Nobody is obligated to suffer for the benefit of another. Selfishness? Well I guess in this world where everybody acts without regard to their own interests it would seem so, unless maybe the world isn’t really that way. Mental illness? Better you kill yourself than someone else.
I don’t think ethics is really that much of a concern when it comes to suicide. The concern would be diligence in looking for alternative solutions.
They can’t. I’ve known 4 people who commited suicide (for three of them, a suicide was conceivable or even expected in a case, but one put an end to his life out of the blues and nobody could ever guess why), but in fact the most telling example for me was a friend who eventually didn’t, but with whom I talked often when he was depressed and suicidal.
He was the father of a little girl (something like 4-5 yo at the time, IIRC). So, “what about your daughter if you were to die” obviously seemed a good argument to me. But his view was that he was such a crappy person and father that clearly everybody, including his daughter, would be better off without him. In his view, he would make her a favour by diseapering.
Note that he wasn’t in fact a crappy father or person, and had no objective reason to think so, but nothing would budge him from this perception at the time.
By the way, he’s now alive and well, pursuing a romance in southern France.
When they are suicidal, yes, they think everybody else would be better off without them. Which makes the ‘you’re so selfish’ accusation particularly cruel. I’m saying they owe it to themselves to get psychological help because then they may be able to see things from another perspective.
Poor bastard. 
Oh, and to answer the OP, no, IMO there’s no reason to consider suicide as evil. It might be often a misguided and preventable issue, but not unethical.
As for it being a sin, it’s a theological issue and decided by an arbitrary and external set of rules (and the interpretation thereof), so there’s no straightforward answer, and being an atheist it’s not like I would care either way.
I think by the way that there’s an ethical issue when help to commit suicide is denied (and those who nevertheless provide it are prtosecuted) when there’s no objective solution to the person suffering (the most obvious case being terminally ill people, but in the Netherlands, they have a law allowing assisted suicide and it was allowed at least once in the case of a man who suffered from a long time and apparently incurable depression).
That said, I still believe that in the majority of cases suicide is a huge mistake made by people who aren’t any more mentally competent to make such a decision. Doesn’t make them “evil”, though. Just ill.
Whoa, ok so, this probably won’t be a very popular opinion but…for the suicidee, there’s no downside
Sorry, as an atheist, someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t see a downside for the person doing the suiciding
People can justify their opposition with all kinds of excuses that speak to the living, because only the living will care. Once the person dies, it’s over for them, all positive and negative feelings. There won’t be a “what about the people left?” because you will be dead and that will be utterly irrelevent. There is no worrying about them because you will cease to exist
The same thing goes for holding out for the possibility of hope. Why bother? Even if you can be assured that in 5 years you will be completely happy and past this point of your life, you will not be missing it if you kill yourself. You can’t miss what you never have, just like how I don’t miss the $190 million that I didn’t win the powerball lottery. I live a decent life right now. I can say for a fact that if I died in the next minute, I wouldn’t regret it because I won’t be around to do any regretting
Don’t get me wrong, dying sucks. Dying. But death doesn’t suck because you won’t be around to suffer from it. I’m not telling people to commit suicide, that is a decision everyone has to make themselves. But I severely disagree with the language of death where most people talk as if they dead is around to miss what they gave up through suicide
Back on topic, I don’t believe suicide requires ethics. It’s the only thing where the person who commits it will not be around to ponder the ethical dilemma. The pondering is left for those who survive, and each one of us imbues the dead with their own sense of morality. It’s probably impossible for someone who had a good relationship with the dead to think well of that person’s actions. There will always be another “but if you just waited, it could have gotten better!” argument. But life isn’t a sappy movie with a happy ending. Sometimes things never get better, sometimes it gets worse. The only real escape is death
Wow. I’ve never seen you get so intense on any particular issue.
I value freedom and free will above all else, but as such, it introduces some interesting questions with regard to suicide. It would seem that being a proponent of free-will, I’d have no issue with suicide, but in reality, without life, choice has no meaning, so I really see it as something that ultimately limits us. Moreso, the repercussions of suicide are all but impossible to understate for any family and friends; the pain and suffering you incur upon them inevitably limits their freedom as well. And so, in order to be free, we must be able to choose it, but so to practice it, we must know never to do so.
That all said, I understand why terminally ill, mentally ill, or depressed people choose it. I, myself, have had dark times in my life with seemingly unbearable pain, and though I may not have had any regard for my own life in those times, suicide was never more than a passing thought because, as horrible as my own pain was, I loved my friends and family too much to pass off my own burden onto them.
As such, and though I will never say so to a person I think is on the verge of considering it, I really can’t help but see it as about the most selfish act one can do, particularly when it comes about unexpectedly, and moreso when done in a gradiose fashion. Perhaps if someone is terminally ill and will be in a lot of pain before dying in a few months, they can avoid passing much of that burden, but its hard to really see how I feel about that since I’ve never personally known anyone like that. In non-terminal cases, I can’t even see that sort of exception, especially when the decision is made hastily and one hasn’t exhausted other alternatives.
And so, the reason I think it’s condemned is probably some variation of what I feel. I do think it is one’s right, just like it may be one’s right to be a huge jerk, but because it causes pain to other people, it is rightfully condemned.
Yeah. It’s pretty personal. Socialy and legally, of course successful suicide is out of our control, and unsuccessful suicide is a matter of mental health. Personally, though, I am very much of a mind to let people know that it’s not in any way noble, or high tragedy. It’s selfish.
(My experience comes from planning my own suicide. Feeling those displaced emotions, looking into blackness. I almost went there. Learning how ugly the act was was hard on me, but some types of healing come only with bitter truth.)
Tris