You’re right. My dogs are more important than your dogs.
^ This. And, OMG, stop it with the vitamins and supplements and juicing and “organic” everything. We live in a time when food is safer and more abundant (aside from spot shortages and relatively rare outbreaks of food-borne illness) than at any time in history. Rejoice! Enjoy!
Really, for most people with a weight problem it’s not about “eat the right things” so much as “don’t eat so much”.
^ This.
I didn’t want to put my dying husband in a nursing home, but I could no longer physically give him the care he needed at home and had no support or help (my one helper wound up having to go to Michigan to care for a dying relative, ironically enough).
Doing the above puts both the ill person AND the caregiver at risk.
“Taking care of a loved one” means doing what’s best for them, and sometimes, putting them into a LTC facility is exactly that, as difficult a decision as this is.
My dad went through that with both of his parents (LONG story on both) and I have a Facebook friend who has had to place her severely disabled 21-year-old son in a group home.
There’s a big difference between “Good morning, Mom. What do you want for breakfast?” and caring for an adult-sized infant who needs even more attention than a baby, and will never improve.
And don’t get me, or anyone else, started on people who insist on moving an adult relative in with them while they still have kids at home. The kids DO NOT appreciate it, believe me.
Actually referees/schools usually punish both, but that’s also reprehensible. I say if A hits B , B should get carte blanche on doing whatever they want to A. Like break A’s arm and get a free pass.
When I put my husband in a LTC I could stop being his private nurse and go back to being his wife. He got better and more consistent care, and I wasn’t as stressed and crazy.
Just because someone can’t deal with the death of someone else…It doesn’t mean that suicide is a bad thing.
I’ve had many relatives kill themselves and tbh…it was there choice. Sure I felt something but eventually it passed.
If someone wants me to stay alive because they feel ‘pain’ over a choice that’s mine then they can bugger off in my opinion. I don’t really want ‘family’ members nor do I think depressed people would like one that have such a warped sense of altruism.
The person committing self-murder is the one who “can’t deal with” something - admitting that the death of someone you loved or cared for causes you pain is being honest, it’s not a sign that you “can’t deal with it”.
And yes, I DO see most suicides as murderers. They are, after all, killing someone who isn’t actively dying and there’s no way to argue it as self-defense. Don’t like that opinion? This IS the thread for “unpopular opinions”, right?
That’s YOU. My mother never got over my sister murdering herself. Ted Bundy made a choice to kill people, does calling his actions a “choice” somehow made the consequences less horrific? Then how does calling what a self-murderer does a “choice” make it OK? Answer: it doesn’t.
People who argue for suicide as a some sort of right concentrate only on the pain of the murderer, they ignore, belittle, or handwave the pain of those left behind.
But let me throw out a caveat - there are a very limited number of circumstances where I could tolerate (NOT condone, or approve) suicide. Agonizing terminal illness, for example. It’s understandable, even if deplorable. The trope of a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save other people, that’s excusable. But most suicides don’t fall under those categories, just as most killings of one human being by another are NOT self-defense. Possibly a few other circumstances.
Fuck the scare quotes you put around pain. The pain of those you’d leave behind is every bit as real as the pain you currently feel.
It’s not warped altruism, clinical depression is a medical condition. A civilized society attempts to treat medical conditions, we don’t euthanize human beings for being sick. A humane society (admittedly, I question if current US society meets that definition) doesn’t leave sick people to suffer pain without trying to treat them.
I’m not exactly defending suicide here, but people in that state of mind (and I have been there countless times) aren’t exactly able to think rationally. It doesn’t make sense to me to blame the person who is sick. Generally, their cognitive schema is so warped that they believe they make the lives of the people around them worse, so in their minds, they are the soldier throwing themselves on a grenade to save their loved ones. I don’t think demonizing the mentally ill really helps alleviate the problem.
Also, I was just thinking, Broomstick… IIRC your sister included a suicide note blaming you and/or your mother for her death? Do I recall correctly? That is vindictive as hell. Anyone would be justified in their bitterness, having gone through that.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Weird.
I agree. That is NOT normal. Maybe it is where s/he comes from; IDK.
I’ve gone similarly back-and-forth with a woman on another website who says she’s had FOUR close friends over the years who were murdered by their husbands. :eek: Any effort to tell her that it is not normal for someone to have had even ONE close friend murdered by their SO gets shot right down. :rolleyes:
I would not classify the grenade scenario as a suicide any more than I consider the people who jumped out the windows on 9/11 a suicide. They were going to die horribly anyway and simply chose the method. 
Any commentary beyond this is way beyond my pay grade.
As for the former, Chesley Sullenberger has done a PSA which usually airs during the holidays. His father did it upon arriving home after learning that his cancer had come back and he wasn’t going to beat it this time. It didn’t seem to hurt his family any less.
If a mentally ill person points a gun at the head of another human being and I can stop that murder from occurring then I will do so, for me not to do so would violate my ethics.
If a mentally ill person points a gun at their own head and I can stop that murder from occurring then I will do so, for me not to do so would violate my ethics.
I value the life of the potential suicide just as much as any other potential murder victim, so if I can prevent their death I will do so. If the perpetrator of the crisis is not thinking rationally, or not capable of thinking rationally, then they should receive treatment and not punishment, but they should not be allowed to hurt people - including themselves. That’s not “demonizing” the mentally ill in my view, that trying to prevent a sick person from causing harm to themselves or others.
It was a rather detailed three page note that blamed a number of people for various things, but not blaming me or mom (or dad) for her death. She did blame my parents for a number of things that I think were off-base and untrue, but hey, sis obviously differed. She had a 17 year history of clinical depression - which is not to say every day was horrible but she did cycle in and out of depression and was definitely going through a low spot exacerbated by several factors like mom’s second heart surgery, loss of a job, loss of a long-term relationship, and a bunch of other stuff that even a mentally healthy person would find trying.
Mom got better and lived another 20+ years, she could have found another job, and so forth - the extrinsic factors were fixable. Instead, she killed herself.
I sometimes think the pro-suicide camp want to convert me to their viewpoint and have me grant some sort of approval for their proposed acts. That is asking me to approve of the pre-meditated killing of a human being, that is murder. Never going to happen.
I’m definitely not pro suicide, FWIW. I’m glad I didn’t kill myself. It’s difficult to describe what that level of suffering is like, especially when you know you’ll be battling it for life, but it is completely and totally based on severe cognitive distortions in the majority of cases. During those times I couldn’t view reality with any sort of accuracy. I kind of have a rule now that I won’t make any major life decisions while emotionally compromised.
I really don’t see how taking one’s life is not the same as taking another’s life.
Honestly, I do wonder how rational humans are. People seem to view suicide as worse than someone who commits murder or terrorism.
It’s obvious that not everyone is meant to live in this life. There are many paths that people will take and people who say otherwise are delusional. If there’s a right to life, there should also be a right to death. Otherwise, it’s a form of slavery.
I have had a relative kill themselves and honestly I believe that the ‘pain’ from losing someone is not comparable to the ‘pain’ one feels being a slave to this existence. Whenever I hear people advocating for life, I remember to the conspiracy theorists (yes I know how that sounds…) David Icke and British philosopher, Alan Watts. They basic mantra in all their talks seems that humans have imprisoned their mind with ideas which they rarely question. At first societies need people to be ‘sheep’ to a certain degree but our modern world is an excess.
‘The prison without the bars’ sounds like what people have fallen into when they accept that choosing ones death is selfish or cowardice. Something as simple as ending existence is condemned by so many societies.amazing isn’t it?
I don’t see it as worse, I class it with all the other forms of deliberately killing a human being. Very rarely there are extenuating circumstances but they are the exception, not the rule.
There should be a right to appropriate medical treatment for illnesses or disorders. Particularly in the US, access to mental health care is difficult to non-existent much less truly appropriate and useful mental health care. In that environment arguing we should allow the depressed and psychotic to kill themselves is like withholding metformin, insulin, and other medications from diabetics and allowing them to die instead of treating them. We can’t cure everything but we should at least try to treat problems rather than throwing up our hands and throwing people out with the garbage.
Again, you are downplaying and diminishing the pain of the survivors. Given that one suicide can trigger others I think you have to consider that at least for some people the pain of losing someone to suicide can be at least as painful as what the suiciding person endured.
Who are you to dictate to someone else that their pain isn’t as important as someone else’s pain?
I don’t see is as cowardly, I see it as a hostile act. And yes, it is selfish. Leaving someone else to clean up your mess, whether it’s a spilled beverage or the inevitable chaos of you murdering yourself, is selfish.
No, it’s not. Condoning the killing of people is not compatible with either a small tribe’s long-term existence or maintaining a large civilization. Even societies that permit it in some circumstances don’t accept that it’s OK at all times and everywhere.
Listen, you’ve described suicide as a selfish, hostile act and compared victims to Jeffrey Dahmer. That is absolutely vilifying the mentally ill. You have no idea what it’s like to live in that mental hell, and your continued insistence that your pain is more important than the pain of a chronically suicidal person is just as “selfish” as the view that their pain is more important then yours. It’s painful to hear this coming from someone I respect so much. I’m out.
Um… no.
Most murders are committed in either fear or an irrational state of mind, and are usually limited in scope. Jeffery Dahmer was like a Reaver from Firefly - he’d rape you to death and eat you, and if you were very lucky, in that order. That’s a very special order of sick and horrible, and I NEVER made that comparison, that is a leap YOU made. Even so I never advocated for his execution, rather than someone so broken be kept from society for the safety of everyone else.
And the fact is that in the case of a suicide the victim is ALSO the perpetrator. They aren’t someone simply walking down the street and >bam< hit by a falling piano or something. By its very nature suicide implies an intent to kill in advance. And yes, it IS a selfish, hostile act.
How so? Is it any better to view someone committing suicide as a helpless victim? A helpless victim of who, exactly? Part of the heart ache and pain of a loved one committing suicide is that the victim and perpetrator is the exact same person
I’m not saying anyone’s pain is more important, or more intense. It shouldn’t be a pissing contest over who’s pain is more worthy or whatever. What I’m saying is that neither side should dismiss or diminish the pain of the other.
No, I don’t know what it’s like to live in that “mental hell”. I also don’t know what it’s like to have cancer (though I watched my husband die of it) or have a heart attack (although I watch my mom have one) be blind or lose a limb or a lot of other things. I don’t have to directly experience your particular flavor of pain to understand that you are in pain. And if you had cancer or a heart attack or had your leg chopped off I wouldn’t abandon you to your pain I’d try to get the best help possible for you.
So - if I see someone in mental pain, to the point of wanting to kill themselves, I am not going to walk away, I’m going to try to help you. NOT by letting you kill yourself but by trying to get you the treatment you need to deal with whatever is causing you so much pain.
So, folks, don’t tell me you feel like killing yourself unless you understand that means I’m going to call someone and try prevent you from completing the act, just as I would call 911 for someone having a heart attack or a crushed limb. Ignoring what you tell me, allowing you to commit such an act, would under my ethics make me an accessory to murder in my own mind and I’m just not going to do that. I don’t abandon the ill and the hurting.
Now, you may say, what about intractable depression? The mental equivalent of terminal cancer. Well, that might be an extenuating circumstance but I’m not qualified to determine if you are at the point or not, I’m going to have to defer to experts. Which means I’m calling 911 if you threaten suicide in my presence.
I’m sorry you find my honest opinion distressing, but I think you’d respect me less if I lied to you about something important.
But the subject of suicide IS painful.
Back to the subject at hand:
Lord of the Rings is boring. I’ve tried on three separate occasions to read it, and I’ve gotten as far as about halfway through the first book, and just gave up every time. I mean, I respect what Tolkien was doing and he’s obviously brought joy to many many people with his work, but it bores the tears out of me. The Hobbit was okay, though.
This.
I have never understood this whole fascination with everything Tolkien. It is long, tiresome, wearying and really not all that special.