As I see it there are three things preventing us from leaving this horrid planet:
1. The survival instinct. It’s hard wired into our brains from millions of years of evolution, and I think we all know, whether we have attempted or not, how powerful it is.
2. The values that have been bread into us since birth. We live in a world of mental slavery. A small number of insanely wealthy and powerful people control thge rest of the population, using them to maintain their power and wealth. Yet they don’t do this with chains, whips, and dogs. Instead, bread into us since birth are the ideals that life is good, working hard will yield success, pleasure can’t exist without pain, and other bullshit. So even though we know that death will allow us to escape this mental slavery, this powerful mental conditioning is always there to keep us in check.
3. Suicide prohibition. Being “rescued” would result in a life many times, or even many magnitudes, worse than the lives we wish to escape right now. So every day, we recursively put off our desire so that we may plan further, to ensure that “rescue” will not occur. Needless to say, many or most of us are still here.
In my case, the worst of these three is number 1, because packaged with the irrational survival instinct is the irrational tribal instinct. I can’t bear to leave a few people in the world behind, despite the stark irrationality of this emotion, since the “afterlife” is nothing but eternal slumber. If they were all to die, I would have no trouble surmounting 2 and 3.
I would love to hear additions or disagreements to my remarks. But don’t give any bullshit number 2 material. See what I did there?
12 comments
maybe this falls under the “suicide prohibition” but I think the lack of really good options for committing suicide prevents a lot of people from following through, this is my reason for postponing. If there was a suicide pill that was easily accessible I think a lot of us wouldn’t be on this site anymore.
I’d like to see suicide clinics. We have abortion clinics where women can abort their fetus. Why not clinics where people can abort their lives? The Bible would be lined up outside of.those like they are at the abortion clinics.
Meant to say Bible thumpers in previous post…
I think the reason there are no suicide clinics is that people are ignorant to how hard committing suicide actually is with the methods that most people have available to them. Because there is currently a movement for euthanasia for people who cannot commit suicide themselves.
It’s so stupid to make suicide legal but to make all of the good substances that you can commit suicide with illegal i.e. ********? So what we’re supposed to just screw ourselves up with these gruesome methods that have brutal consequences if they fail? Why the hell is ******** illegal anyway? does anyone know?
It’s like saying abortion is legal but then forcing anyone who wants to have an abortion to perform it on themselves. Could just tell them if you really want that abortion then you should be willing to push yourself down a set up stairs.
hmm.. futurama.. suicide booths 😉
I agree. If there was a suicide pill no doubt I wouldn’t be here now. The lack of options in this world disturbs me.
I also agree that we should have suicide clinics just like we have abortion clinics. I think only like 1 in 20 suicide attempts actually succeed.
@Twoweeks- If I remember reading your first post correctly you plan on using a knife? That sounds pretty frightening. I wish you and me had better more dignified options.
No doubt, if I had an assured method. I would be dead. No second thought about it. I don’t care to leave everything behind. I just want a method that will work. I don’t want to take a chance of surviving [again] and having to explain why I tried it. Fuck. Let’s create a suicide booth.
I agree. Most suicide methods suck ass. I mean..Jumping off a building? Blowing your head off? Is this the best humanity offers for those suffering? There has to be a better way.
Then we’re treated as criminals when trying to obtain tools to have a peaceful dignified death. WTF humans!?
@twoweeks
******** is illegal for the same reason most illegal drugs are illegal (emphasis on “most”); it’s addictive and destructive. At one time, in the ’50s and ’60s, it was a popular prescription medication for sleep (Marilyn Monroe went out with it). It’s a barbiturate, and those types of drugs are unique, in that as the user gains tolerance, the LD50 (the amount that would on average kill 50% of takers) stays the same. With most drugs, tolerance is tolerance and if you build your tolerance to a massive height, you just need to take a lot for the same effect. With barbiturates, once you build your tolerance to the LD50 and begin taking beyond the LD50 dose, you die eventually. Benzodiazepines do not have that effect, and so they replaced barbiturates almost completely. Barbs are still around, but only prescribed for extremely specific and unique cases, like euthanasia and certain types of seizures.
ANYway, sorry for the little ramble. I mean to talk about my answer. I am here still not because I have no method, but because I can’t do that to my mom. Also, and this is a bigger point, the availability of an exit comforts me. I have climbed a local glacier many times, the face of which leads over a huge drop into a lake, and have hiked up to a certain actual cliff; what I find in these places where I could kill myself forthwith, is that the sudden availability of a way out is enough to comfort me to stay around. It’s sick, and ironic and twisted and unfair. But when I get a chance to walk out the door, I choose to sit and look out the window just a bit more, because for this moment my prison cell has a window and a door. And when I leave, it crushes me. I had the opportunity, the motive…and I didn’t take it. The pain returns and has redoubled its efforts, and I didn’t just hurl myself off the glacier when I had the chance.
Good realizations Tick, right on. Life can seem very pointless I know, but you seem strong and rational. I can picture you living your life with real purpose and meaning to compensate for life being so meaningless in general. Never give up!
I support this post.
I think you’re right-on with it.
The only thing i really have to add, is that at some point, the suffering will cause the desire for cessation to eclipse the worry over leaving behind those special few.
At some point… it still sucks, but it’s not enough anymore. You know they’ll be whatever they’ll be, without you. You’ll hope they’ll be okay, and it’s not really good enough, but “that being not really good enough,” is good enough. Because it’s all you got.
To expand on your #2:
It goes well beyond mental. Let’s call it “economic slavery.”
In fact, some would argue that we’re actually in the middle of WW3 right now, which is being fought not with militaries and navies and bombs, but rather with who controls Wealth. It’s Money vs. Money vs. Money. It’s so… prohibitively complex. It’s hard to believe the tactics to make people believe this life is “worth living,” are so effective. Needless to say, it doesn’t work on me either; and so i find myself here on SP.