By legitimate, I don’t mean legal. Obviously, most people here are going through some type of (intense) pain. What I mean is, are there circumstances, both internal and external to an individual, which a group of mature, impartial observers would agree are so unbearable, and so unlikely to be changed, that suicide is a rational choice, maybe even a compassionate one ?
I once met someone who said that no one should commit suicide before 40, because s/he hadn’t lived enough to know what his/her possibilities were.
And not I’m talking about the sanctity of life issue, which being a religious/personal one, can never be decided on rational/impartial bases.
12 comments
I’ve wondered the exact same thing before. Is there any such thing as “a really good reason to kill yourself”?
If you’re a soldier caught behind enemy lines, and you know you’re going to be captured, tortured then killed slowly, then yeah, that would be a good time to take matters into your own hands.
You ever see a movie called Million Dollar Baby? Its about a woman prize fighter who becomes paralyzed from the neck down. I’d rather be dead than be dependent on others for the rest of my life.
I guess having a chronic illness might be a good reason, but you could argue that life itself is a chronic illness. Everyone who is born is serving a life sentence which ends with death.
Its up to the individual, I suppose, to determine what’s “a good enough reason”.
You ask 10 people on this matter and they will give you 10 different answers – no matter how mature and impartial they are. The differences are mostly due to what people expect from their lives, or what they believe the meaning of life to be (or whether something like that exists).
So after all its up to you to figure out if suicide is rational or not. No one has ever lived through what you have lived through and thus no one will ever know whether in your case suicide is rational.
Of course there are those people (mostly ones that have never experienced depression) who think about suicide only as a mental illness. They will tell you things like “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” And they will tell you that suicide is selfish etc. But like I said: Not having experienced depression these people are in no position to judge your decisions.
Anyways, I think suicide is not a ‘good’ choice and I know many depressed persons are convinced suicide is good in their situation where it is not. I even catch myself having these thoughts, and later I realize how biased my thoughts were.
I agree that there are situations where suicide might be the ‘correct’ decision (it is never ‘good’), but this decision has to be taken very carefully.
If you think suicide is legitimate in your situation, you better rethink it, and rethink it and repeat doing that a 100 times, sleep over it a 100 times, talk to people about it etc. Only after you have done all this you can come to the conclusion that suicide really is legitimate.
Just to add this here: If you see someone (including me) telling you they know suicide is rational, they are most likely wrong. Firstly they don’t know your life and they cannot judge the legitimacy of suicide in your case, and secondly it is MOST PROBABLE that suicide isn’t even legitimate in their case.
@c4
have to run now, will comment later, but i did see million dollar baby, which imho was an incredibly good and sensitive movie
@cdl
the judgement as to the ‘legitimacy’ of a suicide would by definition have to come from outside (‘rational, impartial’) observers, since, obviously, the subjectivity of the person involved in intense pain can not make an decision that’s divorced from his/her own pain
Suicide usually seems like a really bad idea for everyone except for the person considering it.
If you take pain out of the equation there is no point in making the decision in the firsts place.
Also you’re saying there is some absolute “legitimacy”-scale which definitely tells you whether any decision is legitimate or not. If that were the case you would need foundation on which you base the legitimacy of your actions, and that is called morality. Of course morality isn’t absolute, that every society, every culture and even every person has there own moral beliefs.
Thus the legitimacy of your actions isn’t absolute as well: If according to your morality suicide is a legitimate action, there will always be someone who tells you that according to their beliefs suicide would be wrong in your situation.
You don’t have to be in pain to desire nonexistence. It could be a matter of simply not wanting to participate in life.
“Go to school, get a job, find a mate, procreate. Buy a house, fill it up with shit you could easily live without, then get in debt and be a drone”. Not everyone wants to live that dream.
Death sounds calm, tranquil and serene. I was dead for millions of years before I was born and I’ve got no complaints about that time period.
“I’d rather be dead than be dependent on others for the
rest of my life.” – Same here. Being unable to support oneself sounds like a very valid reason to commit suicide.
Assisted dying is prohibited in a lot of countries. It’s a complicated issue that’s difficult to implement ethically. I believe sympathisers form the majority in any western democracy when the decision is made in extraordinary circumstances e.g medical grounds. It has to be a situation worse than death for death to be deemed acceptable to the reasonable person. However, when the decision is made where the reason for doing so is ambiguous, not visible (mental illness), the simpler the perceived solution the less popular it is. The pain has to be such that a reasonable person is capable of understanding.
It’s not important. I doubt very much someone who is in the process of taking their life would give any thought to what a reasonable stranger thinks. If I say to someone ‘don’t kill yourself’ they are perfectly entitled to disregard what I’m saying. They should make up their own mind. There life/death doesn’t affect me.
I think consideration should be given to people who have invested in a persons life, people who might be capable of even making a difference in your life. Ultimately, everyone is entitled to kill themselves because it’s their life.
Your name is on the title deeds even if someone else might have paid the mortgage. You’re free to sell the property, give it away or burn it to the ground.
Actually, I’m not talking about morals at all. Apart from ‘existential’ suicide — which, in fact, a whole school of ancient Chinese artists and thinkers partook in, because they were ‘tired or bored of living’, almost all considerations of suicide — especially on this site — delve from intense pain, either psychic, physical, or social.
My appeal is to total compassion, not judgement: the point being, that there are situations, where a given individual is in suicidal ideation (or worse), when a more contextual knowledge of the world, would say that that is not the path to least suffering. A good example is a young boy or girl who has broken up with their first love/romance. That person might intensely feel like killing him/herself, but we know that in 99.99999 % such cases the person winds up surviving and finding future romantic partners. Thus, the supposed trigger — the breakup of the relationship, which at the time can make one feel like another relationship will never be found, and that therefore suicide is the only solution to a life of guaranteed eternal pain — is not the best path to minimized suffering, since it’s more than likely that that person will find fulfillment in this realm in the future.
My question was whether there were situations — granted that the details vary case by case, and thus, it’s impossible to generalize — where relevant and accurate contextual knowledge about the world, in fact indicate that further living will not diminish the pain.
There are a host of reasons why suicide is legitimite. Like many other people (more than you realize because you’re probably never going to encounter us out in public, most are in hospital, institutions or nursing homes) I was born with serious birth defects. Nothing medically can be done, even a diagnosis of the actual condition has not been made in 20+ years of seeking. I do have a multitude of malformations especially of the face,skin, intestines, bladder, and brain. I often struggle with breathing. Many of us simply were born without being fully formed. I can tell you it is a gruesome life, involving extreme deprivation, humiliation, boredom, social rejection and constant surgeries. The fact is that society keeping people like me alive is just plain evil.
But you don’t need to have birth defects to find suicide to be the only rational choice. This is a violent world anyone can see that. And for many it is not a world that is in the slightest bit enjoyable. I am deeply opposed to animal suffering. I am opposed to any practices that are not vegan. Why should I be forced to live in a world that does allow animal suffering and there is nothing I can do about it.
We don’t sign on the dotted line a contract for consent to come here. That choice is made by others. We have every right to refuse the terms and find a way out.
@rach
I think you misunderstood me: my argument is precisely that to maximize compassion, there might indeed be situations where suicide is the most compassionate path. Your post points to that. Please don’t think that I am being judgmental: I am 180% removed from that. All I want is to remove suffering: which, in a nutshell, is the sole human imperative.
Be well,
Ira