I think I can safely say we’ve all heard this one before. “Don’t kill yourself, it’s selfish… Think about all the people around you? How they would feel ”
Who here actually feels like suicide is a selfish act?
I personally say this to people who told me this. Maybe suicide is selfish but you can’t forget humans are selfcentered beings.
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I’m iffy about this. On one hand I can see why people would say it’s selfish, but on the other hand wouldn’t it be safe to say making someone exist while they’re in a lot of pain for your own stability equally selfish? Sure there’s ways to get help but telling someone they’re selfish for even considering suicide is not a good idea.
I think sometimes we have to do something for ourselves.
If a pirate captain finds all a treasure chest of gold with his crew and keeps all of it for himself, that is selfish. If he shares the wealth among the crew, but still wants to keep a piece for himself, then that is not selfish. We have to do consider ourselves sometimes too. It is when you consider yourself and not others where it becomes selfish. Will your suicide hurt somebody? Likely, at least one (excluding those who will just feel pity). We have to consider them, but for our own sake, we have to maybe cast something negative on others for our own release. I don’t find it selfish because those people who may care have a life of their own. And before I came into that life, it was no different. I would feel bad, but content in knowing I didn’t take anything away by taking myself away.
I don’t get it when people say ‘it’s a cry for help either’. Death doesn’t necessarily bring that help. I think it’s something we have to think about while thinking about the act. If you are desperate for that help, I think it comes in another way.
I read a debate on this and a quote in particular I liked was: “Only people who have never ‘been there’ would see this as selfish.
Or another one: “Forcing somebody to live in pain so YOU can be happy is selfish”.
The person who calls it selfish, will never know your whole story. I don’t think so. I understand both sides of the argument, and also see truth in both. This promotes choice, not pro-death.
I think I agree with both of you in the way that having people stay alive in pain is equally selfish to taking your own life to the cost of the happyness of those around you. Especially you StruggleOn with your quotes have made it a very clear point ^^.
I get both sides of the argument too, but I don’t really believe it’s a selfish act. If death is the last release you can find, why would it be considered selfish to do it?
I’ve asked this before to family who I’ve discussed my suicidal ideas with. What’s so different about dying in a freak accident as opposed to dying by your own means? I mean yeah, I guess it’s more traumatic for people when a loved one kills themselves, and either way you die is awful, but still. We all die eventually, so why do we have to wait in pain? And don’t get me started on “Only God can choose who lives and dies” . Like I told my uncle, “whether or not I give up is up to me, and whatever happens after is up to God and God alone.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love my faith and wouldn’t ever leave it, but my doubts of how God would send us to hell for simply freeing ourselves from…..well, ourselves, would damn us to hell. Sorry to go off on a tangent. There’s so many things I could say about this topic. Sometimes it gets so painful for us that death seems like the best option available.
Buscetti,
The difference between dying in a freak accident, and by your own hand can be said like so: If somebody in your life has been your inspiration, and tried to help you only as much as you let them in, then you dying could possibly make them feel like a failure. It could make them feel like they didn’t try enough. In the end, it just might hurt them. In a freak accident, they may be just as traumatized but they wouldn’t get a feeling of failure. Because that’s something they REALLY couldn’t help.
Were you (our parents) being selfish when they decided to bring and keep us in this world? Lol. No, I’m kidding.
I can see both sides of the argument. I just feel that if I am in enough pain, let me be the judge of what
And that quote out, “a permanent end to a temporary problem.”–you’re just an outsider looking in. You don’t know anyone’s problem(s). Sometimes a person feels a permanent end may be the best solution. I won’t get into afterlife stuff because and every individual is entitled to their own belief system.
Selfish? Maybe. But I hate it when people try to undermine or diminish my pain by trying to compare my life to some poor little, malnutritioned kid in a third world country with no drinking water. Yes his/her life sucks. But that doesn’t disregard the fact that I’m in pain and suffering from a great deal of depression myself.
@artNHeaven
Yes, That’s another one of those cards I hate getting pulled. “But the poor children in Africa…” my answer to that (yes I have an answer to everything it seems xd) ‘well I don’t see them being depressed, at least they’ve got something to fight for.
Lets not get into the subject of the trancendant, like art said, it’s too individual 🙂
I understand your point StuggleOn. Sometimes I think we all get overwhelmed by all of the emotions of our own and from others we look to find a justifiable answer to why suicide is well….justifiable. Another one of those hard to answer questions lol….
Childbirth is the most selfish thing anyone could ever do. Suicide is to undo something that you didn’t want done to you.
Childbirth is the most selfish thing anyone could ever do. Suicide is to undo something that you didn’t want done to you.
Childbirth is the most selfish thing anyone could ever do. Suicide is to undo something that you didn’t want done to you.
Childbirth is the most selfish thing anyone could ever do. Suicide is to undo something that you didn’t want done to you.
ha! Suicide is not selfish; it is selfish to accuse someone in so much pain of that.
I know I’ve said before that like many of us, we never asked to be born, why do we have to live? I can understand why this thought can be seen as selfish….I’ve been told we all have a purpose, why else would we be here? I hate that. If I at least knew a small hint of what my so called purpose was maybe I could fight to live for that….you know?
Our main purpose is to continue our species, reproduction and preservation of mankind. That is the clear cut answer. Anything beyond that is purely a spiritual ideation or opinion. All life forms do a great job of this(within reason), but where humans differ, we search for a philosophical answer. The only group that has the ability to ask,”why are we here?” All the other animals in the kingdom carry on with that question vacant from their existence.
@bipolar
A humans purpose is too put more humans on earth yes.
The thing is, we’re not the only species on earth who commits suicide. I know for a fact (out of personal experiance) that sheep kill themselves too.
@buscetti
I always tell people who pull the ‘everyone has a purpose’ card on me, this: “What if my purpose is to die” What if you commiting suicide , that very ‘selfish’ act will change people around you, and perhaps that was the purpose of your existance.
When the sheep commit suicide, do they typically leave notes?
Do the sheep’s family and peers have any influence on the likelihood of death?
Wondering if therapy changes the outlook for sheep when they are in their dark places?
Are the police called when sheep commit suicide?
If you count blood smeared all over the wall they do? They do however have the tendancy to commit suicide in groups.
If you’d like a more intelligent creature that has been known to commit suicide. Dolphins. Unlike us, they can choose to drown and are actually intelligent enough to feel depressed. I’m going to look up if there has been a study on suicide in animals now.
My point is, humans aren’t the only ones that kill themselves. If even animals do it, why do we still consider it selfish 😕
It’s considered selfish because other people’s feelings are involved. It’s not a popular choice for “the group”, even though it’s our decision
Are we supposed to care about animal suicide? I guess we should be felt with it. But then, what are we to do to stop it? Humans have the strongest free will, which is why there is so much focus on our concept of suicide. There is an account of a sheep who even jumped from a cliff. Or the 61 whales that beached themselves in NZ. Or perhaps the dog who repeatedly tried killing itself by drowning. What if it’s just a mental disorder in an animal though? I mean, can animals die from becoming depressed from a death or neglect? I don’t know. When I was studying animal suicide I came across a passage:
“Over 40 years ago, Dolphin trainer Richard O’Barry watched Kathy, a dolphin in the 1960s television show Flipper, kill herself. Or so he says. “She was really depressed… You have to understand dolphins and whales are not [involuntary] air breathers like we are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. They can end their life whenever. She swam into my arms and looked me right in the eye, took a breath and didn’t take another one. I let her go and she sank straight down on her belly to the bottom of the tank,” said O’Barry.
The suicide of Flipper is an urban myth
Bipolar American,
People’s feelings will be involved with most things. We come to a certain point, where we have to look past some things and THEN decide. But there is a difference between selfishness and self respect. Sometimes we have to take something for ourselves, as long as we aren’t being ignorant of whoever’s on the other side. We can be aware that somebody would hurt, but learn they won’t hurt forever, and your life won’t take their’s away. So if you aren’t bringing anything down permanently, it is not selfish.
And whether the story of Flipper is a myth or not, the message is what I look at when I think about animal suicide. Something similar must have happened at one point . . . and were the feeling like that?