Suicide is difficult because you contemplate about it.
But when death happens by itself, it hardly takes a minute or two for the process to complete itself and we are done.
In other words, suicide is difficult because we have a choice. Death is easy because we have no choice. Isn’t that just stupid?
11 comments
I have been contemplating the same thing. I was flying an aircraft one morning with only me in it. It nearly became a disabled aircraft as it started taking on ice and it had no equipment to prevent or remove it. Fog was thick and I was descending blindly even with the engine at full power. I was hoping I could reach the runway before hitting an obstacle. It seemed death was just going to happen, despite my best efforts to prevent it. I mean I had emotion for sure but it seems even that emotion was quelled by some kind of disassociation distancing me from what certainly seemed like imminent death. Not that bad really. If I died, I died.
But contemplating death is almost infinitely harder. You are so right.
PS: I did resolve to prevent another such aircraft icing event so as to prevent loss of husband, father, and aircraft. I raised my weather minimums after that event.
Death isn’t easy-unless you mean the actual moment. But for most people it’s slow and painful-people getting cancer and other diseases, dying of loneliness, etc.
Suicide is difficult not because of the contemplation but because there is no reliable method that is without pain and most people avoid it because of that and the possibility they might survive and experience brain-damage, paralysis, broken bones, etc.
What really bugs me is that we would not need these websites if euthanasia was freely available to anyone. Just imagine we have medical experts who have drugs that can quickly, safely and reliably end our lives.
But we are prevented from doing so by self-appointed do-gooders who think they know better than us and think they have the right to stop us from ending a bad life, a life we never asked for or chose but were forced to live out. Our fellow human beings who wouldn’t flinch for one second to put their suffering pets down will fight us tooth and nail to stop us from doing to same to ourselves.
Frankly I think that’s where all of us who support suicide/self-termination should focus our energies on. To force our governments to provide euthanasia to anyone that requests it. Some nations already do, like Holland…here in Canada it’s offered to the terminally ill but they’re slowly relaxing the rules, still fairly strict. Hopefully in time it’ll be available to more people (say the mentally ill/depressed, etc).
No one should ever be put in a position of trying a dangerous risky method to end their life, but sadly that’s what over a million people in the US per year are forced to do.
Thanks for you comment. Yes, life is basically forced upon us in the US by manipulating the access to deadly items and even some structures plus allowing almost anyone to interfere with a suicidal act or intent in most cases. I “owe” my existence to such things and am trying to go on with life but for how long I do not know. Thanks again for your concise comment.
You’re welcome, thanks for your thoughtful response. Agreed-society makes it deliberately difficult for people to end their own lives.
You even hear some of the ridiculous arguments being made on this site, empty platitudes which do nothing to change anyone’s life like “hang in there, it’ll get better.” How do you know? Why lie to people? Yes in some cases if someone really works hard, they want to live, then they can improve their life, but for what purpose? In the end we all die anyways. Those who want to keep living will find a reason and a way to do so-like I have. But those who sincerely want to die should have their wish respected and society should accommodate it.
I know of a relative who had a child-they were informed by the doctors he may have developmental difficulties and they could’ve aborted. They chose not to, he was mildly retarded and had difficulty learning things other kids take for granted. He’s now in his 20s and still talks at the level of a 10 yr old.
They sent him to special schools, had tutors, spend all this money just so he could try to keep up-but he barely scraped by. It would’ve been better for him and everyone else if he was aborted.
Unfortunately this is where we are as a society, I think it may take many more generations till people wise up and have a better appreciation for life and when it should be terminated.
The biggest culprit behind this is religion and ignorance. Idiots who think life was a ‘gift’ from some magic invisible/imaginary sky man, rather than a simple act of biology. Fortunately Christianity is dying rapidly, thanks to the internet-in a generation they’ll be a minority and will stop forcing their medieval dark ages beliefs on the rest of us.
@itsme As a basic freedom, life should be something we can individually accept or reject. As far as I know this was the way of it until perhaps 2000 years ago. First government bodies began to frown on suicide and later so did some Christian organizations. That last one is an irony indeed.
I have seen many a challenged child live a prolonged marginal life. Being lethally under weight at birth, I am one of them. I appears I survived mostly because of medical heroics. I am not sure to this day if the child really benefits from this. I don’t see how I did. The life I was left to live has been a non-stop challenge. Seems the medical system of the day was unethical to say the least.
The apparent Christian preoccupation with life preservation when it is not in the best interests of the individual seems quite odd. Their Bible does not teach this. Mine doesn’t anyway. Yeah I don’t get it either. Not at all.
Well thanks for commenting. What a screwed up thing forced living is.
@a1957
Agreed and well said. The trouble with all religions is that they came up with a simple set of ideas and declared they are untouchable (doctrine) that must be adhered to at all times and regardless of any changing circumstances or new evidence.
Actually the older religions/polytheism were far wiser and more in tune with life, nature and reality like Greek/Roman/Hindu mythology, compared to the desert dogmas/Abrahamic religions. Sadly few people are ever exposed to these alternate ways of thinking/knowing, we have a pretty dumbed down education system.
Sorry to hear what you had to go through. That’s the problem, it’s this fixation on preserving life at any cost that causes so much misery and suffering for people, which is entirely ignored. Ethics/compassion needs to derive from reality, the reduction/prevention of harm, rather than some ideals concocted by primitive peasants from 2000 years ago.
Times are changing-ever so slowly but reason is beginning to trickle into the minds of the masses, just not fast enough. And some people continue to cling to ignorance, but hopefully in time we’ll come to recognize life is not sacrosanct and people’s desires should take precedent above all else.
In my case I didn’t like my parents or the life I was given-we were poor most of our lives and due to my mother’s strict Christianity, I was deprived of having a good social life, watching the tv shows my friends got to watch, etc. It’s only when I hit my teens, I rebelled against her idiotic rules and things improved, but it was pointless suffering.
However to there credit there were decent parents, there are far, far worse parents than them so that’s the only thing I was grateful for, but I lead a largely unhappy, deprived life because of them. There were plenty of times I would’ve committed suicide if it was something easy to do.
There are things about life that make it worth living and knowing I’ll never have another one, that’s the only reason I still keep going but there are days I don’t care and would rather not be around. No problem and you’re right, life should never be forced on anyone but unfortunately it is and we’re stuck dealing with the consequences.
“The biggest culprit behind this is religion and ignorance.”
I believe the biggest culprits are corporations and rich fake-do-gooders using the ignorance religion provided to feed their egos and benefit off it by inflating their good public image to gain more trust and attention for profits. If it weren’t for that, I bet they’d all be glad to let all of the poor die by consent and avoid over-population. If assisted suicide was allowed, they’d be losing profit by losing underpaid/cheap workers who live shit lives washing dishes and taking out trashes. If all the unhappy poor died, who’s going to serve the rich? I doubt a content middle-class person would ever choose to clean toilets for a living.
It’s basically slavery in disguise. Would a slave owner let his slave die because he was unhappy and miserable with his life?
@PGZ
I think that’s partly the answer too-but you’d be surprised, some low-level, uneducated people are fine with their lives doing menial jobs, because they don’t know any better.
Capitalism is slavery in general, but we need it-otherwise food wouldn’t get made and delivered, cars, airplanes, entertainment shows, etc are necessary for society to function.
I believe most people are born with an innate desire to live, that’s why some people keep going on regardless of how much they suffer. Very few consider suicide-so if all the people who wanted to die were granted their wish, most of the remaining would keep on living, even if their lives sucked.
As they saying goes: “fools consider religion to be true, the intelligent consider it false and the rulers consider it to be useful.” So the rich are fine with religion so long as it keeps people under control. At the same time it is the perversion of ethics/morality that is preventing euthanasia from being fully available to everyone-forcing people to find other, bad ways to die.
You’re right. Because even the poorest and saddest ones can hang onto hope and ambitions of self improvements, otherwise, how else could we have come so far from old cave days. I was speaking of the ones who are already suicidal and only hung on because they are afraid of failing their own suicide. If assisted suicide were legal, they’d all be lining up for it and not just the poor, because sometimes social status has nothing to do with wanting to quit. I was just theorizing a situation where if all the suicidal people had a sure failproof option, they wouldn’t think twice about it and the ones remaining would move on and take THEIR shitty jobs but with less competition means raising pays and that means the rich lose profit by losing cheaper labors who hung onto their low pay shitty jobs because they were easily replaceable and once that is no longer to their advantages, the economy would shift out of the rich’s favor. More poor = more competitions = more desperation = more willing to be underpaid = profiting the rich. Our world is a complicated place.
Th programmer might just be sadistic.