When it comes to what one “should” do, it seems to me there are different standards. There’s the pure, selfless, self-sacrificing standard, where you do what’s best for the group, regardless of the cost to yourself. We encourage people who follow that kind of standard by labelling them heroes (or saints), and remembering their deeds even after their death.
As appealing as that kind of validation is, I don’t aspire to that standard. Probably because I’m far too morally tainted to ever be regarded as “pure” or “virtuous”, no matter what I do. But when I am minded to consider the wellbeing of others, I generally end up reaching for some form of “enlightened self-interest”. By which I suppose I mean balancing the negative impacts of your actions on others against the positive benefits for yourself.
For some things this is relatively straightforward. If I’m thinking clearly, I’m not going to do something that puts others at great risk of severe suffering, if all it’s going to provide for me is a temporary buzz. On the other hand, if I thought something was likely to significantly reduce my own suffering, I would feel justified in pursuing it, even if it temporarily aggravated or inconvenienced others.
But when it comes to suicide, it gets confusing. I have this deep pain within me, that I can’t see ever being resolved. Which seems to overshadow any small positive experiences that might remain in my life. So it feels like ending my life would overall be for the best, in terms of my own experience. Return to dust, re-join the planet, the life-cycle, however you want to conceptualize it. Become something that isn’t this particular human brain, with its absurd neurotic generation of unnecessary suffering.
Except when I consider the impacts on my family, I can see it producing similar kinds of pain within them, which could easily overshadow the rest of their lives.
This is where my capacity to reason it out starts to break down. The pain within my mind is not a small thing. It’s not agonizing, but more like a dull ache. Like I’ve lost a limb, and the wound’s closed over, but it won’t ever heal, or I still feel the ache from the phantom limb. I can bear it, in the sense that I’m not screaming or sobbing. But I’m just kind of… numb. I don’t want to live like this. This isn’t living. Everything feels… wrong, all the time. I wake up hating the world, longing for something else. And I go to sleep with this deep sense of absence, that something essential is missing. And in between I attempt to distract myself.
So it’s not like it’s a minor thing, a petty desire, to no longer feel this way. In a sense, I need to not exist anymore, for the world to be made right. And it seems like that’s something I should prioritize pretty highly over most ethical concerns.
But set against that is the potential of generating a similar feeling within my 3 immediate family members (combined with ripple effects on others.) Which is one of the worst things I could do to someone. Maybe that would feel justified if it was required to actually provide me with a happy, positive life. But if all I get for it is the negation of my painful existence… I have no idea.
It may all be irrelevant anyway, since the emotional will to survive seems to trump any rational or ethical consideration. But I wish I could get it straight in my mind, whether or not plunging loved ones into suffering was justified in order to end your own.
1 comment
Hi
you touch it a bit but commit to it. You may want to look into utilitarianism as moral guideline.
shortform: you want to maximize overall positive impact and/or minimize overall negative impact.
Keep in mind, you are also a variable in this equation. So if you get more positive impact (or your negative impact gets decreased more) than somebody else gets negative impact the action is permissible.
concerning how to evaluate your suicide in consideration of your family members here are a couple of thoughts:
1. compare their expected suffering with your expected suffering. Keep in mind generally people cope with live changing events a lot better than expected.
And also the death of a close one seem to lead to more suffering the more sudden it is.
With suicide a lot of suffering is also caused because of uncertainty and self blame.
so their are ways to reduce their suffering substantially if wanted.
There will be a limited period of time, where large suffering of your close relatives is expected (after the act of suicide). After that it will most likely decrease a lot and just be an occasional happening.
i.e. i talked with a friend of mine how she still suffers from the death of her grandmother. if asked closely how much/how many times, it came to about 1-2 times a month for an evening or so.
so now compare that with your suffering. like if they get a large negative impact 1-3 days a week for up to 6 hours. (Which is already really a lot after the initial grieving period). to your current experienced and expected suffering. (i suspect daily or almost daily for multiple hours)
so from an utilitarian perspective (most commonly adopted) it would be a correct choice. except you value yourself quite a bit less than your relatives.
2. Do you think they want you to continue to live if they know your suffering just for their sake?
most likely not (at least when confronted). Except they are extremely selfish. And in this case i would argue it is better to keep them out of your live in the future.
In my case my friends would be sad if i finally suicide myself. But mostly because of selfish reasons of not having the benefits of my company anymore. They understand my position and sometimes can be even happy for me since it is the better choice for me.
There are also other possibilities to reason. but i will leave it at that for now. It should already be pretty convincing and sometimes it is better to not know too much.