I know it’s not entirely natural but is suicide somewhere near natural selection? It’s all about weeding out the weak and those that either have no more use to the environment or aren’t able to survive anyway. Not all people committing suicide fit this category but I do.
I thought about this today – when I get the courage to end myself, I’ll take my genes with me right? So no chance to reproduce (not that I ever would have the chance up any way) but in a way that’s just evolution doing its work. My weak and pathetic physical genes will be lost, my stupid thoughts, values and morals won’t be passed down so essentially I’ve allowed a superior human being to take my place in the evolution chain and further progress humanity in a positive manner than if I ever subjected a woman and the world – especially a child – to the humiliation of breeding with me.
So really the more people who are fucked like I am that take their life without breeding the less fucked our future generations should be, in theory I guess? The world does not need more people like me i tell you.
Does anyone else see their suicide or death as a positive for humanity in this evolution sense? I do now and probably am at the most comfortable with my decision than I ever have been. Now i have irrefutable justification.
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I’ve wondered this too. If a dog or a deer crosses the road and gets struck and killed, it won’t get a chance to reproduce and pass along it’s unobservant genes. The animal that dies as a result of errant judgment didn’t choose to die though; it was just stupid.
With people it’s different. Choosing to die isn’t the same as dying accidentally. Is overriding the will to live nature’s way of thinning out the herd? Are suicidal people weaker members of the species who’s passing benefits the greater whole, or are they just mentally disturbed individuals with a faulty thought process? Idk.
I do believe that suicidal people believe their reasons are valid when it comes to taking their own life. Does their suicide actually benefit society as a whole? In most cases no, but in some cases yes.
I believe this can be true. While suicide itself isn’t necessarily a part of natural selection, pain (the root cause) and its affects seem to be a natural occurrence. I don’t believe this is due to a direct function, rather it’s simply an unfortunate side-effect. For example, good genes and the positive attention or sociability it elicits produces greater propagation, and of course bad genes end up producing a lesser chance of propagation because they are not as desired.
The unbearable aspect is likely an unfortunate result of how the principle of pain works, having been formed by evolution. As with when you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain tells you to take it away, and anything bad has the same affect. However, the pain that comes with being ugly, stupid, etc., cannot be simply solved as you would by removing your hand from a hot stove (sometimes it can’t be solved at all). Due to the principle of pain being simplistic in the idea of having your hand on a hot stove (as I understand it), it doesn’t discern between when you can’t control what is bad or when you’ve had enough of it. Basically, it’s akin to being unable to remove your hand from the hot stove, yet you understand you need to, the pain doesn’t stop (and is also much worse than it needs to be to get your attention), and now you’re also scarred for life.
I find it troublesome that life can seem amazing due to its complexity (I would almost simply call it convoluted), yet the function is problematic. There seems to be nothing in place to account for the degrees of pain and the context of that pain.
As far as I’m concerned, though, it isn’t really all that clear. Evolution doesn’t have an intention, and humans are far too stupid to have steered evolution towards the existence we are in; even if we directly wanted a specific design, we couldn’t start propagating it until it actually appeared. Propagating something like pain and to its current affects would take an incredibly long time and I doubt we could coordinate something similar even with full cooperation and in our current technological age. I imagine the principle started as something incredibly minute and burgeoned without reason governing it’s development; all lifeforms that ended up with the principle had less likelihood of genetic flaws and therefore outperformed those without in this resource driven system. I see this as a morose irony, having been born on the “winning team”.
I hope any of this made sense, because honestly it’s the rambling of some who just sits down and gets lost in his own head, and the head being of potentially questionable quality. What I’m trying to get at is that if you’re feeling like life is telling you, you need to die, it’s not. That doesn’t mean there isn’t pain, or that you’re not lonely, or that this existence is going to get any better. All it means is that you’re not necessarily meant to die, as if that’s the grand scheme of the universe.
It’s not much comfort to me, personally. I think it still blows no matter how I look at it, but you’re not me and I find perspective to be a key component to self-worth and happiness; e.g. I wasn’t always depressed, yet existence is quintessentially the same. For me, the only thing that has changed is my perspective, though for others I realize there are very real health concerns which are more than just perspective.
As a side note – non-suicidal people are not necessarily better. There are plenty of people who want to continue to live, yet they tear down the fabric of their very own species in any number of inane ways (sometimes they have fantastic genes, too). Don’t let those optimistic a-holes get you down and make you think you’re inferior because they lack what is needed to give a fudge, namely, a conscience.
No, because a lot of suicidal people/ people who commit suicide leave behind children.
Depression and other mental illnesses are more prevalent in families but there is insufficient to evidence of a genetic link although it is likely.
Xanadu said something about us being the winners, the product of natural selection. He might have a point. Generally people tend not to refer to humans in that way because it’s unethical. I think it’s because Hitler built a human stud farm to create a race of super humans. We can’t just kill off all the ugly people.
People who are successful commit suicide and it’s not always through mental illness. What is to say all suicidal people are mentally weak anyway? Even if we were genetically modified people wold still commit suicide because you have to consider the social factors.
Have you ever wondered how all the undesirable people are able to reproduce and perpetuate the human race? It’s miraculous. We are living at a time when it’s never been easier because there are a lot more options available for these people – plastic surgery, mediation, welfare system etc.
Technically, yes. Any death that prevents reproduction is part of natural selection. But your suggestion that a trait exists which tells faulty individuals to suicide in order to improve the species as a whole is rather unlikely to be true. Individuals don’t know whether they are “faulty” or not, this is decided only through their interaction with a given environment and their chance of survival and reproduction. Furthermore nowadays genetics which cant be changed are rarely the main reason for natural selection. It’s rather social, cultural, economic factors that determine whether you reproduce or not. And these factors are very dynamic, meaning if you consider yourself faulty now, you may very well change and be a fit individual in a couple of years.
Don’t mistake evolution as a system of values by which you can act though. It is not. It’s just a scientific theory and it gives us insight into how we developed to be who we are. Evolution shouldn’t be the motivation for anything you do, because you’re not your genes but rather the consciousness that lives as a consequence of the interaction of those genes.
I have the same thoughts.
I’m not normal. I am a closet trans, asexual, and possibly gay. When there was a moment I was normal for this one person, whom I thought loved me, I had feelings to want a family. I wanted to actually get married. I saw a future. I could reproduce. Because I fell in love.
but now that this person is gone I felt like a failed human. I should be eliminated for the sake of natural selection. No one should ever breed with me.