Suicide, an open poll
It's been a weird day to be a therapist. Days like today, I don't like my job so much.
An interesting ethical/moral question arose after my last session of the day, which was with a girl who is chronically and persistently suicidal (and quite frankly has every reason to be).
Is suicide really always a bad call? We preserve life at almost all ( Read more... )
An interesting ethical/moral question arose after my last session of the day, which was with a girl who is chronically and persistently suicidal (and quite frankly has every reason to be).
Is suicide really always a bad call? We preserve life at almost all ( Read more... )
Interesting question. I think the first thing you must do before answering it is to determine what is it about suicide that makes it, as a general rule, wrong?
A utilitarian argument would be that when a person kills him/herself, it generally leads to an increase in the overall unhappiness of the people around them, either directly or indirectly. Under this approach, suicide becomes justifiable if a person's own unhappiness is greater than or equal to the amount of unhappiness they would create by the act of suicide. Strict utilitarianism would even go so far as to say that you could be morally obligated to commit suicide. This happens if killing yourself would create more happiness in the world than anything you are able to do while alive.
Does being alive and healthy confer some obligation to go on living? If so, what is the source of that obligation? If not, and if no one else's survival depends on your own, is killing yourself ever truly "wrong"? Is it ever really wrong to destroy something that is yours and yours alone?
A fine suicide counselor I turned out to be ;)
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However, I think that there is a definite point where there's no turning back and there's no way that you're going to be able to make up for the amount of hurt that you've caused, even if you do a whole lot of good in the mean time. Now, I think that that point is really really really far down the line. There's almost always something that you could do to turn things around, karmically. There's hardly ever such a karmic hole that you couldn't dig yourself out of. Even horrible Nazi war criminals could have, spurred on by a sudden feeling of remorse, tried to dig themselves out of the karmic hole they'd found their way into. Sometimes, trying counts as something. Now, if you can't bring yourself to try, for some reason or another...
That's a whole different kettle of fish.
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I think that the idea of potential matters here. I'd wager that there is almost always potential for redemption, good, change, and betterment. But the ability to grasp that potential... that's kind of a trickier thing. Even those who bring themselves to try, as you mentioned, may still fail, and fail spectacularly.
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You've hit where I was going with that great response. Grasping potential. Everyone I think has the potential for great good and great evil. finding the motivation (what's my motivation?) to grasp either of them is the trick, and then being able to follow through. Yes.
Is it better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all?
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Better to have tried and failed... ?
Depends. What is the cost and consequence of failing?
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Typically, unless there's a direct and obviously horrible consequence of failing, it's better than the whatifs that would come later.
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You were a fine suicide counselor indeed.
I would guess that the religious prohibition, and then the legal one, against taking a life extends to one's own. So it's against the law, and depending on dogma it's a ticket to Hell. But is it really morally wrong? I'm inclined to say that there are cases in which to intervene as we are wont to do, and interfere with someone's existential right to choose to die rather than continuing to live is cruel and uncompassionate.
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