Suicide Philosophy: part II
Caveat: I am very interested in the opinions people (including myself) hold and why. I am especially interested in testing the logic/reasoning of those opinions and seeing if they hold up. That kinda thing fascinates me. As such, if any of this comes across as especially pokey or heartless, it's not supposed to, but it is (hopefully) meant to provoke thought and discussion.
This a general continuation of my earlier argument; since it is mostly a bundle of replies to things people have said or suggested it's not going to be a coherent essay, more a collection of points. In fact, points might work best, especially for ease of comment from people...
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
1) Unquantifiable pain.
The trouble with depression and depressive states, is that the pain is mostly hidden and unknowable. Pain, even as a physical sensation, is greatly varied from person to person. Even so we mentally build up a sort of scale that is understandable which starts with 'small bruise' and 'papercut' and goes up through 'broken bone' to 'chronic cancer' and beyond. Even if we have never had a broken leg, we've worked out roughly how much it must hurt. It is so much harder to do this with mental anguish - especially since there is usually no physical manifestation. We can look at the incorrect shape, the vast bruising and swollen flesh around a damaged bone and see clearly that things are very wrong. If someone is depressed there is only their behaviour as a gauge of their pain, and that in itself can be very misleading.
2) Over-reaction / Pull your socks up.
Because emotional pain is so hard to rate, the best we can do is look at the evidence (what is happening to the person in question) and attempt to imagine how we would feel in the same situation. In other words, empathy. However, this is a very flawed tool. To illustrate: an average person runs two miles and feels out of breath and tired at the end of it. An over-weight person who smoked 40 a day would never manage a fifth of that; a Decathlon athlete would complete it thrice before breakfast.
The point is this: just because someone *should* be able to cope with a situation, does not mean they will, nor lessen their distress when they fail to. As an average adult human I should be able to hold my breath for three minutes (or something like that) - I tell you now for free that by then I'd be drowning. The attitude of 'it's not that bad' and 'pull your socks up' is only valid if you know for *certain* that the person in question can survive the situation - otherwise you're just telling someone who's drowning that they should be able to hold their breath for longer.
3) Reaction / Solution.
My father once told me imperiously that suicide was a reaction to a situation and not a solution, and in many ways I have to agree - he's right, it is. Of course it fucking is. But then again, putting on a jumper when you're cold could be filed under the same heading. (The jumper solves your immediate problem but still doesn't make the room any warmer. Humans are animals for all their reasoning, which generally means when solutions are thin on the ground reactions take over.) I've seen this quote around on the net: "A woman wants an abortion the way a fox in a trap wants to chew off its own leg." And the same holds true here.* People do not (unless they really are unhinged) contemplate suicide because they think it might in any way be fun or groovy. They think of ending their life because they feel trapped by their situation and can't see an alternate way out - and their current situation is so abhorrent to them that they wonder whether ceasing to exist** might be better.
4) Guilt.
"You might have seen the end
But you were never able
To keep me breathing
As the water rises up again
Before I slip away..."
Those remaining after someone they care for has committed suicide are usually wracked with guilt. My argument against this links in (kinda) to my notion that those crying at a funeral are weeping for their own loss. (Not because they're selfish bastards, but because you cannot in all reason weep for the deceased.) Guilt says 'I should have acted' and 'I did not do all I could' and 'I am somehow at fault'. This is probably the nastiest and maybe the most hypocritical of all my arguments. In all its stark unpleasantness, it goes like this: get over yourselves.
4B) Guilt - the explanation.
Guilt is the feeling of remorse over something - it shows us that we are very capable of empathy and aren't bastards - that's its good point. But guilt has a lot of bad points, mostly which can be summed up into the term 'histrionic self flagellation'. Let me offer a metaphor. A man is playing fetch with his neighbour's dog. He throws a stick for it; it runs across a road to fetch it and is run over by a truck. The man, the neighbour, the truck driver and a person who witnessed it all feel horrible guilt at the death of the dog. But logically, who actually needs to feel guilt in order to show they are not a monster? The witness? Hardly. The truck driver? Possibly, but only if he wasn't paying attention to the road or was given some warning to the dog's approach. The neighbour? Unlikely, unless they knew the man in question was in the habit of throwing sticks across busy highways. The man who threw the stick? Probably. He likely knew the road was there; on the other hand unless it was deliberate he will have to forgive himself sometime because a miscalculation in throwing a stick does not deserve a lifetime of guilt.
My point is this: in the case of suicide a lot of people feel that they 'could have done more' to help the deceased. But could they really? In amongst the depressed person trying to hide their feelings, in amongst the day to day noise of life, in amongst the gaps of the snapshots you see of someone's existence... given what you knew of the situation, could you really TRULY have done more? I'm willing to bet that in 95% of the situations the answer in all honesty is 'no'. If you're not in that 5%, then the guilt you feel shows that you're a caring empathic human being... who is needlessly beating themselves up because some bit of their brain feels responsible for an unhappy action they had no control over.
5) Waste.
Many people are very adamant that suicide - in any situation - is a waste. In some ways I agree with them. If someone I had a high opinion of killed themselves, I would quite bitterly consider it a waste - a waste of the time we could have spent together, a waste of their potential, a waste of all the things I liked about them which have now gone forever... But there are also arguments against such an opinion. Many people who specifically say 'it's a waste' are vague relatives or acquaintances or ex-friends of the deceased. They knew them almost by proxy, which really means they saw that life only in snapshots and not the inner truth of it. (ie, they knew that person was studying law so envisaged them as a brilliant barrister, but they knew nothing of their day to day struggles which may have effected this future.) In some ways this view makes me feel contemptuous: a thousand thousand people waste not only their lives but the love, money, time and resources of those around them, and yet they are more forgiven than suicides. (Yes, I see why this is, it's because Wastrel Cousin Bob may yet turn to the good, but dead is dead. Stupid bloody hope warping things again.) I think in my opinion you're only allowed to say 'it's a waste they died' if you knew then well and tried to help then through the bad times. If not, you're just like a spectator at a car crash saying words that have little true meaning and only serve to salve your own heart.***
6) Better vs Drowning or the Demon Hope.
Pandora opened her box, all the demons of the world escaped. At the bottom was left Hope. I still maintain Hope is a demon. People often get very upset that someone killed themselves when they are certain that their life 'could have got better'. Here's another metaphor for you. Depression - being at the end of your tether - wanting to die - is like drowning. (And stupid though it may seem, it only takes three inches of water and some bad luck to drown a man.)
Sometimes if you thrash and fight you can keep your head above water. Sometimes no matter how you fight, the current drags you under. And when that happens, it doesn't really matter whether there's a ship on the horizon or not; your lungs are filling with brine and there is only a finite time before you sink to the bottom. Learned people saying you should be able to last three minutes without oxygen don't mean shit: your lungs are sodden and it's mostly up to you and you alone whether you manage to struggle to the surface again or not. Ships on the horizon are no good to a drowning man; he must be saved now or never - and even if he is saved, sometimes the water in his lugs kills him anyway. (That doesn't mean don't try; that just means sometimes there really is nothing you can do.)
7) Death the hard way.
Some people have said that if they were to kill themselves it would be their duty to pick the hardest method possible. If there is logic here I don't follow it. Suicide has upon occasion been termed 'the easy way out'. But I don't think that is very fair. Having personally felt (for extended periods) the weight of emotion that makes one suicidal, and indeed tried to kill myself on three instances - I fail to see what is easy about the thought or the act. I don't think I have ever felt so small, so evil, so guilt-wracked or so desperate as when I've attempted suicide. And for shear pain tolerance, craziness and bloody mindedness I've never encountered anything like it. Whilst I do endorse the sentiment that to live for an ideal or cause shows more courage than to die for it, I'd like to point out to those who don't know just how much courage and conviction suicide takes. I understand that taking the 'hardest way out' ie, the most violent, abhorrent and anathema to you, means that at least you're not doing so out of some pathetic angst fueled ennui... but for fekks sake. Ok - metaphor time. You're hungry. I can understand if you say to yourself 'I should wait 'til the next meal time' or 'I should cook a meal and not just gorge on chocolate'. But saying, 'Am I really hungry?! Am I?! I should go hunt a ((wild creature from another continent)) with my bare hands!! Because to do less shows I'm not hungry - yeah!!' ....Doesn't really follow. Yes, I accept that death is a pretty final thing and therefore should involve a lot of thought. (I did once stop myself from suicide because I thought I was too crazy to make such an important decision.) But I don't really understand the 'I must make this as unbelievably hard as possible' argument unless one is a moron prone to making rash decisions and need dissuading from such.
8) Emotion.
I've been told that one cannot - even logically speaking - be purely detached and unemotional about suicide. I concede that this is correct: unless one is discussing ethics in the broadest of terms then one cannot speak nor act without emotion. And in my case, when I have made it clear I have a vested interest in the subject, emotion can at best only be held at arm's length or admitted as such. It cannot be dismissed entirely because for anyone who knew the deceased, suicide will produce a very emotional reaction. Also, I cannot believe that anyone killed themselves purely with logic and that emotion was absent from the equation.
9) Choice.
We accept with little question when people say 'I want to marry and have ten children - that would make me happy!!!'. Or 'I want to spend my life attempting to translate obsolete and ancient manuscripts which could be as dull as shopping lists for all I know!!'. This is fine. But 'I've looked at all my life previously and all my life that I can see and I figure I'd be better off dead...' Is somehow not fine. In this day and age happiness seems to have achieved the status of a human right - so what gives you the right to decide for me whether I am or will be happy or not?
At A-level I studied 'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolfe. I didn't think much of it. I thought even less of the fact she killed herself 'fearing another depressive episode'. At the age of 17 and having been clinically depressed for two years I felt I knew enough to scorn her cowardice. Had the reason been 'she was depressed, she killed herself' - that I could have understood. But 'She got better and then killed herself for fear it happened again' - that I could not forgive. I understand the present. I scorn fear of the future even though I argue one should be allowed to make choices based on the likely outcome of future events. Am I hypocritical? Oh I'm damn sure I am. But, despite my bitching and my arguments and counter arguments... I must agree (at least in theory) with Kieron. He claimed that suicide was a human right - if perfectly healthy animals in cages could choose to die and do so then humans sure as hell could. (I argued against, since it was Kieron being difficult, and since I'd swore 5 years of my life to him - but that's another story.)
10) Conclusion.
In conclusion: despite the feelings of guilt, frustration, confusion and a myriad of other negative emotions felt, one must admit that if one's life is one's own then one's death may be also. You might not agree with friend XX's huge weight gain or friend YY's 50-a-day-habit (etc etc etc) but in the end - it's their life. They are responcible for it, not you. If they, for whatever reason, choose to fekk it up or end it (and why people are more lenient for the fekking up I really don't know sometimes) that is their choice. If you believe in free choice (yeah yeah, within the bounds of lawful permissive society****) then you have to accept suicide is valid.
...Don't you?
=======
*There is a sub argument about abortion I could get into, but let's save that one for later, hmm?
** Again, for now, let's leave religion and thoughts of the afterlife out of it as much as possible and say for the sake of absolute simplicity that there is life and death and that's it.
*** Yes, this is a harsh opinion. If it causes you to react badly please try to consider why that is and then give me a counter argument. As before, if it comes down to pure emotion please acknowledge the fact. (I'm not discounting emotional argument, I'm just trying to keep it in a separate category to reason.)
**** Let's not have an argument on law - I really don't have the energy or the mental capacity.
This a general continuation of my earlier argument; since it is mostly a bundle of replies to things people have said or suggested it's not going to be a coherent essay, more a collection of points. In fact, points might work best, especially for ease of comment from people...
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
1) Unquantifiable pain.
The trouble with depression and depressive states, is that the pain is mostly hidden and unknowable. Pain, even as a physical sensation, is greatly varied from person to person. Even so we mentally build up a sort of scale that is understandable which starts with 'small bruise' and 'papercut' and goes up through 'broken bone' to 'chronic cancer' and beyond. Even if we have never had a broken leg, we've worked out roughly how much it must hurt. It is so much harder to do this with mental anguish - especially since there is usually no physical manifestation. We can look at the incorrect shape, the vast bruising and swollen flesh around a damaged bone and see clearly that things are very wrong. If someone is depressed there is only their behaviour as a gauge of their pain, and that in itself can be very misleading.
2) Over-reaction / Pull your socks up.
Because emotional pain is so hard to rate, the best we can do is look at the evidence (what is happening to the person in question) and attempt to imagine how we would feel in the same situation. In other words, empathy. However, this is a very flawed tool. To illustrate: an average person runs two miles and feels out of breath and tired at the end of it. An over-weight person who smoked 40 a day would never manage a fifth of that; a Decathlon athlete would complete it thrice before breakfast.
The point is this: just because someone *should* be able to cope with a situation, does not mean they will, nor lessen their distress when they fail to. As an average adult human I should be able to hold my breath for three minutes (or something like that) - I tell you now for free that by then I'd be drowning. The attitude of 'it's not that bad' and 'pull your socks up' is only valid if you know for *certain* that the person in question can survive the situation - otherwise you're just telling someone who's drowning that they should be able to hold their breath for longer.
3) Reaction / Solution.
My father once told me imperiously that suicide was a reaction to a situation and not a solution, and in many ways I have to agree - he's right, it is. Of course it fucking is. But then again, putting on a jumper when you're cold could be filed under the same heading. (The jumper solves your immediate problem but still doesn't make the room any warmer. Humans are animals for all their reasoning, which generally means when solutions are thin on the ground reactions take over.) I've seen this quote around on the net: "A woman wants an abortion the way a fox in a trap wants to chew off its own leg." And the same holds true here.* People do not (unless they really are unhinged) contemplate suicide because they think it might in any way be fun or groovy. They think of ending their life because they feel trapped by their situation and can't see an alternate way out - and their current situation is so abhorrent to them that they wonder whether ceasing to exist** might be better.
4) Guilt.
"You might have seen the end
But you were never able
To keep me breathing
As the water rises up again
Before I slip away..."
Those remaining after someone they care for has committed suicide are usually wracked with guilt. My argument against this links in (kinda) to my notion that those crying at a funeral are weeping for their own loss. (Not because they're selfish bastards, but because you cannot in all reason weep for the deceased.) Guilt says 'I should have acted' and 'I did not do all I could' and 'I am somehow at fault'. This is probably the nastiest and maybe the most hypocritical of all my arguments. In all its stark unpleasantness, it goes like this: get over yourselves.
4B) Guilt - the explanation.
Guilt is the feeling of remorse over something - it shows us that we are very capable of empathy and aren't bastards - that's its good point. But guilt has a lot of bad points, mostly which can be summed up into the term 'histrionic self flagellation'. Let me offer a metaphor. A man is playing fetch with his neighbour's dog. He throws a stick for it; it runs across a road to fetch it and is run over by a truck. The man, the neighbour, the truck driver and a person who witnessed it all feel horrible guilt at the death of the dog. But logically, who actually needs to feel guilt in order to show they are not a monster? The witness? Hardly. The truck driver? Possibly, but only if he wasn't paying attention to the road or was given some warning to the dog's approach. The neighbour? Unlikely, unless they knew the man in question was in the habit of throwing sticks across busy highways. The man who threw the stick? Probably. He likely knew the road was there; on the other hand unless it was deliberate he will have to forgive himself sometime because a miscalculation in throwing a stick does not deserve a lifetime of guilt.
My point is this: in the case of suicide a lot of people feel that they 'could have done more' to help the deceased. But could they really? In amongst the depressed person trying to hide their feelings, in amongst the day to day noise of life, in amongst the gaps of the snapshots you see of someone's existence... given what you knew of the situation, could you really TRULY have done more? I'm willing to bet that in 95% of the situations the answer in all honesty is 'no'. If you're not in that 5%, then the guilt you feel shows that you're a caring empathic human being... who is needlessly beating themselves up because some bit of their brain feels responsible for an unhappy action they had no control over.
5) Waste.
Many people are very adamant that suicide - in any situation - is a waste. In some ways I agree with them. If someone I had a high opinion of killed themselves, I would quite bitterly consider it a waste - a waste of the time we could have spent together, a waste of their potential, a waste of all the things I liked about them which have now gone forever... But there are also arguments against such an opinion. Many people who specifically say 'it's a waste' are vague relatives or acquaintances or ex-friends of the deceased. They knew them almost by proxy, which really means they saw that life only in snapshots and not the inner truth of it. (ie, they knew that person was studying law so envisaged them as a brilliant barrister, but they knew nothing of their day to day struggles which may have effected this future.) In some ways this view makes me feel contemptuous: a thousand thousand people waste not only their lives but the love, money, time and resources of those around them, and yet they are more forgiven than suicides. (Yes, I see why this is, it's because Wastrel Cousin Bob may yet turn to the good, but dead is dead. Stupid bloody hope warping things again.) I think in my opinion you're only allowed to say 'it's a waste they died' if you knew then well and tried to help then through the bad times. If not, you're just like a spectator at a car crash saying words that have little true meaning and only serve to salve your own heart.***
6) Better vs Drowning or the Demon Hope.
Pandora opened her box, all the demons of the world escaped. At the bottom was left Hope. I still maintain Hope is a demon. People often get very upset that someone killed themselves when they are certain that their life 'could have got better'. Here's another metaphor for you. Depression - being at the end of your tether - wanting to die - is like drowning. (And stupid though it may seem, it only takes three inches of water and some bad luck to drown a man.)
Sometimes if you thrash and fight you can keep your head above water. Sometimes no matter how you fight, the current drags you under. And when that happens, it doesn't really matter whether there's a ship on the horizon or not; your lungs are filling with brine and there is only a finite time before you sink to the bottom. Learned people saying you should be able to last three minutes without oxygen don't mean shit: your lungs are sodden and it's mostly up to you and you alone whether you manage to struggle to the surface again or not. Ships on the horizon are no good to a drowning man; he must be saved now or never - and even if he is saved, sometimes the water in his lugs kills him anyway. (That doesn't mean don't try; that just means sometimes there really is nothing you can do.)
7) Death the hard way.
Some people have said that if they were to kill themselves it would be their duty to pick the hardest method possible. If there is logic here I don't follow it. Suicide has upon occasion been termed 'the easy way out'. But I don't think that is very fair. Having personally felt (for extended periods) the weight of emotion that makes one suicidal, and indeed tried to kill myself on three instances - I fail to see what is easy about the thought or the act. I don't think I have ever felt so small, so evil, so guilt-wracked or so desperate as when I've attempted suicide. And for shear pain tolerance, craziness and bloody mindedness I've never encountered anything like it. Whilst I do endorse the sentiment that to live for an ideal or cause shows more courage than to die for it, I'd like to point out to those who don't know just how much courage and conviction suicide takes. I understand that taking the 'hardest way out' ie, the most violent, abhorrent and anathema to you, means that at least you're not doing so out of some pathetic angst fueled ennui... but for fekks sake. Ok - metaphor time. You're hungry. I can understand if you say to yourself 'I should wait 'til the next meal time' or 'I should cook a meal and not just gorge on chocolate'. But saying, 'Am I really hungry?! Am I?! I should go hunt a ((wild creature from another continent)) with my bare hands!! Because to do less shows I'm not hungry - yeah!!' ....Doesn't really follow. Yes, I accept that death is a pretty final thing and therefore should involve a lot of thought. (I did once stop myself from suicide because I thought I was too crazy to make such an important decision.) But I don't really understand the 'I must make this as unbelievably hard as possible' argument unless one is a moron prone to making rash decisions and need dissuading from such.
8) Emotion.
I've been told that one cannot - even logically speaking - be purely detached and unemotional about suicide. I concede that this is correct: unless one is discussing ethics in the broadest of terms then one cannot speak nor act without emotion. And in my case, when I have made it clear I have a vested interest in the subject, emotion can at best only be held at arm's length or admitted as such. It cannot be dismissed entirely because for anyone who knew the deceased, suicide will produce a very emotional reaction. Also, I cannot believe that anyone killed themselves purely with logic and that emotion was absent from the equation.
9) Choice.
We accept with little question when people say 'I want to marry and have ten children - that would make me happy!!!'. Or 'I want to spend my life attempting to translate obsolete and ancient manuscripts which could be as dull as shopping lists for all I know!!'. This is fine. But 'I've looked at all my life previously and all my life that I can see and I figure I'd be better off dead...' Is somehow not fine. In this day and age happiness seems to have achieved the status of a human right - so what gives you the right to decide for me whether I am or will be happy or not?
At A-level I studied 'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolfe. I didn't think much of it. I thought even less of the fact she killed herself 'fearing another depressive episode'. At the age of 17 and having been clinically depressed for two years I felt I knew enough to scorn her cowardice. Had the reason been 'she was depressed, she killed herself' - that I could have understood. But 'She got better and then killed herself for fear it happened again' - that I could not forgive. I understand the present. I scorn fear of the future even though I argue one should be allowed to make choices based on the likely outcome of future events. Am I hypocritical? Oh I'm damn sure I am. But, despite my bitching and my arguments and counter arguments... I must agree (at least in theory) with Kieron. He claimed that suicide was a human right - if perfectly healthy animals in cages could choose to die and do so then humans sure as hell could. (I argued against, since it was Kieron being difficult, and since I'd swore 5 years of my life to him - but that's another story.)
10) Conclusion.
In conclusion: despite the feelings of guilt, frustration, confusion and a myriad of other negative emotions felt, one must admit that if one's life is one's own then one's death may be also. You might not agree with friend XX's huge weight gain or friend YY's 50-a-day-habit (etc etc etc) but in the end - it's their life. They are responcible for it, not you. If they, for whatever reason, choose to fekk it up or end it (and why people are more lenient for the fekking up I really don't know sometimes) that is their choice. If you believe in free choice (yeah yeah, within the bounds of lawful permissive society****) then you have to accept suicide is valid.
...Don't you?
=======
*There is a sub argument about abortion I could get into, but let's save that one for later, hmm?
** Again, for now, let's leave religion and thoughts of the afterlife out of it as much as possible and say for the sake of absolute simplicity that there is life and death and that's it.
*** Yes, this is a harsh opinion. If it causes you to react badly please try to consider why that is and then give me a counter argument. As before, if it comes down to pure emotion please acknowledge the fact. (I'm not discounting emotional argument, I'm just trying to keep it in a separate category to reason.)
**** Let's not have an argument on law - I really don't have the energy or the mental capacity.