What's with us and suicide?

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Right but, also, you can't really address psychological/emotional pain when there's no end in sight to the causes and when someone's really pressed themselves to the limits to find out - yes, the hell their in is the limit of what they can negotiate from society and, even worse, they've collapsed on every personal mission statement - again despite their own best efforts - after which they're a bit like a bankrupted corporation that isn't being allowed to dissolve and worse is being forced to dwell in that limbo until the lights go out on their own. Its all quite perverse when you see it from that angle.


Lol, I can't help but admit - that's just classic creepy. He's got this huge genuinely enthusiastic grin like he's about to give you the most bright-eyed sales pitch on how to put a person to sleep. :shudder:. I swear, someone needs to put that on a t-shirt or demotivation poster.

Or can't see it in themselves.......I would certainly like to veiw myself as a perfectly good capable person but there is really no evidence to suggest that is true. hard to see what's not there for me to see........intresting thing about depression is it can make it very difficult to consistantly think positivly about anything.

As a blanket statement that sounds beautiful but it doesn't really assess 'what' the problems we're trying to solve really are. If we try to draw it all in to a clean and tight picture of what 'evil' constitutes it's human suffering or actions that create significantly greater suffering in the future for avoidance now. To then scrutinize it further to see what it all stems from or what our problems stem from - we're really a lot of confused automatons which don't 'feel' as though we are as such, just like most of us are given cart blanc to live in our own little bubbles and never be compelled to understand or even necessarily help the next person. Its not to say that we don't have certain amount of capability and times we can do it right, practically speaking, and times where we have to fend for oursleves, but the biggest thing is you can't *make* anyone be there for people who either can't be comforted or are too odd or in too bad of shape for people to either relate to or want to be around (on the level of what you'd consider shite people it kills their high - they don't want their bubble ruptured, for people who wish do the right thing even - its draining and they only have so much in them). Its really because there's so many immovable factors here that I take a libertarian stance on the issue.

To be your brother's keeper also shouldn't necessarily mean be their rescuer or worse, their jailor.


Which is still arguably circumstantial. People can find things out about themselves that, in clear conscience, they'd never want to procreate. In the same way, if someone gets swallowed by life talents and all they can easily end up in a place where they simply feel like an animated version of a person who's being kept alive in a vegetative state.

This brings up the point - I think it would be utterly irresponsible for medical doctors not to carefully work to cover all of the angles and dissuade a person from doing so - over many visits - to make sure its all reviewed by that individual and that it isn't a reaction to something temporary. I'd say this is more in line with being our brother's keeper - stabilizing the confused and helping them out - rather than standing in the way of those who know exactly what they want and why they want it.


A few thoughts on that:
1) What that doesn't account for though is how broken and largely helpless those who are excluding said people are themselves. Some people fall too far in the middle of the bellcurve to understand much of what's going on outside of it, others are too imbued with their own problems and cynicism. It would likely take mass genetic-engineering to clear that one up.

2) We're best off dealing with what we'd like to see in theory as it stops being theory. For a person held in limbo and becoming a black hole whether they want to or not, all because they're wrapped in political red tape, seems regressive. That's not to say that they can't off themselves without the help of others, just that the biggest problem still applies - the odds of doing serious damage to ones self and surviving make this even more tragic.

I suppose one could parallel a lot of these things on the abortion issue - ie. that we should either help these moms be moms or distinctly not rather than play it both ways. Then again, the contagion of moral hazard works differently here as well; one has something to do - most often - with poor personal risk management, the second you can just be lucky enough to be the product of the right sperm and the right egg which in that sense its not likely to raise the amount of depressed people in the same way that lax abortion standards would risk the increase of pregnancy - people like sex a bit more generally than they like being suicidal.


Him taking them and us taking them aren't really separable matters though. It falls into the same problem where what you or I might decide to eat for lunch or afternoon snack on February 18th, 2019, is as much his will as ours. If he meant for something to happen then it registered from the big bang. If he didn't will it to be then it didn't happen.

I think the best a lot of us can do if all sides seem to be caving in is to stay as adaptive and flexible as we can to new opportunities and have ourselves at least aware that we're ready to go all out for what we want in life. That 'nothing to lose' sort of fire is something that most people who haven't been through what we have don't have in their gut and its the kind of thing that can drive us to the pinnacles of success if we harness it right.

I feel like its more likely to drive me to insanity.

@Techstepgener8tion

To be, or not to be?

Hamlet made the right decision and what Hamlet asks as a question, Shakespeare proposes to you as a universally accepted answer.

What I have learned is that we cannot reason ourselves out of despair, we have to inspire. Action and insight are our weapons against it. We must march into our inescapable problems.


IF.....

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Hmnn, pretty sure we are... :/

This inclination is not written in stone, it seems: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Do-Anima ... 3441.shtml

People condemn suicide because the very existence of unrectifiable despair and unremitting abject suffering makes them way too uncomfortable. Instead they must dismiss the entire notion that such a state of existence can even occur. They instead turn to religion, saying God always has a plan, there's always something better to look forward to, etc... The part that's shameful is how they completely fail to empathize with those who don't have the capacity to share in their delusion. The last thing a person in such mental torment needs is judgement from clueless people who can only offer tired cliches.

People are different. I'm sure I could find all kinds of epic and inspirational poetry that has gotten people through hard times, not necessarily the point for someone - say - in their sixties or seventies who see themselves and their kids being robbed blind by the medical establishment. Nor will it be the point for someone who does get to the point where they realize that they have been rendered completely useless by society.

That could constitute a form of coercion, probably best to leave that out of a discussion relating to suicide.



We can still lose at life, no matter how good we are. I like the part where Job finally gets to have it out with God. He is sitting around with his friends, in silence, because of the pain he has gone through... then he curses the day he was born. In the end God responses 'where were you when I made the heavens and the earth'... take it literally or not, the point is still there, we just cannot know what is next but what we do know, is that we are supposed to keep moving. God does not simply rebuke Job, rather he pains an intricate picture of creation, with leviathan and all sorts of other creatures.

The illustration of which makes his point, pain and nature are not evils they are a catalyst for change and although we yearn for the stability of the grace of God (which Job eventually finds) we are not meant to live entirely amongst it. We are the products of both grace and nature, if we cannot accept that then we will never be at peace with ourselves, much less ready for the trials of despair and age.

A PSALM OF LIFE (there is a reason it is my signature)

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

That is a cheerful poem. I like it.

ruveyn

This is the problem with religious people. They are incapable of understanding those who can't think/believe the way they do. My deepest gut tells me that the "well adjusted" are just not in touch with reality. I simply do not have the mental power to convince myself that there is some grand plan for all and that the deepest suffering in this world is not truly in vain. It's not that I consciously look down on or have contempt for religious people. I just find that their talk only makes me feel more alone than ever.

I've known a lot of people who will sincerely try to warm you up, and there are a lot of people who will take you in as family just about in how they relate to you just for being a good person and sharing the majority of their values with or without. I see what you're saying and its kinda the jackass/macho of the religious crowd who give it that feeling, the whole 'If I can do it anyone can' about almost anything. I am deeply touched though when do meet people who are authentically real and you can sense in their energy that they're not only feeling like they live for a higher purpose but they're able to do so lovingly rather than judgmentally. Then again for lots of war-hardened adults that can be as disquieting as going back and watching Jim Hensen movies from their childhood at times.

We truly live in a strange structure don't we?

Yes. I understand that religious people are well meaning. Most of my family is devoutly Christian. I just feel so utterly alienated around people who seem to always talk about how religion is the answer to everything, even the most kind and good hearted people. It's because that answer isn't really a choice for me. I can't force myself to believe something that just isn't real to me, no matter how much better it might make me feel.

I always took issue with him calling the thing the "Thanatron"; sounds far too much like a 1950's consumer gadget, and why would you name something like that anyway? It's not like he was going to be marketing it or anything.

From the looks of the thing its still in alpha testing as well - he forgot to tack that in.