Is Fear the Strongest Force in the Universe?

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Yes, in a way; I am an electrical engineer.

All that I ever really needed to know about Philosophy can be summed up in three simple principles:

The First Principle of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.

The Second Principle of Philosophy: They're both wrong.

The Third Principle of Philosophy: It really doesn't matter.

On suicide, I agree with the Stoics:

A WISE person may reasonably committ suicide in 3 circumstances:

1. when it serves virtue--in service to country, family. In defense of an innocent, etc.
2. when circumstances make living a virtuous life impossible--you are being forced to betry a trust/vow, etc.
3. in cases of severe pain or disease

Most people decide to committ suicide on an emotional level. Like the OP they seek suicide as a solution to their problems. Unfortunately, in most cases (like the OP's) suicide is a permanent solution to transient problems. it's an irrational overreaction.

On a personal note, I recently graduated from paraplegia to quadriplegia... I couldn't move anything, much, from the neck down for about 3-4 weeks. If I'd had the means, I would have killed myself.

However, that would have been hasty. Three months out, I can walk and my arms are starting to wake up (I have central cord syndrome).

Still,if I start to go backwards or need more cervical surgery, I would seriously consider suicide...

I think that's reasonable, but it's also motivated by fear. Fear of being disabled/dependent, and fear of losing suicide as an option.

I guess, in my case, fear wins.

I hope you'll be OK, GoonSquad. I'm so sorry to hear about your (fortunately temporary) quadriplegia. How awful. Being physically helpless is truly not something anyone wants. I'm glad your philosophy of life carried you through.

I hadn't seen you around here on WP much and was wondering how you're doing. Have you looked at all the possible medical options for your condition, including non-medical stuff like exercises or even diet to control the problem and prevent it deteriorating? I think it's always better to avoid surgery unless there's no alternative.

M yleft rib cage was so painful (both front to back) two to three weeks ago that I was seriously worried that I wouldn't come right again. I could barely bend and had difficulty getting up in the morning. Luckily I realized that it was just my intercostal muscle which I must have twisted at some oint while moving heavy stuff. One can truly feel hopeless when the pain seems disproportionate to the problem.

Such an wise heart. I'm almost twice your age, have gone through countless cycles of suicide-worthy depression and could not have said it better.

Indeed Sweetleaf has a great deal of wisdom and good sense to share here on WP and we salute her.

That's just awesome. There's a lot more to philosophy than just that, but it's still pretty funny!

1. How does suicide ever serve virtue? How could committing suicide be in defense of an innocent person? I could understand putting one's self in harm's way to defend another, but technically speaking that's not suicide - it's merely self-sacrifice (there's another aggressor besides the person sacrificing him/herself who ends up killing them).
2. I don't see how the inability to live a virtuous life warrants suicide. I person who lives a decadent life does so because they chose to do so, because they want it, so they're probably not going to want to commit suicide (so they probably won't, and they probably shouldn't anyways).
3. Emotional pain can be just as painful to some as physical pain to others. And if emotional pain doesn't warrant suicide, then I don't see how physical pain should either.



I can totally agree with what you say here, that suicide as a response to transient problems is irrational. So, perhaps the biggest lesson that I need to learn, is that life won't be how I plan it all the time, and that in order to really feel the joy in life, I must first suffer through the pain. Technically, I've already learned these lessons (or else I wouldn't be able to relate them to you like so), so I suppose, more appropriately, I need to accept them, which is a lot more challenging for a lot of us, especially me.



I'm sorry to hear that that happened to you. I don't know what that's like, and I won't pretend to, but I'm glad that you recovered from it. I'll try to live up to that myself and recover from this depression, to the best of my ability.

Point one is just hair-splitting.
Point two isn't relevant to what I wrote.Also, I don't think you understand virtue as defined by Stoics.
Point three--A Stoic would say that emotional pain, past a certain point, is self indulgent and irrational.


That`s a very (proto)Stoical conclusion... A Stoic would also say that it is not rational to hang your happiness on external things that are beyond your control. Don't be fate's b***h....

I'll leave you with two nuggets from the Enchiridion:

"To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”

and

"God has entrusted me with myself. No man is free who is not master of himself. A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.”

I'm fairly familiar with the Stoics - the people themselves because of a philosophy class I took this summer at university, and their teachings because of my mother, and what she's learned from A.A.). My mom tried to teach me a lot about the illusion of control (since before I even took the class), but it pretty much fell on deaf ears until I took Introductory Philosophy (I guess one's ethos is more important to me than I would have previously imagined), and even now it's still difficult to let go of that control, and realize that pretty much everything is out of my hands. "Let go and let God," as the A.A. saying goes.

Btw, just so everyone knows, I think I'm done contemplating suicide - for now, at least. If anyone wants to continue this philosophical discourse on suicide with me, I'd be more than happy to contribute!
Even when I'm not feeling suicidal, I still enjoy philosophizing about it.

^^^ Yeah, AA is full of Stoic sayings and homespun cognitive behavioral therapy.
One thing to remember is, you really aren't giving up control. You're giving up the illusion that you're in control, because either way, you are not in control.

Entropy is the strongest force.

Reminds me of Japanese mothers and their children blowing themselves up with grenades during WWII because the mothers were afraid of what American soldiers were going to do to them.



Can I ask you this: how in the heck are you still living with her? I think I'd be homeless before my mom let me live with her until 26 (same goes with my dad, and just about anyone in my family as a matter of fact). My mom was out of the house by 16, my dad was out by 17, by maternal grandfather by 14, my paternal grandmother and grandfather by 15 and 19 respectively (and my grandma was pregnant with my dad at the time), so my family is notorious for having young "nest-leavers". I'm an exception because I'm autistic (or possibly just have a personality disorder, but more likely autistic because of how I was as a child, which is incongruous with just a simple personality disorder). Also, random question, but is your profile name a reference to the Black Sabbath song? Because that kicks a** if it is!
Can't believe it took me this long to think of that...

If it makes you feel any better I'm 35, will be celebrating my 36th from the bedroom I grew up in at my parents place, am unemployed and even with a bachelors degree in business I'm getting bounced right now from temp-to-hire to temp-to-hire. I have a care that's over 190,000 and if it goes on me I wouldn't have the money to buy a new one, rather I'd probably have to talk to one of my parents about cosigning on a lease (I'd pay for it but even with a good credit score my employment status would limit my options and I'd give them shared use of the vehicle so that if I were forced to put it back on them that they'd have just as much right to use it).

Also, at this stage in my life, I have to admit that I've been in one relationship for longer than a month, only slightly longer than a month, I've dated a couple times a little bit longer but suffice to say I have relationship primacy issues that likely won't be getting resolved.


The good news at least - if you find yourself where I'm at your priorities change in that you get much more interested in employment, business endeavors, budgeting, etc.. and I also think that the agonizing drive to be in a relationship really started to decrease toward my late 20's and particularly into my early 30's - I'm not sure how much of that is my biology changing and how much of it is me realizing that even watching social butterflies without AS or any particular snags that the relationship world is an incredibly difficult place.

One thing I do have going for me - the work references I have are good, the trouble is in line with what you're saying. On one hand everyone wants experience and no one wants to give it, then when you do have experience but decide to move into a new sub-region of the field its as if you have to start over from scratch. My big sin and what put me where I'm at, ie. 35 and not financially viable, was having a job for a little over 6 years in an area of accounting that I didn't realize was SO niche that the experience gained in that field wasn't portable to any other area of accounting aside from a few small companies loosely based around the country. I also find that corporations are just getting stupid these days - ie. once they get to a certain level of success they start spending speculatively, almost gambling with their assets perhaps hoping to find new and needed rather than getting anything to spark in their own R&D departments, and from there they head right off the ledge to be gutted by either a minority shareholder or a capital company who specializes in downsizing or selling companies like this off for assets. My fingers are crossed and I'm really hoping that I can get with an employer for once who isn't dancing on the lip of Niagra Falls.

I'm back to trying to change career path because I found out that the basic level of what I'm trying to do - ie. the clerical problem-solving level, is 10% accounting and 90% human element - my nervous system can't sustain that kind of partying and I'm trying to move over toward data work.

What keeps me alive? On one hand I've been fortunate at least for now to find a metaphysical/spiritual ontology that I can get my hands on, watch myself progress with, and it's something where it's less about surrendering one self to a creed than developing certain kinds of perceptual tools and competencies the way one would cultivate themselves in a martial art (and yes - I'm enjoying that too - black sash with 7 years experience in various Filipino martial arts).


As for thoughts of suicide - I avoid that at all costs but I've had plenty of times where I realized just how fragile I am, just how fragile my state is, and what kinds of outside intrusions into my life and the options I have left could press all the right buttons in me to where I would be quite serious about taking my life within a few hours of realizing the implications.

I'm also here to tell you that the notion of suicide strictly having a drive based on depression is incorrect. I understand quite vividly, particularly in a world where the chief doctrine is humans as accidents of evolution, what kinds of places a person can be put in (particularly if the value judgments seem like permanent 'caste' placements within something like a social-Darwinian version of the old Hindu system) where they can do the math, get the impression that their drawing breath is a weight on the world around them, and they'll particularly feel this if they sense that their very ability to cover the basic responsibilities that society demands of them is being undermined to the point that it's impossible - particularly if they don't have a disability of the type that will cover them in society's eyes. What I mean is that ends up being much less a depression thing and much more a temptation to posit suicidal urges to honor code.

Regardless of where the temptations come from one thing is certain - I'd only ever want to go there if I absolutely knew that to live longer would turn me into a black hole, a monster, ie. that my humanity was going to be completely and utterly destroyed. The other thing, just to feel like that's going to happen isn't enough.

In my own ontology my additional concern is this - that the act of suicide itself very well could put effects and causes into motion that the person taking that action could never begin to understand, would be dealing with quite possibly for a very long time after they would have assumed that nonexistence would have instead taken over, and the other thing - I would much rather deal with life-shattering and world-shattering situations as an adult who is already past his prime and going into these scenarios with his eyes open and some world-wisdom than to find out that I'd die, come back as a baby somewhere, and have them dropped on me at an age where my coping skills and ability to face said challenges adequately isn't there. In essence, particularly in the later case, to commit suicide could very easily that a person destroys two lives (incarnations) rather than just one.

I know that last paragraph is a lot of philosophic speculation but when I think of things like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, when I think of the wave-like nature of the electromagnetic spectra, it seems almost more magical to me to act with any assurance that life does end at death, ie. if the Universe doesn't play fast and loose with energy (ie. can neither be destroyed nor created) I have to wonder about information from that standpoint as well.


As for the strongest force in the universe - I really doubt it's fear, cruelty, or anything along those lines. On the social level perhaps evolution is the one thing that cannot be stopped unless the participants of that particular species are stopped as well, however that's just stopping a single vista of something that very likely is happening from a much more fundamental level than just plants building the roots of animal dna and animals building the roots of sentient human or human-like dna.

The last thing you want to do when you're in enough pain to contemplate suicide is build a cosmology-sized projection of what you're feeling at the moment and throw it onto the entire universe.

Indifference is the strongest force?

Actually, that makes me feel worse - a lot worse. What does make me feel better, however, is this:



I feel like you've done a lot for your spiritual/mental growth as an individual in spite of everything you've gone through, which I find quite inspiring.



You raise a good point there, and I'll admit that some of the reasons I listed (e.g., "break-up," "lost job," etc.) have arisen, to an extent, from guilt and shame - I feel like I've done the universe and myself wrong, and I feel like I can't fix it. On the other hand, I am also trying to avoid a miserable life, and while suicide can fix that, it will also screw up any chance I would have at having a happy life.



So..."You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"?



*sigh* Nagel would hate me for this...but, I would be dead, so I might not have to worry about it. Doesn't mean it's still not happening, unfortunately, but it would probably not be my concern anymore. Of course, that is a bit of a gamble saying that, I suppose...I don't know what will happen when I die, nor of what I will be aware, if I will be aware of anything at all.



Yeah, that does seem like a pretty bad idea - pretty destructive.

One last observation I'd like to make - you remind me a little of a friend I had in college not long ago, who just turned 33, has been through some rough relationship stuff, has a bachelor's (or two) - except in computer science/programming - and is going through a rough time financially. He's currently unemployed and on disability, and is getting a bit of support from his Marine veteran grandfather, he's on a whacky schedule that interferes a little with school (6am to 4-6pm has been his sleep schedule last time I saw him, which was this past summer - I don't know how he's doing now), and as far as living situation goes, he has an apartment just off campus, but I guess it's income-based and he had a cosigner for it. He really only seemed happy when my ex and I would hang out with him and either watch some movies (or Farscape - we watched A LOT of that), play some video games, go eat out, etc. Just have fun in general, you know? Then I screwed that all up by becoming pissy and irritable all the time for no reason whatsoever (like when we were watching Big Hero 6 once, we got the DVD from the library, and it was a bit scratched, so about 45 minutes into the movie it froze up and we had to clean it and restart it as close to that point as we could, but I hate interruptions like that, and so I got pissed off at them because they hadn't checked it before hand, so I stormed off and listened to The Who's Quadrophenia at a nearby river), and I could list a whole slew of other things that happened, but it wouldn't make a bit of difference, because I would just be ranting on and on about things that are gone and past now. Anyways, I haven't heard anything from my ex since she broke up with me in September (except "I'll call you in November" - I'm still waiting on that call), and I haven't heard anything from my friend lately except some Facebook posts. I kind of went off on a tangent a bit, but the main point is that you remind me of him from what you've described so far - and he's also an Aspie like us.