Nina wrote:Okay. I'm glad I understand. Threads like this can bring out the worst in people, even me, and possibly you. It's an eye-opening experience, sometimes, to realize what you thought you wrote in earnest was in fact ironic, but not that ironic, until it is to someone else, which offends you, because you'd know when you mean what you say, right? So all you want is a little explanation, but that requires another post, etc etc . . .

Internet: Sometimes It Just Sucks.

I want to be clear that I'm not passing moral judgment on the suicidal, calling them cowards or selfish or any of that. I just fail to see what good can come of it, excepting cases of terminal illness or injury. Depression is an illness, but I disagree with some of you in that it does not have to be terminal. I suppose I've been naive in thinking this was a consensus opinion.

And that whole sucking the AIDS out of my dick thing, that was just some hyperbole posted up in the heat of the moment. I don't even have AIDS.

Fly, I love ya man, but I'm staying far the fuck away from you if I ever think of offing myself. :)

that damned fly wrote:

gaetano wrote:well, who knows, sometimes suicide can probably be a very quick decision. given certain circumstances someone can "snap" and do it. the victim doesn't see it coming, and also no one around him.

...

also, suicide studies show that suicide, in most cases, is an act that the committer has planned for days,months, even years ahead.

yep, sometimes people do one thing, sometimes they do the other.

also, trying to help someone who is suicidal is not a bad thing.
it's perfectly human, understandable, reasonable. death is not retrievable, you know? we don't want our loved ones to die, maybe we prefer having them suffer.

only a child would prefer suffering of someone else for their amusement to not.

historically, humans don't associate psychic pain with body pain. we think mind is a thing and the body is another while ,arguably, they're both parts of a body.

are you a monist or a dualist?

"well, go do it, if that's what you want".
but this sounds a bit too politically correct, and as far from human as can be.

depends on what your definition of "human" is. "human" and "sympathetic" aren't synonyms.

...whatever mistake they make by "prolonging the suffering" is at least forgivable. give those people a break, eh?

i restate from elsewhere on the board, "i speak in absolutes, i live in grays."

and kurt cobain's suicide may have been a "fuck you to himself", or the world or drugs or whatever. or maybe an act of terminal depression. like, did you know the guy? i'm curious.

well, c'mon, look at the facts, alone, an empty white room and a shotgun to the face. a one page scrawled note. what about the act doesn't scream, "fuck you!"? if it was fuck me, he'd have done it hanging from an overpass in a woman's dress with no underpants on. or something of the like.

also, didn't you know it was a conspiracy and he was murdered? yeah, like a professional hit courtney pulled so she could go make a forgettable album with billy corgan...i think my timeline might be skewed...really though, in all fairness in utero has three truly badass songs on it. yep. just three, sorry, everyone. three good songs. like nine shitty ones.

on the monist vs dualist thing...i dunno, to me the brain is an organ, so it's a part of the body. that would make me a monist, but we all know it's much more complicated than that. so maybe monist/dualist can't apply.

and i believe human nature to be fundamentally "sympathetic". if not, there wouldn't even be no internet for you and me to communicate.

and about Kurt: it was Axl who did it, believe me.

lemur68 wrote:I want to be clear that I'm not passing moral judgment on the suicidal, calling them cowards or selfish or any of that. I just fail to see what good can come of it, excepting cases of terminal illness or injury. Depression is an illness, but I disagree with some of you in that it does not have to be terminal. I suppose I've been naive in thinking this was a consensus opinion.

Daily life requires a baseline investment of effort, no matter how kept you are. That means, by default, you have a negative balance at the end of the day unless some rewards for staying alive are there. Friends, family, relationships, existential fulfillment, you get the picture. Take all those away, and you have a continuously accruing negative balance. Pain from illness, from depression to cancer, obviously subtracts from this balance further. It is certainly possible that you can go so far in the red that you can logically, rationally conclude that suicide is the one way to zero out this balance by declaring bankruptcy.

Furthermore, if your affairs are in order and you have no friends, family, or community ties, then nobody is necessarily hurt by the suicide, and resources previously consumed by you are available for someone else.

In that light, what's so baffling about it? Seems simple enough to me.

Incidentally, Fly is 100% correct.

As for your own experience, as well as your friend's, other people were reacting to it. The cliche that many overt suicide attempts are really cries for help or support is mostly true, and the line between things like that and earnestly logical conclusions that suicide is the only way is blurry.

lemur68 wrote:I'd like someone to tell me with all seriousness that if someone close to them were contemplating ending their life, they'd be all freshman philosophy major like they are here and tell them, "Hey, it's your choice, do it if you feel like that's what's best. Godspeed." Bull fucking shit, they're going to be devastated

This is like an inversion of many people's stance on the death penalty-- in principle they are against it, but if someone close to them were gruesomely murdered, for instance, quite naturally they'd want the guy or gal who did it to die. Might even want to kill the culprit with their own hands. Might even take great pleasure in doing so.



I agree with Fuzzbob, btw:

FuzzBob wrote:Daily life requires a baseline investment of effort, no matter how kept you are. That means, by default, you have a negative balance at the end of the day unless some rewards for staying alive are there. Friends, family, relationships, existential fulfillment, you get the picture. Take all those away, and you have a continuously accruing negative balance. Pain from illness, from depression to cancer, obviously subtracts from this balance further. It is certainly possible that you can go so far in the red that you can logically, rationally conclude that suicide is the one way to zero out this balance by declaring bankruptcy.

Also, I think a person can have plenty of rewards for staying alive---plenty of good qualities, plenty of love and connections to others and plenty of things to look forward to---but still, ultimately, because of other factors, these things just aren't enough to keep him or her going. Or maybe they're just barely enough.

Wooo-fuckin'-cheee-beee.

The Horror of Existence plus Cheese Fries versus Non-existence.

So much fatalism, you guys.

I think I want to die now.