Poll: Suicide - Your opinion

[Animated Rope]

Without reading the entire thread: None of the available options. It's above all simply tragic that they get to the point where they consider it. I don't think you can or should blame them, even though I don't think It's a good option.

It's important to remember that one often leaves behind devastated relatives, but equally important to remember you own your own life.

If there was a "ambiguous" option I'd pick that.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Why do we judge dying from depression when we don't judge dying from a physical disease?

Exactly. Mental ilnesses are easily dismissed for false reasons.
Someone who mopes around a bit may be your view of "depression", but it can go so much further.

Major depression is a disabling condition which adversely affects a person's family, work or school life, sleeping and eating habits, and general health. In the United States, approximately 3.4% of people with major depression commit suicide, and up to 60% of people who commit suicide have depression or another mood disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder

 

[Durahan2]

Eh, it's a free western world. Why can't people kill themselves. It's selfish in most cases and way to end suffering for the few vegetated people.

Most will just be "an heros", I will laugh at it, then grow old, die, and go to hell. So I say it let them be stupid. More oxygen for the rest of us.

 

[JediMB]

It depends entirely on the circumstances. Why are you doing it? Does anyone benefit from it? Is it for yourself or someone else? And then there are plenty of gray areas where it can seem somewhat justified, but at the same time there might have been another solution.

 

[Cliff_m85]

It's your body, do what you wish to with it.

 

[The_Echo]

I think of it this way.

Life is a game, and you win when you die (just play along). Suicide is like cheating. Maybe the boss is too hard, or you can't find the solution to that puzzle. So you take the easy way around it.

That said, people who are terminally ill and don't want to suffer should be able to off themselves without people freaking out over it. In my life to game analogy, I'd call them the NPC you know isn't going to make it, so it doesn't matter how it ends.

 

[Florion]

I think of it this way.

Life is a game, and you win when you die (just play along). Suicide is like cheating. Maybe the boss is too hard, or you can't find the solution to that puzzle. So you take the easy way around it.

That said, people who are terminally ill and don't want to suffer should be able to off themselves without people freaking out over it. In my life to game analogy, I'd call them the NPC you know isn't going to make it, so it doesn't matter how it ends.

Depression is not necessarily a terminal illness (is there such thing as chronic depression? I think there is, but I'm not sure), but if it kills you, isn't it sort of like a terminal illness? It chased you to the end of your life.

Depression is not the same as rationally looking at a situation and saying "Well, it could get better, but I don't want to deal with it until it does so I'll kill myself." It's more like holding up a giant boulder on your shoulders. Unless you get help, or unless your circumstances change significantly enough that the boulder is lifted, the effort it takes to hold up that boulder will eventually overcome you. Even if you know or have been told that the boulder will go away at some undefined point in time, that doesn't make holding it up any easier.

 

[S-Unleashed]

I thought on it is: Just plain dumb.

 

[Cody211282]

i have a friend who is thinking about doing this and every time he bring it up i cant help but think he is being a huge selfish ass, and its a damn cowardly thing to do, it take real bravery to stand up and face what is giving you a hard time

 

[Kenjitsuka]

It's more like holding up a giant boulder on your shoulders. Unless you get help, or unless your circumstances change significantly enough that the boulder is lifted, the effort it takes to hold up that boulder will eventually overcome you. Even if you know or have been told that the boulder will go away at some undefined point in time, that doesn't make holding it up any easier.

Very eloquently said!
I'll go further and add, depending on how bad your depression is, you can become convinced no one can lift the boulder for you, not even all the friends/family/love in the universe...

 

[llew]

its stupid. dont kill yourself, kill the problem thats my view on it. in the case of terminal illness then i suppose they are shortening the inevitable in a painless way.

 

[WhiteTiger225]

Honestly... I don't give a fuck about suicide or what people think. My Grandmother Pena Grana (Used to be a very powerful name in Lima Peru) was dying of brain cancer, sheshot herself in the head to retain her dignity as she could no longer maintain her own body, and was dying just as much of embaressement of how much the disease had stripped her of her dignity as it had of her life's quality. I commend her, by offing herself she showed courage to end her suffering rather then let the disease rot away her body slowly, and kill the family more and more inside as we watched the disease eat away at her life.

A buddy of mine killed himself because his girlfriend of 6 months left him. I don't see him as an idiot, but as mentally insane as no sane man could grow that attached after 6 months without living within his own minds dillusions.

Honestly, it's your life, if you want to take it, go ahead. I see Physician aided dying as an act of mercy, not suicide. You are ending someone's life, a life which is now ridden in pain, anguish, and with no quality left in one's life to enjoy.

 

[Nutcase]

Suicide is an interesting behavior. It proves that humans are something apart from animals who are simply slaved to the genetical will to live and life's mindless will to spread it's genes.

It proves we have a choice, rather than being mindless idiot creatures who only live for the purpose of procreation.

No, I think you have misunderstood the implications of how genes work. As far as the future of my genes is concerned, if I can no longer produce surviving offspring or be of use to my community, my death has no adverse effects whatsoever. On the other hand, if dying helps the others around me - say, they no longer have to waste energy in keeping me alive - dying is a boost to my genes, since most of them are shared with the people around me.

So, a wish to die in certain situations is a perfectly good adaptation. On the other hand, I have no doubt that many people killing themselves today - especially young ones who do it in a fit of depression, temporary setbacks, etc. - could have survived to be productive. Genes can only do very raw approximation. They can't distinguish between the hopelessness that comes from abstract and fixable things like being deeply in debt, and the hopelessness that comes from knowing you will never again be anything but dead weight to your tribe. Thus, the instinct that exists for the latter gets triggered for the former. Our cultural evolution runs circles around our genes, and they simply can't adapt that fast.

 

[Klepa]

I'd say it's a case by case thing for me.

I find it kind of hard to just vote "good" or "brave", as every suicide has a lifelong story behind it, of which I haven't read a page of.
It might be a 70 year old man who's paralyzed from the neck down, with six months left to live, and daytime tv as his only human contact. Or it might be a 16-year-old in a massive fit of rage, not exactly fully understanding what will actually happen, once those sleeves have been bright red for a few minutes.

So yeah.. case by case.

 

[Kingsman]

Suicide is an admission that you are too weak to handle your own problems in life, and that you're fully ready or too stupid to realize that you're dumping all of those problems on other people.

It is the ultimate act of selfishness and cowardice.

 

[Mozared]

Depends. One may never know the future, but if you're in the situation where you know for sure that nothing is going to improve for at least a longer part of your life then ending it is 'a viable alternative'.

I would never call it cowardly, and I wonder if the people who do have been that far down themselves.

 

[Pilot Bush]

two word:
Hara-kiri

 

[Eternal_24]

Depends entirely on the circumstances.

 

[Kingsman]

Depends. One may never know the future, but if you're in the situation where you know for sure that nothing is going to improve for at least a longer part of your life then ending it is 'a viable alternative'.

I would never call it cowardly, and I wonder if the people who do have been that far down themselves.

Killing yourself does not get rid of your problems- it only dumps them on someone else. It's an admission that you think it's too much work to try improving a bad situation, so you're going to escape it via eternal sleep and hope that the people left around you can do a better job than you did.

Suppose you owe a massive debt, or your friends/relatives just died, or you're suffering from any other problem on earth (save a terminal disease.) How does committing suicide show yourself as being responsible instead of cowardly, in ANY way?