winstonjen

Yes, but I believe that people should 'be all the want to be', not 'be all they can be'. They should not be forced to take opportunities simply because the can. We don't prevent people from marrying because there is a chance of divorce, do we? And divorce can affect the lives of any children as well.

Yes. This is one of the major issues that needs to be resolved before we can prevent most suicides. If they are willing to talk about it, they can get help.

Nowhere357

Life provides it's own justification. The point is to live (which supports your position).

Because we only get one shot. Afaik. (Again supporting your position.)

No, I'd rather watch the sun rise. And die old, bitter, and smoking some weed. But that's just me. (Supporting your position once again!)

But the issue imo is not whether we should live or die - the issue is whether the government has the right to make this decision.

I say no. I am not a slave.

Worldtraveller

This is an extremely difficult, and deeply personal issue for me.

To wander back to the topic of the OP for just a moment; I don't think suicide is "illegal" in most states. However, as a society we do try to discourage it, and since the condition of extreme depression has been shown to often be due to a physiological chemical imbalance more often than due to any circumstances, our view has probably changed even more in recent years. And just because a policeman tells you it is, doesn't mean it is. I know many police officers who have a less than perfect understanding of the laws they are supposed to be enforcing....

My opinion of suicide is that it is your life to do with what you will. A lot of people will think that's awfully cavalier and "easy for me to say", but nothing could be further from the truth. I lost my absolute best friend in the world a few years ago. He took his own life. This was the guy who I knew since high school, he had even gotten "ordained" through the universal life church to be able to legally preside at my wedding. There isn't a day (and I mean a single day!!) that goes by that I don't think of him, and it has been a little over five years now.

He wasn't entirely as "successful" as he would have liked to be. He shot himself, in the head. However, we feel he wanted to minimize the pain he knew all of us would feel, so he drove himself to the parking lot of the nearest hospital, and shot himself there. The Dr.'s found him within about 5 minutes. My wife and I, with a couple other friends, made the 8 hour drive to the hospital in about 6 hours.

The days that followed were probably the hardest 8 days of my entire life. When it came right down to it, my wife and I both felt we were morally obligated to side with his wife, and supported her decision to 'respect' his decision. We told the Dr.'s to remove everything except the feeding tube, and decided not to ship him to another hospital. Of course, he still hung on for a few days more, but at least he passed on before we had to make a decision about the feeding tube.

If you haven't been through something like this, I don't know if you can comprehend the emotional duress that this kind of thing brings. And yet, as hard as it was, and as painful as it still is, I still have to say that it was his decision to make and we couldn't second guess it. Oh, believe me, we wanted to, we had rationalized it in so many ways....this was the same man who had so many times talked other friends out of doing exactly what he had just done. He was almost finished with his Ph.D. thesis, he had just celebrated an anniversary....oh the things he had to live for. But it IS his life, and when it comes right down to it, I would want the same thing if I had made that decision, even if, like us, no one knew why.

Well, I think I have probably depressed everyone enough now. I hope I didn't kill this thread, but I'm going to go have a good cry now.

-Lane

winstonjen

That's a very sad story, Worldtraveler. There's a page here that advises people about the ways to help depressed people. Here's a bit:

Kandeda Trefil

It all depends how much you want to let other people push you around...potential suicides, unite! Thumb your noses at the legislators, THAT'll make 'em sorry!

Alternatively, you bet it should be illegal! THAT'LL make those suicidal buggers feel bad, won't it! HA!

SLUGFly

Righto, maybe the question should be "should suicide be made legal?" I think suicide should be publicly accepted. Consider the personal and impersonal.

Personal: How could I force someone to continue a pain that is so great that the only option they can see is death? Think about it. So much psychological pain which we on the outside belittle by saying "it'll get better, it's not so bad, it'll be okay" Of course it's not so bad, because we're not the ones in pain. Of course it'll be okay, that's why a failed suicide attempt rarely makes one attempt only. How much mental anguish must these people be in to choose to end life entirely? Why should we force them to suffer through a life they genuinly don't want? "oh, they're just sick, we can heal them." Maybe... but they hurt. They hurt in a big way that we can't empathize with.

Impersonal... 6 BILLION PEOPLE. Most of the world has dirty water and little food and we're going to hit 10 billion within the next 20 years. We're reaching critical mass. What do rangers do if there's too many of a wild animal? They thin the species.

Not sure if this is just a clever pun (one that I toyed with myself recently) or if it's a social comment. Adolescent suicide is a serious problem in asia (I know this statement contradicts my last point) because of severe stress on good grades, good schools and good jobs. In addition, if someone is outcast, it's not like in North America where you can find a freak culture (which I think is cooler) to take you in. If you are outcast in an Asian high school/middle school, you are targeted by every person and completely isolated. I'm a teacher in Korea and I've seen seeds of it but heard more serious instances from other teachers and my kids.

SLUGFly

Sorry for double posting but I missed this the first time through. (throw something at me if I'm too long winded)

I think it's a great idea. But don't jump to conclusions, imagine this scenario, it's an impossible scenario because it requires a complete culture shift... but imagine for a moment.

Think of the money we spend on pensions. Think of how hard we work for our entire lives so we can finally "relax" during the years in which we decay. What if in our culture, we had an expiry date. What if it was a cultural norm that when we are 60 we commit suicide. Think of the ways in which it would improve life.

Socially-

-people wouldn't have to pay for the plentiful nursing homes, pensions or health care of the elderly.
-our population problem would be a little closer to under control (a tiny bit... but a tiny amount is still an amount, penny saved and all that)

Personally-

-knowing that I would die at 60, and knowing this for my entire life, I would have the opportunity to reconcile myself with death because it's no longer a "thief in the night." I wouldn't fear it because I would have beaten it by willingly giving myself to it.

-knowing exactly when my last page will be turned allows me to sort out all of my attachments and concerns and finish all my projects, it's the ultimate deadline. (no pun intended, really)

-I would have a party the night before, with all my friends and relatives or perhaps only my closest friends and relatives, during which I would give them all of their inheritance while I'm still alive. I would pay my last respects to them, and they to me while I can still hear it.

-with only my lover and children, I would lay on a bed and drink my hemlock (sort of) in a comfortable and pleasing environment, fading into nothingness in the arms of those I love.

-I would willingly give myself to death while I'm still healthy (60 is not very old) and so avoid the pain and decay and clinging to life that happens towards the end.

-the only way death would catch us by surprise and hence shock us and torment us would be by accident, disease and murder. The pain that our loved ones feel would also be lessened because of the opportunity to prepare.

Every religion in the world has an idea on the afterlife, therefore why is death so scary and bad? To them, it's simply the transition that's scary. It's the "what if I'm wrong? What if god doesn't love me?" Or the selfishness of those around them "don't go, don't leave ME alone!" Those without religion believe that after death is nothingness and how could that be bad? It's our inability to understand "nothing" that makes us afraid (and in some maybe "what if I'm wrong") I think expiry dates by suicide would be a great thing, but only if it was publicly accepted. Which by our fear it never will be.

I also admit that I'm normal. Most men would fight and lay down their lives to defend the country they're in (from invaders, I'm not talking about Iraq silliness) but we always feel strongly about this when the possibility of war is far away and improbable. Given the actual situation where we were being conquered and occupied, most of us would run and hide like rodents. So I admit that I feel like this now, and I despise and disrespect the clinging to life "1 more day, another machine, more drugs, just 1 more day of breath!" But when I'm 60 or 70 and lying in a hospital bed maybe I'll be saying "one more day" and clinging till my fingernails rip off.

winstonjen

SlugFLY, I think that would be a great idea, so long as there was no coercion. In many societies in history, suicide was seen as noble, not selfish and bad as we do today. It was religion that robbed people of their ultimate right to self-determination, and that twisted the culture to a horrible perversion of a humane and just society.

Treacle Worshipper

I knew a very outspoken doctor who firmly believed that everyone should suicide at 65 (British pension age for men). He was my gp & he used to write letters to the newspapers about it. When he got into his sixties, the age moved up to 70; when he got near 70 it moved to 75, etc, etc. He dead now anyway.

I think it's impossible to put an age limit on death. For instance, my grandmother died suddenly of a heart attack 2 weeks before her 77th birthday. She was very active in all sorts of respects until literally the day she died. If she'd had to suicide at 60, the world would've missed 17 years of her good works & many people's lives would have been much poorer.

Illness, mental and physical, should be treateed to the best of our ability, but people should be allowed to go when they feel it's right for them to go.

TW

Harumi

All right then. I wonder if any of you feel if there was a case in which suicide is unacceptable. Here's a scenario, and it's actually a fairly common:

Mr. X is a happy man with a wife and two beautiful children. He lives in a decent house, gets decent wages, and has enough free time to relax and just enjoy life once in a while.

One day the economy went bad, and businesses start to dismiss people. Mr. X was one of them. Because of the current economy, he can't immediately find a job. His pride won't let him work at some cheap restaurant or some such (taking such a job would cause him a great deal of emotional pain), so he stays at home. Because of the lack of income, he is forced to sell their home and move him and his family into a very poor district. Once prosperous, the family is now forced to work for every penny. Even take charity and government loans.

Mr. X cannot bear this. He feels he has failed the family. As any other person would in his place, he becomes depressed. He can't speak to his wife and family about his feelings, because that would just worry them further.

This goes on for quite a while.

By now you probably know the ending. Mr. X can no longer bear his feelings of shame, and so commits suicide.

Do you feel that Mr. X was perfectly justified when he took his life? Do you think he isn't guilty for leaving a starving, practically homeless family behind?

I think that when other lives are seriously affected (and I mean seriously), then I don't believe you have the luxury of taking your own life. Mr. X left a poor, starving family behind, in a way escaping his responsibilities. His wife and children may just follow in his footsteps, simply because they feel there is no hope, whereas when the father was around, they did.

Opinions?