Seraphim

Let's see if the other guy does it...


Last edited by Corgan Sow on January 29, 2003 at 03:14 AM

My reply : HMPH ... So much for expecting fair play, no?

Balls in your court, Mr. Moderator ... I did my part ... the insult from the other still remains ... WHAT are you going to do?

Joseph Backs

Like I've reasoned with many on this issue, one should only commit suicide if and when they have a damn good reason for doing it, just like any other action that person would commit, without the common and unfounded consideration for society's subjective (favored and thus empty) impositions to influence the determination.

There should be a reason for killing oneself, and suffering "depression" is not the reason.

If someone is crippled by depression, it sucks, but there's no reason apparent in these circumstances alone to lead the person to wanting to die.

The reason has to be found - objectively (like in Hume) - and once that reason is discovered, independent of that person's subjective experience of his/her world, then the act is warranted.

Suicide is not cowardly if committed for a good reason, for it possesses what may be termed a "natural" motivation that any rational mind can and would distinguish from the compelled to acts of the fear-stricken and so-self-deceiving coward - therefore it never must be an action undertaken out of one's impulsive urges.

How does one identify the good reason for doing such an apparently harmful thing? Good question. Afterall, there are some who would seem to have no control over their actions, and do commit murder or suicide impulsively.

But that's not the issue here - that would fit into the category of the compulsive force leading to the compulsive act - the issue here is the "aware" and decisively "clear" individual who makes the concious decision to end it all, and how and when such a decision does and should come to, as they say, fruition.

That person who first can use their "clearness" of mind - by which I mean the faculty of reason that remains open to the depressed person by way of his/her ability to make certain separate-from-the-condition and distinctive decisions even in the state of suffering; or, more specifically, the power to come to conclusions that may be born out of basic reasoning - must decide based on a "clear" and "distinct" reason that can only exist separate of subjective reality - that revelation that can be tracked with a clear line of logic and thus infer the obvious course of action.

Like any other "action" the decision must be based on sound reason.

If that reason is not available, the act is rejected, despite the misery the person feels at the moment, and so reasons for alternative courses of action - however unfamiliar or unsavory they are - must be accepted and followed to fruition. What is important to note is that the act, no matter how virtuous and esteemed or unseemly and deplorable, must be given equal substance and strength by its only "true" authority: reason.

J.B.

winstonjen

You have many interesting points there, but I would like to ask how you would define an 'objective reason' for commiting suicide. After all, things like depression, pain, suffering, etc. are all relative, and everyone has their own pain threshold.

What I am saying is that since no one can actually experience the lives of other people, how do we decide what is and what is not a justification for suicide, using your objective criteria?

Joseph Backs

Thank you for your response winstonjen, your questions are very reasonable ones.

Well, in terms of defining an objective reason for committing the act of self-slaughter, what courses are open to us?

We may begin with an investigation into what must be understood as the "intimate anguish" of the human mind and spirit (not completely excluding, but leaving unemphasized at present the matter of physical suffering and pain).

We can explore the idea that the consistent observation of the one who continues in a perpetual state of personal and social animosity, who it seems is unfailingly condemned to the worst of life's experiences, bringing a constant misery into the world, and to whom it would appear nothing but "unwanted" things do and can happen, would reveal to the minds of virtually all reasonable men an ideal candidate for justifying such a one's determination to suicide.

In the case of such an uncommonly tormented individual as this - whose life it would appear is a riddle (indeed, the breadth of such interminable wretchedness would imply there were no bounds to personal anguish and stupidity) - that the only "out" would be to put an end to the "all" that is so wretched, namely the so-called life of the man who has nothing to gain, and nothing to offer.

It would be easy to postulate in this manner, but for the point that no such matter can impose such rules on life. What I mean, basically, is can the guy really give up on life based on what "seems" to be the failure of his own life?

What is apparent can, at any moment, become obviously not the case. Thus, the man cannot justify killing himself - for if the possibility of "difference" to appearances - if he concludes that his life is not nearly as miserable as another's who perhaps has had not the liberty of unlabored breath, or two legs upon which to walk, or a hundred other blessings which this man owns ... he sees by comparison that the appearance of total misery is a fallacy, even in spite of his total abjection.

Moreover, it is difficult for this man to imagine or reason that it is not possible that his plight can change. Even in the worst of it, even looking up from the gutter, he still sees the stars. He is not blind like another man - he must see both his misery and the joys of others - and seeing those joys, the man must reason - for we must impose the faculty of reason upon this otherwise ridiculous mind - that he too is still exposed to joy, and so it is not impossible that by some twist or alteration he might one day experience it himself.

Basically, this first message - focusing on the existence of the wretch - is designed to argue the point that a man, even at his lowest, cannot despair entirely when he accepts reason into his thoughts, which he must - for he would be impulsive if he did not - and we are not dealing with acts of impulsiveness which overshadow all reason.

We are trying to limit his determination to suicide down to the point: 1) can he say he is so depressed that he cannot bear to go on?

Certainly not. His reason tells him that being so depressed has nothing to do with not being able to go on. For he has gone on this far, and so he knows he can continue in misery.

If he cannot continue, then what is the reason? Is it because he sees no hope for the future? Well, again, turning to reason, he realizes that hope is a matter of deliverance through alteration - and he cannot prove to himself that, even though he has gone through the worst and the worst still persists, it may not be so in the near future, indeed, that he may suddenly and all but in a state of complete shock, become totally alien to the concept of sorrow - that he may not change his mind, acting explicitly or subtly upon this or that quality, that he may not be changed and so become subject to the greatest joys any human has ever experienced.

With the possibility of the greatest of joys and blessings staring the reality of the worst of it in the face, a man's reason prevents him from discovering the REAL reason for death.

Since death has not ushered him off, he cannot judge that he should do it himself - afterall, if he did, could he imagine any circumstance - even in the possibility of alteration - of regretting the decision after the fact?

But then may he say his depression is too crippling for him to continue?

Certainly not. For he knows that even in hell a slave may live, and any slave living can glimpse the kingdom that even he may, under some possible circumstance, embrace with the yearned after changed heart, and then prosper - which is what all selfish and selfless invididuals alike can hope for - and so may his life persist in a depressive state, as long as he is able to keep life in him through the barest of sustainance, and even though he judged his life the worst and lowest he can imagine it - he can, even then, imagine some worser fate of a wretch who has lost his reason and is an animal - which he, still capable of such imagination, is certainly not. And so there he is blessed with the understanding that even in this state, living and understanding clearly, with depression and all hindering only his frequency of comprehension, he has no reason for snuffing out the life that blesses him with that which raises him above the animals to be able to imagine a better future for himself - perhaps a much better one, and so an incredibly valuable future - because it is still a possibility.

This is the first (admittedly rough) argument in my discussion about reasons for such a bleak determination. Excuse the first-draftness of the composition, and give me time to compile and clarify for the longer second section.

thanks again for your question

J.B.

winstonjen

Thank you for your reply, Joseph. I thought it was very interesting and detailed.

In general, however, I believe that anyone's life is their own, and to deny them full authority over their life is slavery. We can use persuasion, but not force. After all, we don't choose to be born. Surely we should be able to choose how and when to die.

Joseph Backs

Objectively speaking, my clarity needs refinement, and let me admit this here.

However, if one understands simply that the reason for suicide can only be found in the impossibility of bettering one's situation and so transcending that which would give a man the excuse - depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and even pain; all of which cannot be proven to not be subject to having an eventual end - one realizes that such a circumstance is rare only because the possibility for a kind of improvement, even in the most finite degree, is always extant.

J.B.

Joseph Backs

Thanks W. Certainly people have the "right" to do with their own life as they wish.

All I am saying is that someone who has open to them numerous possibilities for living cannot use temporary problems as true justification for suicide, without first weighing all the elements, or examining the "big picture" beginning with the progress of their own existence from point A to H ... I ... J ... K ... and so on.

Now even in the worse cases, there is the possibility for improvement of life and the embracing of a richness that has not yet come.

Deductively at least, one must be willing to be open to this very real possibility, otherwise many of us today could find instant justification for any action - being that certain things are the way they are.

Subjectively, our pain can be used to better our lot in the future, just as much as it can be used to bring us to our knees and our hand to the knife.

J.B.

Dominus Paradoxum

I think you're just bitter because you didn't kill yourself years ago, when you had the chance, before to got addicted to trolling internet forums. You know what I think? I think you just rip on others because you are too much of a COWARD to kill yourself. It's called projection, necrophobe. Ever heard of it?

Btw, I know your story's bullsh!t, because there's no way in HELL you could go through depression without symphatizing with those who want to kill themselves. And just in case you're telling the truth, I wanted to let you know that your calling that girl who killed herself 'supid' just made you deserve everything that ever happened to you.

Have a nice day. [/SARCASM]

NightWatchman

"O ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers .... and let them find harshness in you." (Immunity 9: 123)

Murder means to break down the life aspects of a person to where those principals by which they exist actually die. It is what I have been talking about with executing criminals. We have to work, not on killing the body but on killing the negative light within them. Here the admonition is to murder but remember this is metaphysical and never speaks of the physical body. It is speaking of the life force. That is the light.
Here that life force is negative and must be killed so a new life force can be put in place. Kill the negative light or blow it out so it can be filled with a new positive light.


nightwatchman

Joseph Backs

Take this story and see if you can beat it: I once was a whore who was raped by Hollywood people who do gang-bangs a lot, and by the time I was forced to do hard labor for the farmers who owned the prostitution ring to which I was bound, I decided I had enough - so I got a sex change and decided to take up philosophy.

Now I beat it, but in a very different sense. I can now take comfort that instead of killing myself, I can stick it do dumb whores like I used to be.

sincerely

J.B.

(sarcasm?) heho