Suicide

Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 6 months ago to Culture
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Recently one of the funniest comedians ever, Robin Williams, committed suicide. In AS, quite a few people committed suicide. I can never support suicide. However, is suicide a logical response to an illogical world? If so, please explain.

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  • Posted by $ blarman 11 years, 6 months ago
    I look at suicide as the ultimate loss of hope. To commit suicide, one has to have evaluated all one's options and decided that all roads lead to a negative payback - including the hereafter. One also has to conclude that there is similarly nothing to be gained by others in your continued existence. Along the same line, one also has to conclude that one can not produce anything of benefit to others. They believe that they can be neither the recipient nor generator of value.

    I truly pity anyone who would reach such a point in their life and would ask them to reconsider. No one is truly alone and there are always people who care. Don't give up and don't give in to the feelings of worthlessness and despair.

    It may seem cliche, but one can always try counting one's blessings. I am amazed just by looking around at my own circumstances and comparing them to others' around the globe of what I have access to. I have eyes that work. I have ears that work. I have legs that work. I live in a great country. Et cetera.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    We are geared for it to be full of pain and fear. As I was running from that tornado last year, my adrenaline was pumping, and I took desperate measures just to stay alive, even though every day before and since I had to convince myself not to eat a bullet.

    Survival is indeed an instinct.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That would need to be determined by the individual. If asked for guidance, I would say that emotional pain can diminish over time.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    When my father died, one of my greatest concerns was that, when I was gone, all the things by which I knew him would be gone too. It would be as if he never existed. For years I tried my hardest to remember every thing he told me, every memory he shared, every dirty song he taught me.

    He had his own version of "Show Me The Way To Go Home" that I thought far better than the original. He used to sing songs by omitting the last word of each line, saying instead just its initial. But I digress.

    When my mother died, I regretted that I'd never again taste her swiss steak in red gravy, or her special "apple salad". For some reason I obsessed on that.

    And when I'm gone, all that'll be left behind is some "acid tongued" messages on the internet.
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  • Posted by hm3buzz 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Being afraid of the process intrigues me, as it is something that we all must go through at one point or another.
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  • Posted by hm3buzz 11 years, 6 months ago
    Whether it's a logical or illocial response is entirely subjective. There are people who've come to the conclusion that it was illogical for them, and there are people who have come to the opposite conclusion. What it all boils down to is whether you think it's the right thing to do for you.
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  • Posted by Maritimus 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am 79 years old and have never been hospitalized in my entire life. I have identified the way I want to go if I decide that my life is not worth living any more. Having witnessed consequences of strokes (or was it Alzheimer’s?), incurable cancers and Lou Gehrig disease, I am confident that family suffering is worse in cases of such prolonged slow deaths, than in a fast dispatch with a warning (my family knows my plan). Everybody knows that humans are mortal. If there is a life for a soul after body's death, do you think it depends on how the body died?
    Here is my idea of immortality. When we love someone deeply, many good things rub off them and into us. That way, they remain an indelible part of ourselves. This way, by loving them, we make them immortal in the only way that, at least I, can understand immortality. Those who love us inherit also those we loved. I do believe that relatives who insist on prolonging the life of unconscious bodies are committing an act of irrational selfishness.
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  • Posted by H2ungar123 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Glad you took those three giant steps back
    from the edge, giving a pretty powerful (to
    me) description of your dark time and how
    you resolved it. My deepest thanks for this,
    Rainman0720
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  • Posted by Rex_Little 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If it's not included, then what was the point of having her in the movies at all? If I were writing it I'd have left that whole story arc out.
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  • Posted by flanap 11 years, 6 months ago
    Suicide is most logical when living a life based on no absolutes.

    Unfortunately, more and more people do not hold to an absolutist world view.
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  • Posted by radical 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If this episode is included, it needs to point out that her whole world collapsed - a world where she could admire someone in a high position.
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  • Posted by radical 11 years, 6 months ago
    Depression is probably the leading cause, not outside events, with the possible exception of the sudden loss of a loved one or an extremely painful illness.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yup... being dead doesn't scare me. The process of dying is another matter.

    Per my beliefs, suicide is a one-way ticket to hell. But that's not much of a deterrent, since I know I'm going there anyway.
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  • Posted by Rex_Little 11 years, 6 months ago
    I wonder if, in AS3, Cheryl Brooks kills herself as she did in the book. Rand's description of Cheryl's act included an explanation of why it was a rational response to her situation. Acted out on the screen without that explanation, it's not going to look rational to anybody.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Suicide is the ultimate cowardly choice."

    Yeah, I used to think that too.

    Would Galt have been a coward for suiciding if they started torturing Dagney, as he promised he'd do?

    I submit that suicide can be a rational choice, if one can, with reasonable accuracy, foresee one's future, and finds said future unacceptable.
    Seems some kind of violation of Objectivist "natural rights" to force people to go on living a life they don't want to live, to me.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    define "painful illness"? Does emotional pain count, or only physical pain? If one has emotional pain, does one not feel it?
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    And the same to you. Unfortunately, it is for some. We had a situation in WI in the past 6 months where an old couple faced just such a situation. Married for 50 yrs, wife had some medical issue that caused incredible pain and her system was too fragile for the necessary drugs to alleviate that pain (plus, they would basically have made her comatose). Her husband placed a pillow over her head. Not suicide, but thankfully the prosecutor chose not to bring up charges.
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