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[Maximum Spin]

Yet it doesn't cross me as completely unreasonable that one may take the life of another purposefully after engaging in combat, out of fear of revenge or repercussions.

I agree completely, but I don't see how that comports with saying that it should be prevented by force in all cases.

[Magistrum]

I might understand why someone thinks something and still find it appalling.
I mean it in the sense of following their supposed line of reasoning. Or at least what I think it is.

[redwallzyl]

I find it very disturbing that some people seem to think of suicide as a if it is a totally rational decision all the time. I am fairly certain most of it is as a result of either chemical issues or extreme stress or other emotional issues. The get depressed and suddenly you should off yourself attitude seems awfull and just completed misses the cause. You seem to be be missing context completely in you philosophical discussions of individual rights. On top of totally disregarding society which however much you want to you can't.

[Magistrum]

You seem to be be missing context completely in you philosophical discussions of individual rights. On top of totally disregarding society which however much you want to you can't.

I find it interesting if only as a way to understand the why of someone's opinion.

I also share your opinion about suicide not being a rational decision, even if by different reasons.

[misko27]

I find it very disturbing that some people seem to think of suicide as a if it is a totally rational decision all the time.

I'm disturbed that people suddenly care about rationality when sucicide is involved but never anywhere else! Why is someone allowed to ruin their own life, but not end it? Why is suicide the one decision that you're completely unallowed to be irrational over? I'd say the desire to live no matter the situation is inherently irrational! And do you know why? You're going to die anyway. Dying is literally the only thing we all have in common.

No it's not always rational, but just because you don't like the bloody idea of it doesn't mean you've got the right to take it away from people. And from what I can tell, people's opposition to suicide rests primarily in precisely that "Oh well it sounds nasty" gut reaction.

I find it very disturbing that some people seem to think of suicide as a if it is a totally rational decision all the time. I am fairly certain most of it is as a result of either chemical issues or extreme stress or other emotional issues. The get depressed and suddenly you should off yourself attitude seems awfull and just completed misses the cause. You seem to be be missing context completely in you philosophical discussions of individual rights. On top of totally disregarding society which however much you want to you can't.

What if one lives in a society where suicide is seen as perfectly acceptable or even encouraged in certain situations? Then what?

[redwallzyl]

I find it very disturbing that some people seem to think of suicide as a if it is a totally rational decision all the time.

I'm disturbed that people suddenly care about rationality when sucicide is involved but never anywhere else! Why is someone allowed to ruin their own life, but not end it? Why is suicide the one decision that you're completely unallowed to be irrational over? I'd say the desire to live no matter the situation is inherently irrational! And do you know why? You're going to die anyway. Dying is literally the only thing we all have in common.

No it's not always rational, but just because you don't like the bloody idea of it doesn't mean you've got the right to take it away from people. And from what I can tell, people's opposition to suicide rests primarily in precisely that "Oh well it sounds nasty" gut reaction.

I find it very disturbing that some people seem to think of suicide as a if it is a totally rational decision all the time. I am fairly certain most of it is as a result of either chemical issues or extreme stress or other emotional issues. The get depressed and suddenly you should off yourself attitude seems awfull and just completed misses the cause. You seem to be be missing context completely in you philosophical discussions of individual rights. On top of totally disregarding society which however much you want to you can't.

What if one lives in a society where suicide is seen as perfectly acceptable or even encouraged in certain situations? Then what?

Because you cant fix dead and fixing is what should be done not saying fuck it. Also you still seem to be ignoring that suicide is heavily connected with depression which is often medical and has nothing to do with the reality of a persons life and is fixable. You could argue that everything is pointless because of the heat death of the universe but we non the less continue on. Your points seem absurd.

To the second point that as far as I know is generally connected to either shame, coercion, or self sacrifice. I don't know of any that is fine with members just offing themselves for no reason then they got depressed. And I'm an anthropology student so I would be more likely then most to know of such societies. I would be greatly interested in an ethnography on such an phenomenon. The thing is it seem to me this perspective you seem to have conflicts with basic concepts of societal success. It benefits no one for otherwise healthy people to kill themselves.

[Rolan7]

The problem with the society measure is that it's equivalent to slavery.  Using psychological or even physical enforcement to keep people within a system, working for the benefit of others.

I don't have an answer for this problem.  I deeply feel that people shouldn't be forced to live, yet a lot of people are going through temporary circumstances (back luck, hormones) which might push them to a rash decision.

[redwallzyl]

The problem with the society measure is that it's equivalent to slavery.  Using psychological or even physical enforcement to keep people within a system, working for the benefit of others.

I would hardly call it that. Also exploitation is an entirely different issue with solutions that are not kill the exploited because they are sad. Also humans exist in a society and always have, that's just how we work, we could not exist if we did not work for the benefit of others. The best socaity would be where everyone helped one and other and worked for each other to promote the common good and prosperity of everyone. We ideally have obligations to one and other to avoid situations were people get so desperate as to want to escape it by such drastic measures. And its hardly like everyone is in a terrible situation, there are many other things that could lead to possible suicide attempts.

[wierd]

No, it is totally that.

Prohibitions against self-termination mostly started in feudal societies, where the people were literal property of their liege. Self-termination was effectively destroying the kings work force, and therefor bad. (Like, super duper bad).  When you consider the quality of life that serfs had, self-termination would seem nice.  As such, strong punishments against family members of those who self-terminate were instituted to discourage it.

The puritanical morons who settled our country brought such notions with them, just less overt, in their social mores.  This "LIFE AT ALL COSTS! SUICIDE IS NEVER RATIONAL!" rhetoric is just a modern apologism of this original practice.

If we respect people's choices to-- Not be pregnant, or ---to consume dangerous drugs recreationally, then we must also respect the choice of the person who chooses self-termination. Thats my .02$ anyway.

[redwallzyl]

No, it is totally that.

Prohibitions against self-termination mostly started in feudal societies, where the people were literal property of their liege. Self-termination was effectively destroying the kings work force, and therefor bad. (Like, super duper bad).  When you consider the quality of life that serfs had, self-termination would seem nice.  As such, strong punishments against family members of those who self-terminate were instituted to discourage it.

The puritanical morons who settled our country brought such notions with them, just less overt, in their social mores.  This "LIFE AT ALL COSTS! SUICIDE IS NEVER RATIONAL!" rhetoric is just a modern apologism of this original practice.

If we respect people's choices to-- Not be pregnant, or ---to consume dangerous drugs recreationally, then we must also respect the choice of the person who chooses self-termination. Thats my .02$ anyway.

(citation needed)

[wierd]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felo_de_se

Note the punishment: Forfeiture of property to the king.

[SalmonGod]

I'm with you on this, misko... I'm actually ambivalent on the subject of suicide.  It's one of those topics that brings out the absurdist in me.  There's no absolute that can be fallen back on here that is wholly consistent, at least without bringing religion into it.  To argue that there is any value in life beyond what one feels for it themselves is to ascribe some source of that value which is absolute, beyond human experience.  I don't believe in such a thing. 

This is one of those subjects that lays bare the random absurdity of existence to me.  The only thing which makes life more than some random absurdity is our own agency, and our own ability to explore our feelings about the situation on our own terms.  One of the most sacrosanct aspects of the human experience to me is the struggle to find and create value in ourselves by our own self-originated ideas of value, and if everyone succeeded, it wouldn't really be all that special, would it?  It's for this reason that harming one another should be avoided, because it violates that self-determination... but respecting someone's right to harm themselves is the other side of that coin, even if it's sad.  We don't have the right to tell someone else what their life is worth.  We don't even have the ABILITY.  We can express it.  We can physically enforce it by removing the means to self-harm (including psychological).  But we can't replace someone else's feelings about their own life with our own, and it would be wrong if we could.

Otherwise, we'd outlaw shit like smoking, soda, dangerous sports, etc... right?  Because we can easily argue that those are just different ways to kill oneself, or express a devaluation of one's own life.

It also bothers me when people bring "chemicals" into this.  It's all chemicals.  I'm not saying that medical depression isn't a real thing and a problem.  But to automatically disregard negative experiences and motives as "chemicals" once they reach a certain threshold that correlates with a specific action you don't want to happen, it invalidates all of human experience.  It's all chemicals.  All our thoughts and feelings.  And without the absolute source of value from beyond human experience as I mentioned before, we could assign invalidation of self-determination at any point because "it's not really them it's these chemicals" and the validity would be objectively equal.  Yeah, we can't ignore that there is a hardware aspect to our physical make-up that can be fucked up, and it's ok if someone decides for themselves that they want to take a hardware approach to fixing it (medication to address chemical issues).  But to say "if someone wants to hurt themselves, we have to save them from those chemicals" is to decide that your own feelings about the lives of others are the determining factor as to whether something is genuine human experience or "chemicals".

Here's to those who have decided to leave, including a friend who toughed out 30 years of cerebral palsy and left a 1 year old child.  I don't hold it against them, and I don't regard them as machines that malfunctioned.

[redwallzyl]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felo_de_se

Note the punishment: Forfeiture of property to the king.

*does some research*
you are wrong in your assertions of cause.

I took the liberty of gathering some book chapters of various arguments for you to read. I cant download the whole thing due to page limits

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/7kutgj8c7rxaq/Suicide

[redwallzyl]

I'm with you on this, misko... I'm actually ambivalent on the subject of suicide.  It's one of those topics that brings out the absurdist in me.  There's no absolute that can be fallen back on here that is wholly consistent, at least without bringing religion into it.  To argue that there is any value in life beyond what one feels for it themselves is to ascribe some source of that value which is absolute, beyond human experience.  I don't believe in such a thing. 

This is one of those subjects that lays bare the random absurdity of existence to me.  The only thing which makes life more than some random absurdity is our own agency, and our own ability to explore our feelings about the situation on our own terms.  One of the most sacrosanct aspects of the human experience to me is the struggle to find and create value in ourselves by our own self-originated ideas of value, and if everyone succeeded, it wouldn't really be all that special, would it?  It's for this reason that harming one another should be avoided, because it violates that self-determination... but respecting someone's right to harm themselves is the other side of that coin, even if it's sad.  We don't have the right to tell someone else what their life is worth.  We don't even have the ABILITY.  We can express it.  We can physically enforce it by removing the means to self-harm (including psychological).  But we can't replace someone else's feelings about their own life with our own, and it would be wrong if we could.

Otherwise, we'd outlaw shit like smoking, soda, dangerous sports, etc... right?  Because we can easily argue that those are just different ways to kill oneself, or express a devaluation of one's own life.

It also bothers me when people bring "chemicals" into this.  It's all chemicals.  I'm not saying that medical depression isn't a real thing and a problem.  But to automatically disregard negative experiences and motives as "chemicals" once they reach a certain threshold that correlates with a specific action you don't want to happen, it invalidates all of human experience.  It's all chemicals.  All our thoughts and feelings.  And without the absolute source of value from beyond human experience as I mentioned before, we could assign invalidation of self-determination at any point because "it's not really them it's these chemicals" and the validity would be objectively equal.  Yeah, we can't ignore that there is a hardware aspect to our physical make-up that can be fucked up, and it's ok if someone decides for themselves that they want to take a hardware approach to fixing it (medication to address chemical issues).  But to say "if someone wants to hurt themselves, we have to save them from those chemicals" is to decide that your own feelings about the lives of others are the determining factor as to whether something is genuine human experience or "chemicals".

Here's to those who have decided to leave, including a friend who toughed out 30 years of cerebral palsy and left a 1 year old child.  I don't hold it against them, and I don't regard them as machines that malfunctioned.

The first step in demonstrating suicidal influence is to
look at the fatal harm a parent’s suicide often causes. A 2010
study from Johns Hopkins University in the May 2010 issue
of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry showed that children (eighteen years old or
younger) of suicide victims are three times as likely to commit
suicide at some future point, compared with people who
reach eighteen with neither parent having committed suicide.5
The study looked at the whole Swedish population over thirty
years. Investigators in Sweden and the United States examined
suicides, psychiatric hospitalizations, and violent crime convictions
in more than 500,000 Swedish children, teens, and
adults under the age of twenty-five who had lost a parent to
suicide, accident, or disease compared with nearly four million
children, teens, and young adults with living parents. A
suicide by a parent while a child was under the age of eighteen
tripled the likelihood that that child would commit suicide.
Children under thirteen who lost a parent to illness had no
increased risk for suicide when compared with children with
living parents. The study also found that children who lost
parents to suicide were almost twice as likely to be hospitalized
for depression as those with living parents; those who lost
parents to accidents had a 30 percent higher risk for hospitalization
for depression, and for those who lost parents by illness
the risk was 40 percent higher

Suicide is a disease. Not a cure.

[Maximum Spin]

Why yes, depression has a genetic component and is therefore heritable, but once he's had a child, the damage is done, you know?


Oh, wait, you didn't think that study was capable of proving an environmental effect, did you?