I think you just spoke about empathy, a natural parameter of feeling. Com-passion is passion in common, and rare cases do exist, but they are not the norm.Originally Posted by cacian
I think you just spoke about empathy, a natural parameter of feeling. Com-passion is passion in common, and rare cases do exist, but they are not the norm.
YesNo I always respect and often agree with your opinions, but here I think you're way off base. Suicide and rape are not at all comparable. Rape is a violent act committed against another, suicide is a violent act committed against oneself. A rapist is simply a bad person, a suicide is not.
I despise the popular sentiment towards suicide. No one can know what it is to inhabit the mind and feel the pain of another. I think suicide should be a right. We did not choose to be born, why must we feel obligated to live?
The main character in my novel kills himself. I see no valid justification for the prohibition of suicide in literature. No subject is out of bounds when it comes to art.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
I respect your opinion as well, Darcy, and have always enjoyed our discussions.
The only time that I can think of that I would be sympathetic to someone who commits suicide is if their entire family were killed and they were the only survivor. I could see them committing suicide. I don't think this would be right, but I could understand the survivor guilt.
Regarding the right to commit suicide, I don't think it is possible to stop someone from doing it. The most one can do is not pay the survivors any life insurance as a result of the death and legal things like that.
Regarding prohibiting suicide in literature, I am not in favor of prohibiting it. However, I would disagree with the final result if the suicide were portrayed in a positive manner. The market however determines what survives in literature not censors.
We mainly differ on comparing rape with suicide. I consider suicide worse than rape. Imaginatively, (don't actually do this, because there is no point in causing her stress) ask your mother which would hurt her more: (a) being raped or (b) going to your room and finding that you killed yourself. I think she would choose (b). Alternatively, you could ask yourself this question: which would hurt you more (a) being raped while detained in prison or (b) finding your girlfriend or your mother with a self-inflicted gunshot wound through her head?
I was counting on responses like this, islandclimber. Let me make sure my point is clear: Suicide is worse than rape and the suicides's victims are the survivors. Just ask the parent of a teenager who committed suicide.
We should not eliminate the political-religious-philosophical motivations for suicide. They are the the most inane aspects especially when seen at a distance from the issues involved. And as far a literature goes, which is what this thread is about, they usually involve stories--some pretty sick stories.
Why is it that the suicide's victims are expected to handle themselves appropriately, but the person who actually commits suicide is given a free ride? That is like saying, the girl who has been raped should realize that it is her "choice to allow this to affect" her?
I hadn't heard before that suicide is the most selfish of acts. Let me say, having heard that, that I totally agree. Couple that with political-religious-philosophical self-righteousness that is motivated by stories, it is the most disgusting of acts.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting. I am asserting that the person who commits suicide has harmed his or her family as much--no, more so--than a rapist.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I'd be far more devastated by finding my girlfriend or mother dead after their suicide than I would be after being raped, but I would think lesser of the rapist than I would of my girlfriend or mother. Likewise, I think my mother would think the person who raped her is morally lesser than her suicided son. I suppose overall you could try and argue that suicide is in a certain sense "worse" than rape, but that would be in the wider emotional devastation it causes on others and not in regards to the moral status of the person who commits the act.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Suicide is wrong, if you affirm that the universe is good. It is neither right nor wrong, if you assume the universe is not good.
This has nothing to do with any theistic position or atheistic position.
So, you are asking the right question and given that, I would ask you, what is your position on the goodness of the universe?
Regarding someone having the right to kill themselves or not, the fact of the matter is that people will kill themselves whether they have the right to do so or not. You can't stop them from doing so. However, you can tell them stories that might encourage them one way or the other.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
What an ugly, ugly thread. The pop understanding of suicide doesn't permit most people to fully understand your position YesNo. But that's age appropriate sometimes. That's the nature of being fooled (by nature). Which is worse seems like a horrifically superficial question. And answering that question only provides information... of other interest.
Western conception of suicide seems to crutch on 'It's my life, I'll take it if I want to.' The moral argument follows pretty easily from the inverse. If you fully respected agency of the other, ie appreciated their capacity to feel pain is equivalent to your own, you assess the nature of suicide in proper context. Even though you don't feel it yourself, you honor the reality and fullness of someone else's pain-- such as the effects on a family or a community caused by suicide.
So much goes out the window when Western conceptions of the self get a little nut checked.
J
I agree with that. I would feel the same way. I am only arguing for the wider emotional devastation a suicide causes.
I don't have any metaphysics that claims that the person who committed suicide goes to hell or is punished in some way after death. Although I don't think our consciousness ends at death, based on what I've read from psychics, people who commit suicide are not punished except in perhaps knowing the harm they caused. You may not find what psychics say to be evidence, but I don't have any other evidence to go on.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
That's how I feel on the matter, but I don't encounter this attitude very often. A person who expresses suicidal thoughts is met with horror and is liable to be locked up and forcibly medicated.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Empathy is an interesting word and I admit I do get empathy and sympathy muddled up. I think they are interrelated in that one cannot sympathise if one does not empathise.
I think a subject such as suicide goes ibeyond both because wishing someone to do something as permissible and fine but that we do not wish to ourselves is contrary to our beliefs and therefore false. Someone I know once told me do not feed something to somebody if you would not eat it yourself.
This brings me to think about present days jobs and the whole ethos about what we do professionally and how we feel about it. I was thinking it must be fake and allusive to do a job one does not believe in . To be professional and to believe in the profession is two separate things. I think our lives are already geared to live a lie an allusion. To strive in life teaches people to adopt blasé attitude and care free sentiment about everything else in life and that is concerning to say the least.
Last edited by cacian; 04-28-2013 at 05:31 AM.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
I agree with what peeps are saying about the emotional devastation killing yourself would do to others (that's why I for one would never contemplate suicide), but in my opinion you should still have that right to die. For example, people with terminal illnesses that make their life very painful. If they want to end their life now rather than prolonging it, who are we to deny them that right? I would certainly think that their family would be able to respect that decision.
Hi Volya you do bring a valid point and I feel that one that is in pain because one is disabled and is not able to conduct a normal life because he or she is literally in a vegetative state is a different subject. That is in my eyes not suicide but more of a need because physically one is impaired really badly. However someone who commits suicide because one is not able to get what they want or because they have gone bankrupt are physically able and can recover with the help for others. A physically impaired person is helpless because one cannot help their body adjust it is different. I feel it call it suicide is wrong. It must have a different name.
Last edited by cacian; 04-28-2013 at 05:42 AM.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
So someone who has a 'physical' desire for release from this life due to pain or degenerative illness is exonerated from the sin in your eyes. How very kind of you. But someone with a 'non-physical' need, be it depression or loneliness or some mental illness or whatever, is not?
Empathy? Hardly.
But this thread is supposed to be about whether suicide should be written about in literature or not. We seem to be wandering off-topic.
H
Not entirely sure if this was aimed at me, but if it was, I was merely using the terminal illness as an example, I am aware that there are other reasons people commit suicide
The answer is simple. Literature often reflects the harsh, cruel realities of life. Suicide is one of those realities. Deal with it.
Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb
No - it was aimed at the OP.
H
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