Suicide

[Jozanny]

All I'm saying is: anyone who is even thinking about suicide should get help.

Now.

I rather agree with noema in my disagreement with this, Aunt. I come out of the social control model of mental health, professionally, and of disability both personally and professionally, and most of it these days is about containment for the comfort of middle class norms. I rather agree with Foucault's critique, and even outrage, at modern psychiatry. The older I become with cerebral palsy, the harder the dilemma, because human beings were certainly not designed or evolved for nursing homes. On a conceptual level, these places are evil, and they literally breed the immorality which mainstream media highlights on a daily basis. I have depression and anxiety, partly due to social isolation a wee little bit beyond my control (loss of career, transportation, mobility issues), and I am against suicide, at least the kind of suicide that Wallace used as his solution, but no one is going to convince me that the choice of an egotistical self-death is less rational than being warehoused in a nursing home facility. I've been in them, for my job, and the teacher's description of them in The Miracle Worker was not much of an exaggeration.

It isn't always either right or wrong. The lines do get to squiggle now and then.

[noema]

no one is going to convince me that the choice of an egotistical self-death is less rational than being warehoused in a nursing home facility....It isn't always either right or wrong.

Jozanny, you just opened, I think, a debate as to the logical validity of euthanasia. I use the word 'logical' in want of a better word. Jean Amery talks about the logic-of-life counterpointed by logic-of-life in his discourse on voluntary death. For me, there's nothing rational about not committing suicide. We live by default. I completely agree with you that a life lived, as a patient or Guardian, in nursing home or an asylum is not worth living because it is one form of slow death and death shouldn't be lived. As long as the state banishes euthanasia or physician assisted suicide (PAS), such deaths will be considered acts that are not wholly accepted in ordinary society and they will be tagged as taboos perhaps. But then, philosophically I agree with you when you say "It isn't always either right or wrong".

[erikwithAk]

I havent had anyone close to me die in this manner, however. i have friends who i have seen go from the happiest person alive to absolute depression due to someone close to them commit suiside. ive sat down on many occasions and talked with them on many levels, and they always talk about the deaseased so dearly and in the best regards and how much they loved them. in my beliefs this is the most inappropriate way to die becuase on the effects it has on the person and the people and world around them. be it in a position of greatness or at the rock bottom pits of hell :quote: in nursing home or an asylum is not worth living because it is one form of slow death and death shouldn't be lived - noema :unquote: its never a choice to be considored. if your still alive God is not done with you. if you are dead however, and your body just hasnt gotten the memo. then all i can say is that its between you and your maker.

[JBI]

Honestly, suicide for some people is a better alternative. The right and wrongs are irrelevnt, as suicide is a persons choice, and to some extent, it must be left up to them to decide whether or not they wish to die.

[NEEMAN]

I am of the opinion that suicide is always a bad decision. But is suicide 'wrong'? No, and the greatest achievement of western philosophy is that it has settled the issue of 'right & wrong' for all time. Suicide may be a bad decison, but there are plenty of bad decisions a person can make.

[noema]

I am of the opinion that suicide is always a bad decision. But is suicide 'wrong'? No, and the greatest achievement of western philosophy is that it has settled the issue of 'right & wrong' for all time. Suicide may be a bad decison, but there are plenty of bad decisions a person can make.

I agree. Why doesn't any religion support suicide?
do the souls of a person who has committed suicide go to hell?

[Bitterfly]

Seventh circle of hell for suicides (in Dante's Inferno)!

[Terror Firmer]

I agree. Why doesn't any religion support suicide?
do the souls of a person who has committed suicide go to hell?

Some religious beliefs follow this train of thought especially organized religions. If not with the precise eternal severity definitely a big taboo.

[joseph90ie]

I think this is very insightful on suicide, one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's thoughts:

"Surely one cannot will one's own destruction and anybody who has visualized what is in practice involved knows that suicide is always a rushing of one's own defences. But nothing is worse than to be forced to take oneself by surprise."

A rushing of one's own defences, he says, and I think this is spot on, like one is defending oneself unto the death against life. And the shock and novelty of the idea of taking oneself by surprise. I never knew I myself could take my very own self by surprise. But there you go; you can be driven to such violence against yourself.

I like Wittgenstein's remarks so much because it shows very logically and imaginatively how suicide is a failed act, yet it's not at all without sympathy, but full of understanding. His point is memorable. And it's safe to say his idea on this was no armchair philosophizing: three of his brothers committed suicide and he was often very worried about destroying his own life.

[sunshine_enl]

When I think of suicide in literature the first thing that comes into my mind is Septimus's falling out of the window in Mrs Dalloway.From a psychoanaltical point of view I consider Septimus's suicide to be a necessity and by this I mean that Septimus couldn't control his urges,he couldn't develop,he was always constricted in his ID(in Freudian terms) so in a way he had to be "punished",he had to die(I felt the same after watching Revolutionary Road and Monster)Taking his own life was the only way that Woolf could honour him,imagine if he had him die by a car-accident!
So suicide in some cases celebrates living, more than continuing one's existence ever could!

[Dori]

When I think about suicide in literature I immediately think Dostoevsky.

SPOILER ALERT








Mainly I think of Smerdyakov and Svidrigalov. Which leads me to believe that the act of suicide is the most selfish act imaginable (at least in Smerdyakov's case).

But then I think of Romeo and Juliet.

And Othello.

Now I don't know what to think about suicide. But all of those characters provide good case studies.

[chrismythoi]

i have encountered suicide in brave new world, by huxley.
i think in this instance, and i suspect in many others, the act of suicide is seen as the final straw, or the final defiance that can be conjured by a character.
in terms of the 'hounourable' suicide such as Japanese seppuku (spealt right?) it is seen more as a way of eliminating the acts of the person. therefore there is often a balance in most authors minds between these two; suicide as a rebellion and also as a submission.

suicide can also be loked at thematically and can be a general narrative rejection of events.

[seanlol]

Honestly, suicide for some people is a better alternative. The right and wrongs are irrelevnt, as suicide is a persons choice, and to some extent, it must be left up to them to decide whether or not they wish to die.

I completely agree.

[phoenix151]

It disturbs me that suicide is often glamourized in literature. How come the back of Hemmingway novels include in his little "bio blurb" the fact that he aced himself? I've never seen this on a Jack London book.

It's curious too that the origins of the Romantic Movement trace back to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, which is about love and suicide. The author himself later found the book distasteful and discouraged it's popularity. Napoleon himself considered it one of the greatest achievements in European literature. The novel gave birth to the first-recorded "copycat suicides", and was perhaps the most fashionable book in European history.

I find this all very unsettling.

[JBI]

It disturbs me that suicide is often glamourized in literature. How come the back of Hemmingway novels include in his little "bio blurb" the fact that he aced himself? I've never seen this on a Jack London book.

It's curious too that the origins of the Romantic Movement trace back to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, which is about love and suicide. The author himself later found the book distasteful and discouraged it's popularity. Napoleon himself considered it one of the greatest achievements in European literature. The novel gave birth to the first-recorded "copycat suicides", and was perhaps the most fashionable book in European history.

I find this all very unsettling.

There are two sides of the spectrum really - my highschool English textbook featured bios of some of the major writers of world literature, and for Virginia Woolf, introducing her essay The Death of the Moth, the bio went on and talked about her publishing career, with a very dull "Virginia Woolf died in 1941". Talk about stupidity.