I am cleaning up a years old mess and mulling over abstracted inner philosophy as one does. So why do other people care if someone wants to check out, punch their own card, start life retirement. Why would there ever be a stigma or law against such a thing, (other than profiteering from misery). In my attempt to reason why some worthwhile human might find it offensive, independent of outside influences like religion, the only thing I can think of is the idea, “to give up on one’s self implies giving up on everyone else,” like perhaps the person that takes offense does so out of their desire to help but lacks an effective means or opportunity. True/not true, is there some facet I am neglecting? What do you think?
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C.S. Lewis wrote that every death in our lives is an ending not just to their life, but an end to the unique part of our own life that only happened when we interacted with them.
It’s natural to fear and mourn that ending.
There’s a lot of reasons why people will respond negatively to someone deciding to excise themselves from reality, and part of that is because there are a lot of different types of people, but we’re almost all of us inherently social creatures.
Some people may feel sad that the person who ceased to be didn’t think to reach out to them, or didn’t clarify what was going on. This often comes with a strong feeling of guilt, a feeling that the former individual was let down by their friends who ‘should have seen the signs’. The signs can however take many forms, and be easy to miss.
Some people may feel that life is so amazing and wondrous that’s a straight up insult to discard it. Anyone doing so is almost invalidating their optimism, and it feels like a personal attack.
Yet other people, much like the first group, will feel like they were indeed given up on, like they weren’t given the chance to support the no longer present individual. A slightly different perspective that can feel like disrespect.
Finally, there are people who don’t want to acknowledge the option even exists, and anyone who uses it is making it more real. We want it to be so last-resort, that it’s never considered an option.
At the end of the day though, it’s always a permanent solution to a temporary problem, no matter how big. If you’re really considering it, you’ve spoken to the helplines, tried to get the support of all your friends and you’re out of ideas, sell all your shit, hitchhike 3 states over, and spend 3 months trying to live there. You literally have nothing to lose, and it’s worth trying every fix before making what is literally the last decision you will ever make.
I’ve got a dear friend who’s been struggling with suicidal ideation for years, and there are lots of reasons I don’t want him to, primarily that he’s a force of good in the world. Secondarily, he deserves to know joy and he can’t do that if he kills himself first (then there’s his goddaughter, his writing, getting to watch trump die, coming to visit me in Germany, his work is getting picked up more and more, apple fritters, blueberry picking, going on drives in his beat-to-shit old van, and a hundred other reasons). It’s getting to the age where even my terminally optimistic self starts to think that he deserves peace, but I can’t help thinking that therapeutic attention is the best solution (he was raised too catholic for that, unfortunately). He keeps talking to me and he doesn’t get too annoyed about it, so I’ll keep talking to him until one day, panicked, I can’t reach him, and the world will forever be worse.
I have a very cynical reason. If you look at what most religions say about it (against), you have to wonder why they all agree on it and it seems to me that if you off yourself, you’re not supporting the team. When there weren’t many humans, you really needed a bunch of team players on your religion making more babies, and the dead ones can’t carry out your crusades.
Now we put capital above religion, but it’s the same thing: we need workers for our factories. We need babies to become workers for our factories. Dead people can’t make cars or babies.
Is it really that hard to imagine that someone who loves you was hoping to see you happy instead of as a moldering corpse?
i think it is incredibly unfair that the process of ending your own life is, in this culture, a necessarily lonely and grim affair.
according to the theory of complete bodily autonomy the option must be available, simple, painless, and ideally a joyful shared experience. but the moment you make such a desire known to others, they will try to “help” you. and i can assure you that their idea of “help” will not be pleasant for you.
so, sadly, you must tread this path alone.
philosophically, i think it offends people because it forces them to acknowledge that their own life is probably not worth preserving. we force each other to suffer through it all because no one wants to openly admit that this shit just plain-old-sucks.
Dear God, this community has been nihilistic lately.
