Suicide: Heroic or Cowardly

@brozus, “Suicide is naive”

Oh yeah.. well, eating is naive.

Eating what? Eating who? Eating where? When even? What the fuck am I eating? WHY?!?!

Perhaps I’m cracked out and eating your face. That would not be in your favor, but you’d know the consequences. Also, if my life were to be ended, my body would perish, along with it my relationships between my body and the other bodies I have become acquainted with. Further on, it would be safe to say I would not continue relating with people that I know, thus relinquishing my circumstances in this existence in this form. The next step in the wheel of life is unbeknownst to me of course, why would you assume that anyone could really know such a thing? That’s pretentious.

Your short and somewhat contrived statement towards suicide sounds like you’ve given it some thought, although very diluted thought.

I feel this video fits the topic

Monty Python – The Meaning of Life

@beyond,
I don’t have to speak with a dead person to know that I don’t know anything about death OTHER than how it affects the living. You can claim that no consequences exist for a dead person, but can you prove it? How do you KNOW that no consequences exist for the person that commits suicide? When was the last time YOU talked to a dead person and they told you that everything was hunky-dory and that nothing happened to them as a result of suicide other than what is obvious and observed by the living?

It is arrogant to claim that you know something is factual, when you have no proof, and base your claim off of nothing other than opinion. How do you KNOW that nothing happens to the suicidal after they take their life? You don’t, therefore it is arrogant to claim you know something about a situation that you actually know nothing about.

@beyond,

Definition of ARROGANCE
: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions
Definition of HUMBLE
: not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive

Definition of OPPORTUNITY COST
: the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices

Some definitions which may be useful for our discussion.

@cognizantelephant,

I would argue that eating is a substantially more understandable concept. Given my personal experience in eating I would say its consequences are usually predictable. Except for maybe the occasional bad egg.

As far as is death is concerned; I do not know nor do I claim to.

My cousin committed suicide last year and it wasn’t cowardly or self-righteous. He had a mental illness but was also insanely smart. He was going through a process of challenging his fears and when he got manic he would challenge his biggest fears. It started by overcoming his fear of being naked in public (slept in the commons nude), getting arrested (stole a tv), but his last and biggest fear to overcome was the fear of death.

While the event was a shock and was very tough on our family, there was something very poetic about how he died. His final FB post read, “I did it for love.” My thought was that his soul was too big for his earthly existence and it couldn’t be confined to a body that didn’t fit him.

@jefflivak, Wow, Sorry about your loss. I’m not sure weather he was absolutely crazy or one incredible soul. I guess the difference is a very fine line. Did he assert a different kind of presence?

@brozus, While you’re initial statement held an air of arrogance, I still choose to defend it because it is very true that no one on HE or anywhere else in the world knows, nor could they possibly know ALL of the consequences of suicide. We can only know how it affects the living, not also how it affects the dead, other than them being dead.

That being said, @beyond, I wasn’t asking how it affects the living, I know how it affects the living, my biological father committed suicide. I was asking if you know ALL of the consequences, i.e. the consequences for the dead person(which I also happened to give hypothetical examples of so as to give you a better basis for understanding), which was a rhetorical question because you CANT know all of the consequences. To claim that being dead is the only consequences for the suicidally dead person is presumptuous, and just as @bronzus pointed out, that fits very perfectly the definition of arrogance as “in presumptuous claims or assumptions.”

My point having been clearly made (<yes, arrogant due to presumptuousness), I'm done arguing semantics on page five of a suicide topic, and let everyone else get back to their highly judgemental and arrogant opinions about the touchy-feely topic of what is essentially a choice that no one 'should' judge even if they or someone they know has had to make that same choice.

I wash my hands, and I'm done

@aguertin, Your last paragraph was truly inspiring. Thank you.

@yoinkie, @splashartist, Thanks guys. I can’t remember the medical term for what he had but it was described to me as bipolar without the depression. He was certainly a dynamic person, he was popular but also didn’t quite fit in which I think it typical of highly intelligent people. It’s hard to fit in when you’re tutoring high school seniors as an 8th grader or when you get caught hacking into your school’s computer system to give people higher grades than they earned.

His suicide felt very different from others I’ve experienced where they used it as an escape. He had been applying the Uberman Sleep Method for quite some time, was very into CrossFit and basically lived his life challenging the status quo. Not talking about it like most people do, he actually did it. Unfortunately for him, that same passion combined with the irrational behavior of being manic led to his death.

Typically the aura surrounding an early death is very morose and although his was difficult, it just felt different. It felt like he was finally free, like he was being held back by his human experience. During his funeral a bald eagle glided past the church windows and there have been very specific interactions with birds every time the family gets together. We know he’s still here but he’s free, and there’s something beautiful about that.