The Case Against Suicide

[attofishpi]

You are horribly self absorbed.

It's 5am here, I've been up all night attempting to give some atheists (yes Gazza is on your dumb arse team) some advice (including from my lived experiences of some of this shit)

..but a stupid evil hag like you has nothing to do but slag me off "self absorbed" ...really u moron.

[Darkneos]

You are horribly self absorbed.

It's 5am here, I've been up all night attempting to give some atheists (yes Gazza is on your dumb arse team) some advice (including from my lived experiences of some of this shit)

..but a stupid evil hag like you has nothing to do but slag me off "self absorbed" ...really u moron.

My assessment of you turned out to be correct.

[attofishpi]

My assessment of you turned out to be correct.

What assessment, and on what basis?

[Atla]

It is illogical, one needs a reason to live. Death happens eventually

No, one doesn't need an ultimate reason to live. The only thing we need is for life not be worse than death (nonexistence).

Maybe I just can’t really fathom wants and needs.

To me if I don’t have to do something then I don’t do it. Saying you want something feels weak to me because I think wants are weaker than needs.

Well, get used to the idea that you'll live without an ultimate reason, and you'll do things without having to do them in an ultimate sense..

[Gary Childress]

FFS. Stand on your own two feet, you're a grown man. Get away from the woman, ease off of the pills (dosage), the brain has that plastic thang, it self corrects eventually.

Hey, how many different pills are you on?

On 3 psychiatric meds right now. Anti-psychotic, anti-depressant and mood stabilizer. None of them do anything but dull my mind. But when I'm off them, I'm off my rocker and drive everyone around me up the wall.

'Drive them up the wall' or are they terrified of you? 'Drive them up the wall' makes it sound harmless but just quite annoying.

Annoying would be putting it mildly. I turn into a whimpering idiot. I suffer from paranoid delusions when I'm off my meds.

[attofishpi]

Annoying would be putting it mildly. I turn into a whimpering idiot. I suffer from paranoid delusions when I'm off my meds.

So you don't gradually reduce them, it's just nope, not taking them now?

[FlashDangerpants]

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. Filling life with good things, doing what you love, all that junk only has logical weight if one is unable to die until a set time. Baring that I see no reason for living. Desire for pleasures only applies if you are alive, if you die there is no need for any of that. Same with love, friendship, food, money, etc.

Logic is only good for certain tasks, primarily related to maintaining consistency between the various things we consider to be facts and the things we consider inviolable principles.

But I don't think there's any combination of those things that works to require us to choose life for any particular reason. It's either one of the basic assumptions we hold before we start doing logic, or it's arbitrary. It's not something to be discovered via logic.

Maybe. I guess since it’s a want logic doesn’t really work out here. Just because someone doesn’t want to keep living doesn’t really make it logical to just die.

Maybe the concept of wanting something still eludes me. In my mind if I don’t have to do something then I don’t do it. The concept of want to me feels weaker than a need.

Hume asked a similar question once and came up with "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." We need to care about a thing in some way or another before we can begin to reason about it, at the very least we must want to know something about it.

I take no position on antinatalism because I don't give a rat's arse about it, but I think those guys argue that never being born in the first place is preferable in some circumstances to life or death. I'm probably misrepresenting them - but it's questionable whether I care enough to find out - but let's say that's true enough for now. That places you and I in the position where we have moved beyond the point where we had the option of never having passions and never needing reason.

I guess the default position then would be that reason will give us some of what we want, some of the time, as long as we are around to want stuff, and we've started that so we are in the process already. But it would be fairly easy to reach a situation where as an individual I would reason that my time was up. Perhaps I would do so bravely on the basis that terrorists are threatening to blow up my favourite park bench, and so fearlessly I would of course leap into action and get blown to pieces with it. Or perhaps I would just do something with sleeping pills instead of wait for cancer of the anus to do it's dreadful thing to my previously trouble free rear quarters.

What I imagine would not be possible would would be any categorical position on the matter. Life is mostly a set of circumstances where I wouldn't choose death were I in that person's place. Every now and then it's the other way round. So I don't see much scope for a universal argument either that all moral agents should never top themselves ... or the somewhat darker one that all moral agents should kill themselves today.

But I leave the door open for the antinatalist position that life can be quite annoying sometimes, so better not to make babies. Or as Plato put it: Always do your wife up the arse.

[Darkneos]

No, one doesn't need an ultimate reason to live. The only thing we need is for life not be worse than death (nonexistence).

Maybe I just can’t really fathom wants and needs.

To me if I don’t have to do something then I don’t do it. Saying you want something feels weak to me because I think wants are weaker than needs.

Well, get used to the idea that you'll live without an ultimate reason, and you'll do things without having to do them in an ultimate sense..

Well that’s not really it.

It’s more like people have reasons, they’re just not ultimate purpose. They do stuff because they want to, no always because they have to.

And to me being motivated by “want to” still eludes me. It seems like a weaker reason than needing to, because if you need to there is no choice whereas with wants you don’t need them.

[Age]

I guess this is a good a place as any.

I’ve struggled to find a good argument against suicide that doesn’t involve either nonsense or special pleading to life or hindsight bias.

The way I see it if there is no greater reason to meaning to life then there isn’t really a reason to keep going. Not reason to really struggle and fight for a place in the world. No reason to really pursue anything. One can just end their life and be done with the pursuit and struggle.

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. Filling life with good things, doing what you love, all that junk only has logical weight if one is unable to die until a set time. Baring that I see no reason for living. Desire for pleasures only applies if you are alive, if you die there is no need for any of that. Same with love, friendship, food, money, etc.

NO one has a 'right' to tell another one HOW to live, nor WHEN to die.

If one chooses to end or take their own life, then they are perfectly FREE to do so. But WHY one would even want to take or end their own life is a BLIGHT on 'the world' and 'life' that adult human beings have created.

People only want to end and take their life if they see NO HOPE AT ALL. So, if and when ANY one wants to suicide, then this is because others have created 'a world' where they do not see ANY hope, at all.

There is NO 'case' AGAINST suicide, just like there is NO 'case' FOR suicide. There are just REASONS WHY people want to "kill themselves". And, once the fundamental reason was found, then what NEEDS CHANGING became known.

[attofishpi]

There are just REASONS WHY people want to "kill themselves". And, once the fundamental reason was found, then what NEEDS CHANGING became known.

Bang on, as usual. Hire a hitman to do it.

[Age]

Are you suffering from depression? ..everything seems pointless to me when that cloud is there - rarely I get it, usually if i've had a booze bender for 3 days or more.

My uncle hung himself from depression (i had no idea of his condition)

It's worse than when GOD is fucking wiv me, in a 3mth HELL mode - there I try and fight for my life, but depression - no thanks.

Why do people assume depression when people question the worth of life? Sounds like people are scared of the answers.

Seems like it’s easier to just label people sick.

Good point. There are many reasons why suicide is practical. People make a lot of assumptions because they lack the insight and empathy to imagine that anyone could feel differently from the way they do. 'Therapy' isn't going to cure loneliness,

How could this one know this?

It is like they lack the insight and empathy to imagine that any one could feel, or view things, differently from the way they do.

If this one believes, absolutely, that 'therapy' is NOT going to cure 'loneliness', then what DOES cure 'loneliness', exactly?

Or does this one believe, absolutely, that 'loneliness' is NOT curable?

or approaching dementia, or various health problems etc. etc. Why is everyone obliged to be 'in love with life'?

What would even make this one think that ANY one has suggested this?

What's the point in giving your home and savings to a sub-standard 'care' facility so you can sit there all day in mental torment.

Is there any point in 'keeping things', like homes and/or money, for when one is not consciously HERE, any more?

Never mind hell. Hell is real for most people.

'Hell' was only 'real' for 'most people' back in the olden days when this was being written because adult human beings had made 'life', and 'the world', 'hell' FOR 'them'.

[attofishpi]

Are you suffering from depression? ..everything seems pointless to me when that cloud is there - rarely I get it, usually if i've had a booze bender for 3 days or more.

My uncle hung himself from depression (i had no idea of his condition)

It's worse than when GOD is fucking wiv me, in a 3mth HELL mode - there I try and fight for my life, but depression - no thanks.

Why do people assume depression when people question the worth of life? Sounds like people are scared of the answers.

Seems like it’s easier to just label people sick.

Good point. There are many reasons why suicide is practical. People make a lot of assumptions because they lack the insight and empathy to imagine that anyone could feel differently from the way they do.

IT WASN'T AN ASSUMPTION, IT WAS A QUESTION FFS..my GOD you and Darkneo are clearly thick as pigshit..

[Gary Childress]

If I were the richest man in the world, I'd probably feel too guilty for being "greedy" to enjoy life. And if I were the poorest man in the world, I'd probably feel too miserable to enjoy life. As it stands, I'm kind of in between rich and poor and feel too mundane and ordinary to enjoy life.

[attofishpi]

*sucks to be U*

[attofishpi]

Annoying would be putting it mildly. I turn into a whimpering idiot. I suffer from paranoid delusions when I'm off my meds.

So you don't gradually reduce them, it's just nope, not taking them now?