Is suicide honorable?

[Haelos]

For the sake of discussion:
Do you believe suicide to be an honorable end, or a shame towards your life?

Take the Samurai action of Harikari/Seppuku. They would take their lives if they failed their mission in some way, or were otherwise dishonored by their enemy.

I ask you to consider this from the occult path. When you kill yourself, more often than not, you move to a lower sphere of existence.
For those who have not managed their life work in this time, this can be a potentially beneficial end.
It's more difficult to progress in lower planes, but the progress is much greater.

Do you think there is any merit to this idea?
Do you think the Samurai were just finding a way to puss out of failure?

Please discuss.

[the_spiral]

For the sake of discussion:
Do you believe suicide to be an honorable end, or a shame towards your life?

It can be either (or neither, or both, or something else entirely) dependent on the person, the situation, the reasons, and the context. One thing I do think holds steady is how often a culture's attitude toward suicide reflects its deepest spiritual taboos and priorities. It's almost the ultimate litmus test in terms of how one conceptualizes the value of human life.

[magari]

Reminds me of a story.

A general who served during several campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq was in charge of establishing a memorial for the fallen on the field in front of the staff duty office. He was given a list of names of soldiers who had died during the last two deployments and wasn't expecting the large number of suicides. Most of these suicides occurred at home in between deployments.

The general was torn. Should he include the names of the soldiers who committed suicide on the memorial right next to the names of soldiers who fell in combat with the enemy?

Does including the names lessen the value of the deaths incurred by the soldiers who had the courage to fight and die?

Does not including the names do justice to the families of those soldiers who committed suicide?

----------------

Personally I wouldn't put those two lists side by side.

When thinking about samurai and bushido and seppuku its important to remember that seppuku was only reserved for individuals who had shamed their family name, or their lord. It was meant as a "cleansing" ritual in order to keep the honor of the family or lord intact. Seppuku, in this sense, ensured the honor of the family or lord, something that was incredibly important back then for maintaining order.

[Desecrated]

Just like everything else when it comes to japan, we have some few fragments and then they get lumped together.

There has been many reason for suicide depending on what period of time we are talking about. It has been legal sometimes, illegal at other times. Used as a punishment. Used to avoid punishment. Women have done it, sometimes only samurai did it, in modern times; military and even some politicians have done it.
Suicide in japan is still a taboo and is generally frown upon, so it's not like seppuku is necessarily the same or equal to suicide. The end result is the same, but the mentality differ.

In the most famous example (47 ronin) The samurai commits suicide after they have revenged their dead master so that no blame can fall on him. It's not about taking he easy way out, it's about taking responsibility for one owns action, and avoiding the blame to shift to someone else. It's a sign of strength.
But when a teenager kills themselves because of bullying, they are usually seen as assholes. Low-lifes that does nothing then bring shame and problems for the family. It's a sign of weakness.

Public suicide is the absolute lowest form, since it means someone else have to clean up your mess. If you are going to kill yourself, it is usually best thought of to go and do it in a forest where the wild animals can eat your body.
There are however some records that tell about public seppuku committed by unemployed samurai in the later eras. It was almost a form of entertainment/religious ritual.
Killing yourself with a sword was brave, jumping in front of a train is cowardly.

Committing suicide because you messed up at work is somewhat more acceptable since you take the full blame and not cause any further trouble for the company. Plus you avoid becoming an unemployed loser that only feeds of your family. Not pulling your own weight is seen as a much worse crime then killing yourself.
But that is an attitude that isn't always carried on in the younger generations, since they have a more relaxed view on work and life in general then the older guard. For many of the post WW2 generation, quiting a job is the same as social suicide and you might as well just die of shame.
Depending of course on what social class you are in. (They have at least 8 different classes)

This is however not always true in samurai times. There are several historical records of unemployed samurai running around. Especially after the "waring states period" and the need for soldiers declined. The few samurai that still existed often ended up as bodyguards for nobility, and if the master died, you could always go and find another employer. There was a higher stigma about loosing your job in 1970's japan then in 1870's japan.


And the same goes for suicide in western culture. Depending on what time period and what region and what social group the ethics differ. The public opinion has always been a fickle bitch.
A junkie committing suicide is not the same as a priest committing suicide.
And of course different countries, different attitude. In Finland suicide is stupid, why kill yourself when you can always drink away your problem? But here in sweden where everything has to be so fucking touchy and feely, suicide is the closest we have to a cultural expression.

[magari]

But here in sweden where everything has to be so fucking touchy and feely, suicide is the closest we have to a cultural expression.

I'd be interested if you cared to expand on this statement.

[Hadit]

Suicide can be reasonable and optional, but as a mostly last resort.

[Horny Goat]

With regards to teenagers committing suicide, I think it more represents a total failure on behalf of the parents to make the child feel loved and valued by making the effort to build a close relationship with them. How many times do we read of young teens suiciding and the parents say we had no idea they were even unhappy. If you'd have wanted to know you would have done. Fact is, you knew, and didn't want to get involved.

The form of psychotherapy known as Transactional Analysis (as well as others) has an interesting take on suicide at any age in that it's something the parents knowingly and wittingly program their ofspring to do in order to resolve their own issues, though it may be either consciously or unconsciously passed on, but the parents are the cause.

A person may commit suicide at any age - their teens, their 20's, their 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or even later but the decision to do so is taken at a very young age, before the age of 10. The decision to kill oneself is actually three different decisions:

1) The decision to kill someone. Now that isn't easy and you may well deçide the easiest murder victim for you to kill is actually yourself.

2) the decision to be killed by someone. You may, unconsciously work to put yourself in the position of being killed by another but if you fail to persuade someone to kill you then you do it yourself.

3) The decision not to be alive. Escape from the horrors and hoplessness and misery of life.

As for suicide being weak; what of the vast numbers of victims of rape (at any age, child as well as adult; male as well as female; anal or oral as well as vaginal) who commit suicide. After the Red Army entered Germany at the end of WW2 they reaped every female they could find from aged 8 to 80. A German doctor was reported as saying that for every 100,000 women raped 10,000 committed suicide. Are rape victims really weak for coming to such an end?

As for those struggling with agonising illness, often terminal, who commit suicide to escape the pain; I am told that spiritually this is a mistake and that they find themselves told that they must return to earth and in their next incarnation go through with the very death they killed themselves to avoid.

[magari]

Suicide can be reasonable and optional, but as a mostly last resort.

A permanent solution to a temporary problem?

I'm interested in an example of a reasonable suicide.

[magari]

As for suicide being weak; what of the vast numbers of victims of rape (at any age, child as well as adult; male as well as female; anal or oral as well as vaginal) who commit suicide. After the Red Army entered Germany at the end of WW2 they reaped every female they could find from aged 8 to 80. A German doctor was reported as saying that for every 100,000 women raped 10,000 committed suicide. Are rape victims really weak for coming to such an end?

Whats the difference between the 10% and the 90%?

[Caerdon]

With regards to teenagers committing suicide, I think it more represents a total failure on behalf of the parents to make the child feel loved and valued by making the effort to build a close relationship with them. How many times do we read of young teens suiciding and the parents say we had no idea they were even unhappy. If you'd have wanted to know you would have done. Fact is, you knew, and didn't want to get involved.

it's not a total failure on the parents end. i can tell you straight out, someone who is depressed and contemplating suicide doesn't always show symptoms of it. They can easily hide it from everyone. They can seem perfectly normal, happy even, helpful, caring.
Also, how many teenagers out there are open with their parents? How many teenagers WANT to be close to their parents, be all buddy buddy with them? Fact is, these teens want their parents to leave them alone, to distance themselves, to be basic strangers.
A parent can only be as close to their child as the child allows them. They can show them all the care, concern and love in the world, but if the child isn't receptive to it, then how can the parent's be blamed?
It's easy to look back on a situation with knowledge you have gained after the fact and go "yep, it was so obvious now", or "they should have done this and this to stop it" or "yeah they definitely should have seen it coming".

As for suicide being weak; what of the vast numbers of victims of rape (at any age, child as well as adult; male as well as female; anal or oral as well as vaginal) who commit suicide. After the Red Army entered Germany at the end of WW2 they reaped every female they could find from aged 8 to 80. A German doctor was reported as saying that for every 100,000 women raped 10,000 committed suicide. Are rape victims really weak for coming to such an end?

Committing suicide is weak. It doesn't matter the circumstances that you place on it. It's the cowards way out. Concentrating on the raped victims who did commit suicide to say it isn't weak is an insult to the ones who made the hard choice to continue living with what happened to them, to continue surviving. It's unfortunate for them, yes. But the ones who survived are the strong ones, the ones who chose life.

Life is hard. To live is not to have it easy. To live is to have pain. Otherwise it wouldn't be living. Otherwise you would never know you are alive.

The burden of life is heavier than a mountain, where as death is lighter than a feather.

Suicide is the cowards way out. It is final. It is selfish.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

It's something I'd avoid at all costs, albeit that's if it's in relation to my own pain or reputation.

I've dealt with a neurological challenge of the variety where all the incentives where there to do it. I did take several swings at myself in my teens, I had a space of a few years where in my late 20's the career disgrace angle had me ready to take more drastic actions and not tell anyone - usually when I got serious about it something in my subconscious would start nudging me, tickling me, trying to remind me of all of the good times I had - it was going to work against me no matter what. Unfortunately I hand't had a rekindle of this kind of anguish until I started my last contract in May that ended earlier this month because it was a recapitulation of some of my worst nightmare moments of the job I had back in 2007 and 2009 where internal stamps along the lines of 'You're too weak to be breathing' or 'You should be ash at the bottom of an oven' got rekindled.

I think what I'm learning is something like this - if you're not a voluntary slug, if you're doing your absolute best and your best is not good enough per society or if you find yourself constantly vulnerable to certain forms of society's corruption by situation of unprotected forms of disability, you're really far better off still reclassifying your life's purposes and realizing that economic failure creating an obligation for suicide is both an incredibly western idea and an idea that, the universe quite likely not sharing that assessment, would still hold you to account for killing yourself over what it would class as a callous misbelief that had nothing to do with why you were put on earth to begin with. Similarly I have reasons to doubt that the hierarchy of evolved consciousness would share a warrior's romance for ritual dagger-in-stomach suicide. There have been cases where certain people survived doing that to themselves and a few at least reported hell or underworld NDE's.

I think of the astral/etheric ramifications of suicide - Max Hiendel (and perhaps a few others) mentioned that if you do commit suicide you'll experience a hole in your emotions, that you'll be utterly numb until the natural course of what your life was supposed to be and your inner self rejoins you. Even if a person finds themselves a classic 'useless eater' it's still a terrible idea. If they're a good person, if they're seeking to educate themselves - they have the internet, tons of things from free pdf's to educational organizations to build various competencies. We're here actually to build those competencies and sometimes it seems like when it comes to the career disgrace situation we're in a situation where the higher-self is either a) tone-deaf to our social comfort or b) knows our holy-shit buttons and wants to push them until we grow out of them. The reaction of "I need to be dead - yesterday!!!!" is something that wells up from our functional fixedness, quite likely if we could see future lives while really having a fear of pain or the horror of humiliation we'd either throwing up over the toilet for a good weak or perhaps even dead at our own hands if our higher self actually did show us everything it planned to put us through whether the remainder of that life would be enough to induce that effect or the next ten or twenty. It's part of why I don't think we can see the future; It/they know our propensity to obsess on the dark side of things and we're walled off from these perceptions accordingly.

I'm still to this day, no matter how positively I'm thinking, doing karma and career spreads with my Universal Waite deck and I constantly am getting reflected as King of Swords inverted, 4 of Pentacles, even 7 of swords, and then I'm getting 5 of pentacles, 9 of swords, and 10 of swords for up and coming career situations. When I asked about doing the Will of my higher self and what needs to happen I finally got a right-side up or obverse king of swords in the past spot (seeming to mean 'You asked an honest question!') at which point the cards were generally positive aside from 5 of pentacles in my near future, some brief amount of other negative cards but a 1 of pentacles in the ultimate outcome.

It seems like the tarot is telling me that I need to be burnt to the ground, that it's being demanded of me, in order for it to rebuild me as it sees fit - perhaps removing a lot of what I deemed as 'progress' when I was in a more materialistic frame of mind.

I think this is where suicide can be an exceptionally poor choice. Sometimes the Master Within will swing down on a Merkaba, grab you by the hair, and like Ezekiel tell you to lay on one side for 60 days, the other 300, and eat bean cakes that were cooked over feces. It sounds like very Jehova'ish behavior but sometimes I get the impression that this is what our higher selves may choose to do with us as well.


Reasons outside of human suffering or perceived personal disgrace - like being the senior with $500,000 saved who wants to give to their children but whom the medical community plans to medicate every last dime out of them? I really don't know the answer to that, just that his also may fall under very similar metrics.


Personally I'd strongly abstain from judging anyone for committing suicide, there are some situations that get so bad for people that the compulsion to do so becomes mechanical and utterly defeats every last reason to the contrary. At the same time it comes with a considerable price tag, if not spending a life-between-lives in an underworld status, being born into squalor utterly unrefreshed, perhaps even in worse situations, even if it just results in 40 - 60 years of numbness, it seems like it cuts against the kind of self-cultivation that the universe has us here for. If life comes down so hard on you that it smashes you like a Dixie cup run over by a dump truck - I pray that the Universe and Cosmic Law has enough integrity to treat you accordingly to the lack of options. Anything outside of that though, any humanity that you have to fight it with you're better off doing so just because to be in the right with respect to committing suicide you have to know that the costs are worth it.

[Hadit]

Suicide can be reasonable and optional, but as a mostly last resort.

A permanent solution to a temporary problem?

I'm interested in an example of a reasonable suicide.

It's certainly easy to pretend all problem are temporary. Some learn otherwise the hard way.

[CCoburn]

I agree with Spiral, as it definitely depends on the circumstances. As far as devolution, this is pertinent in a finite linear time construct, and suicide may not be arbitrary relative to it. Then there is the bigger picture, all these evolutionary segments(each segment complete from lower to higher, segments within segments) encapsulated by something larger, maybe unknowable, or akin to non-linear time, rhythmic, cyclical, oscillating.

Having said that, I would consider it disgraceful to commit suicide if unnecessary, and others, or even pets depend on you. It would seem more justifiable if you were suffering, or miserable; not leaving others in a precarious situation.

[Haelos]

I appreciate all the wonderful comments so far, but please keep the discussions regarding teen suicide to a minimum.

That is an issue with many, many problems and no one solution, and it isn't necessarily what we're trying to discuss here. Thank you for doing so, and sharing your opinions, but the example about women and rape is a far better example to base "strength" and "weakness" off of.

We aren't kids here, and though I'm sure plenty of us have had bouts with depression, depressive suicide isn't the goal of the topic here.

I can agree that taking your life out of sadness is a weak thing to do. However, as has been stated, it's circumstantial, and no two cases of depression are the same. We aren't here to talk about mental illness today.

[hellebore]

With regards to teenagers committing suicide, I think it more represents a total failure on behalf of the parents to make the child feel loved and valued by making the effort to build a close relationship with them.

It can do, but this statement is a gross generalisation. As Caerdon says, plenty of teens show few if any warning signs and they certainly don't all come from unloving homes. We also have to consider the growing number of teen suicides that are linked to prescribed SSRI antidepressants, particularly among boys. Our culture 'medicalises' many normal human emotions, including sadness, fear, grief, loneliness, restlessness and boredom, all of which tend to peak in adolescence. It's estimated that in the UK (which is comparatively conservative when it comes to antidepressant use) one in ten teenagers is now prescribed an SSRI, despite mounting evidence of their potentially lethal effects on the growing brain. This is a societal problem, not just a parental one.


The form of psychotherapy known as Transactional Analysis (as well as others) has an interesting take on suicide at any age in that it's something the parents knowingly and wittingly program their ofspring to do in order to resolve their own issues, though it may be either consciously or unconsciously passed on, but the parents are the cause.

I've been teaching TA for years and that's a new one on me. Where on earth did you hear that theory? Without a doubt many parents act out their own issues through their children, but programming children "knowingly and wittingly" to commit suicide to resolve those issues?? For a start your argument flies in the face of the TA premise that dysfunctional families/groups work hard to keep members *locked into* roles so they can continue acting out their dramas ad infinitum. If anyone reading this thread has lost a family member or loved one to suicide please be reassured that Horny Goat's beliefs on this point are ... unorthodox.

A person may commit suicide at any age - their teens, their 20's, their 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or even later but the decision to do so is taken at a very young age, before the age of 10.

Really? What is your source for this generalisation? Did the rape victims you mention decide to commit suicide long before the atrocities they experienced?


The decision to kill oneself is actually three different decisions:

1) The decision to kill someone. Now that isn't easy and you may well deçide the easiest murder victim for you to kill is actually yourself.

2) the decision to be killed by someone. You may, unconsciously work to put yourself in the position of being killed by another but if you fail to persuade someone to kill you then you do it yourself.

3) The decision not to be alive. Escape from the horrors and hoplessness and misery of life.

The only situation in which your hypothesis makes any sense is that of a schizophrenic in a homicidal rage, and the nature of their illness means they're unlikely to be able to think in the logical steps you set out. The testimony of people who have tried to take their own life and failed tells us that 3) is almost always the only factor.

As for those struggling with agonising illness, often terminal, who commit suicide to escape the pain; I am told that spiritually this is a mistake and that they find themselves told that they must return to earth and in their next incarnation go through with the very death they killed themselves to avoid.

.

Who has told you this? Talk about punished for your misfortunes ...

In terms of the general question - is suicide weak and/or dishonourable? I think the matter of honour rarely comes into it. In most (not all) cases the person is seriously psychologically unbalanced at the time and unable to make rational judgements. They often genuinely (albeit horribly wrongly) believe that their loved ones will be better off without them. Talk with someone who tried to take their own life in that frame of mind and you'll probably be struck by the huge amount of courage they had to find. I have never spoken with a suicide-attempt survivor who described it as 'the easy way out'. Anything but. Just because something is a bad decision doesn't mean it was an easy decision and I am deeply uncomfortable with the blanket labels of 'weakling' and 'coward'. We cannot know what it is like to be inside another person's mind.

Suicide can be reasonable and optional, but as a mostly last resort.

A permanent solution to a temporary problem?

I'm interested in an example of a reasonable suicide.

In extremely rare cases it might offer a permanent solution to a permanent problem. There was a well-publicised case of a Dutch woman, both of whose grown sons had died, who had no other family and was suffering from a degenerative neurological condition and refractory depression. She argued that assisted suicide would provide relief from her unbearable mental and physical torment, would directly affect no-one else and would free up money to be spent on the healthcare of those who wanted to live. An unusual case and a pretty compelling argument I thought, unless you believe that hellfire and damnation or a punishing reincarnation will await, no matter what the circumstances. I for one hope we don't live in such a spiteful universe.

[magari]

It's certainly easy to pretend all problem are temporary. Some learn otherwise the hard way.

I dont believe Im pretending at all. Time brings endless change.

Do you have an example?

I mean I will agree that I will probably live my entire life on this earth, but its pretty sad if I can't accept that. Its a big place with lots of opportunity. Takes a bit of willpower to move about it and grow, but overall it bares fruit for those who work hard to get what they can out of it. Generally speaking it provides those who can provide for others more than those of us who haven't been at it so long, but with experience we can do the same for our own.

But then again, mathematically its also possible I might get to live on a different earth too.

So while I can understand some people dont get the same box of crayons, it's really a matter of what you do with the crayons you get

[magari]

The Dutch woman is a great example. Thank you.

Rare cases do exist.

[hellebore]

Haelos

I wrote my post before I read yours. I agree with your argument about teens and that no two cases of mental illness are the same, but I suspect the number of suicides that don't involve some severe psychological imbalance is very small (at least in our modern, Western culture). And surely any discussion about women subjected to mass rape needs to take into account a) severe PTSD and b) the possibility of coming from a culture where in such circumstances the 'bespoiled' woman would have been seen as acting entirely honourably by committing suicide. India in the 1940s partition was a classic example, with shameful stories of whole villages of women throwing themselves into wells or onto fires after being raped and mutilated as to do otherwise was to bring dishonour on their family, and in practical terms to starve as an outcast.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

but I suspect the number of suicides that don't involve some severe psychological imbalance is very small (at least in our modern, Western culture).

I think the thing you're forgetting is also huge social iniquity - either along the lines of socio-economic status and lost opportunity or, alternately, the rampant eugenic and social Darwinist underpinnings that our culture has in it's dealings with any members it deems 'weak' or 'different'.

That and as far as human pettiness and smallness is concerned - when people just deal with small amounts of it in their lives it seems like a brush-off and non event, other people have their lives consistently decimated by it because they seem to find nothing else.

[Hadit]

It's certainly easy to pretend all problem are temporary. Some learn otherwise the hard way.

I dont believe Im pretending at all. Time brings endless change.

Do you have an example?

I mean I will agree that I will probably live my entire life on this earth, but its pretty sad if I can't accept that. Its a big place with lots of opportunity. Takes a bit of willpower to move about it and grow, but overall it bares fruit for those who work hard to get what they can out of it. Generally speaking it provides those who can provide for others more than those of us who haven't been at it so long, but with experience we can do the same for our own.

But then again, mathematically its also possible I might get to live on a different earth too.

So while I can understand some people dont get the same box of crayons, it's really a matter of what you do with the crayons you get

What the hell are you talking about?

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

So while I can understand some people dont get the same box of crayons, it's really a matter of what you do with the crayons you get

I'm really thinking this is an issue that very few people who haven't experienced hard limits in their lives will be able to relate to and very few people who have experienced hard limits will be able to convey.

To roll back and start with the basics - a person with mental retardation or Down's will not be the CEO of a company, they won't likely even work in a white collar position even if they can manage to get a college degree. Far more likely they're best will be a job that will not be able to support them financially and they will be on government assistance at the least and possibly assistance from close kin.

There are people who aren't on the spectrum of mental retardation but they either aren't bright, aren't glib, and there's no amount of their own effort that will move that at all. Certain limits people have are the kinds of limits that they can run at with all their might, move that barrier back maybe 2%, they run themselves ragged overachieving, and the moment they relax it'll snap right back. When I say run themselves ragged I mean pushing themselves so hard that they're destroying their health. I'm talking about the kinds of people who are willing to go home and cut themselves or punch themselves in the face, spit in the mirror, etc. if they made mistakes at work or socially embarrass themselves for the nth time. In fact, lol, some of the least mentally endowed I've met seem to be some of the better multi-taskers and the most pitiless toward people who can't do the same things they can - partly because their lack of intelligence for their whole lives has been waved over them as a point of inferiority.

People get beaten roundly for their frailties, unless one is clearly handicapped or mentally challenged they're classified as lazy, losers, idiots, etc.. People are quite often told that they are genetically and neurologically just not enough to participate in society in certain measures.

What I agree with you on - for most people for all the doors that are closed to them by heredity there's at least one or two doors that are opened by which they can make a respectable living, sometimes that allows for moving from state to state to find ideal social and financial circumstances for themselves, otherwise what they do may be too niche to be particularly mobile. Then you also have a small but noteworthy percentage of people who have natural aptitudes for jobs that don't exist, or frailties that make them almost complete misfits anywhere they might try to work - in our society those are the Gods and Goddess of career, social, and economic loserdom. Permanent misfits as, in the worst cases, they're given high IQ's that they can't make anything out of.

I don't think it's a matter of recommending pitying, coddling, or holding people's arses because they drew the genetic short-straws. What I am saying is that even at our level there's plenty of places in the human jungle where nature is just as red in tooth and claw as she ever has been. This is where I'd point out to Hellbore that people simply do the math and count the brass tacks - no God, no life hereafter, no human soul, they're a well dressed monkey per what they've learned in high school after science has roundly proven that anyone believing in a deity simply has social conditioning or needs a good antipsychotic medication. Similarly I'm not going to tell a person with a dwarfed brain that they can be anything when they grow up - even if I wish it were true its pie-in-the-sky.

[Neko-phyte]

So while I can understand some people dont get the same box of crayons, it's really a matter of what you do with the crayons you get

I'm really thinking this is an issue that very few people who haven't experienced hard limits in their lives will be able to relate to and very few people who have experienced hard limits will be able to convey.

To roll back and start with the basics - a person with mental retardation or Down's will not be the CEO of a company, they won't likely even work in a white collar position even if they can manage to get a college degree. Far more likely they're best will be a job that will not be able to support them financially and they will be on government assistance at the least and possibly assistance from close kin.

There are people who aren't on the spectrum of mental retardation but they either aren't bright, aren't glib, and there's no amount of their own effort that will move that at all. Certain limits people have are the kinds of limits that they can run at with all their might, move that barrier back maybe 2%, they run themselves ragged overachieving, and the moment they relax it'll snap right back. When I say run themselves ragged I mean pushing themselves so hard that they're destroying their health. I'm talking about the kinds of people who are willing to go home and cut themselves or punch themselves in the face, spit in the mirror, etc. if they made mistakes at work or socially embarrass themselves for the nth time. In fact, lol, some of the least mentally endowed I've met seem to be some of the better multi-taskers and the most pitiless toward people who can't do the same things they can - partly because their lack of intelligence for their whole lives has been waved over them as a point of inferiority.

People get beaten roundly for their frailties, unless one is clearly handicapped or mentally challenged they're classified as lazy, losers, idiots, etc.. People are quite often told that they are genetically and neurologically just not enough to participate in society in certain measures.

What I agree with you on - for most people for all the doors that are closed to them by heredity there's at least one or two doors that are opened by which they can make a respectable living, sometimes that allows for moving from state to state to find ideal social and financial circumstances for themselves, otherwise what they do may be too niche to be particularly mobile. Then you also have a small but noteworthy percentage of people who have natural aptitudes for jobs that don't exist, or frailties that make them almost complete misfits anywhere they might try to work - in our society those are the Gods and Goddess of career, social, and economic loserdom. Permanent misfits as, in the worst cases, they're given high IQ's that they can't make anything out of.

I don't think it's a matter of recommending pitying, coddling, or holding people's arses because they drew the genetic short-straws. What I am saying is that even at our level there's plenty of places in the human jungle where nature is just as red in tooth and claw as she ever has been. This is where I'd point out to Hellbore that people simply do the math and count the brass tacks - no God, no life hereafter, no human soul, they're a well dressed monkey per what they've learned in high school after science has roundly proven that anyone believing in a deity simply has social conditioning or needs a good antipsychotic medication. Similarly I'm not going to tell a person with a dwarfed brain that they can be anything when they grow up - even if I wish it were true its pie-in-the-sky.

Far out, this aligns with my own thinking so well. I put some things in bold which particularly resonated with me. I'm been trying to come to terms with my own socioeconomic and biological limits recently--or at least sort out what is an actual hard limit and what is an illusion of a limit. It's been hard, because all I want to do is do well and not drag other people down by being unable to achieve good physical health and socioeconomic security by myself. I've thrown so much time and effort and money at things, and even though I'm making progress in some regards, the effort in itself has been taxing. In other areas, I'm not getting anywhere at all. But with the way society is structured these days (perhaps this applies globally), it doesn't work unless there are losers in place that other people can win against. That's what I've concluded for now, anyway.

It's not fun living in a world where things aren't in your favour, especially when you don't quite fit into either camp of 'advantaged' or 'disadvantaged'. It's so strange, that you unless you are 'enough' of something, what you are doesn't count at all in the social gaze--you're invisible or rejected from all camps. But this 'winner/loser' dichotomy is so politically charged that it kills the 'grass is greener' feelings anyway. It's all sh*t no matter where you stand, we got too good and it got way too easy for us all to throw poo at each other x_x (not finger-pointing, just an observation.)

I wish people (family, teachers, etc) hadn't told me that I could do anything I wanted when I was a kid, or at the very least I wish I realised it was a wish and not truth. They wanted to see me make it and now I don't know if I will or even can (and if I do, most likely not in the ways that they ever hoped). I'm still trying, because it's all I have left to do. My trying is not often out of hope, something which I admit brings fear when it is there.

I remember when I was doing my first year of my undergrad degree and the topic of suicide came up in one of our classes. There are some countries which have quite a reputation about suicide and why it happens in modern times, Japan being the main example. Australia actually had a higher suicide rate than Japan did in certain demographics, and that's because the freedom, freefall and resulting purposelessness felt worse than the rigid structures surrounding that demographic. I'm not sure how it stands today, I haven't kept up with the stats. It will be interesting to see what happens with increasing amounts of globalisation (it brings another study to mind that I encountered in third year--rapidly increasing amounts of people with anorexia and bulimia being reported in a cluster of countries in Africa, I believe, due to the effects of globalisation. Sorry I can't remember the specific locations, it's been a while).

So I guess to answer the original question, I can't bring myself to see suicide as being a thing that is either weak or brave. Or, if it has to be, it is both. It's perhaps the only agency a person feels like they have left, but it's the last action they can take. I can't blame anyone for doing it--heck, I've tried to myself in the past--but perhaps on a selfish level, it really hurts to see someone leave this earth that way.

P.S. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but a friend of mine who ended his life a few years ago had come to mind recently, and I encountered some of Schopenhauer's philosophy about human will, Wille zum Leben, and so on, recently as well. Both happened before I found this thread. So uh I apologise if this is too emotive and doesn't really contribute at all, I just felt a need to say something

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

P.S. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but a friend of mine who ended his life a few years ago had come to mind recently, and I encountered some of Schopenhauer's philosophy about human will, Wille zum Leben, and so on, recently as well. Both happened before I found this thread. So uh I apologise if this is too emotive and doesn't really contribute at all, I just felt a need to say something

This kind of circles back to my post before the one you quoted - that a lot of what we point out as worthy of honor suicide in the west (ie. being a 'failed male' or female and what not) is something that we've rather artificially created. Another example - I know it often gets cited that in the East people can leave home and live the monastic life, that we don't have access to that in the west; in a way we at one time did more so, and for people who were lets say the burn victims, the people with deformities who are essentially the stereotypical attic and basement dwellers, they had places in particular churches and monasteries where those people may not be particularly seen but they would be given petitions by others to pray on their behalf and they would pray constantly.

I think this is where reductive materialism has killed options in the west and really driven us to believe that unless you're employable that you're better off dead or that you at least need to deeply consider yourself as something of a dead-weight and invalid part of society.

Make no mistakes - I'm interviewing quite a bit lately, have a fair chance of landing another job and I'm praying things work out; they probably will more likely than not. Just that my own brushes with fate (in my case living with PDD-NOS) has taught me a lot about the hard-limits in a lot of people's lives. It's one thing to spur someone who's authentically lazy, another to just keep kicking a person for something that their own soul has (lovingly in it's own manner and for it's own purposes) inhibited or even curtailed as an area of growth. It seems to indicate a particular kind of disparity with the below and the above.

[magari]

Yeah, I'm not saying the guy with only brown crayons will be able to draw blue paintings.

But maybe, here's an idea, through "community" they can participate in something greater than themselves.

Western thinking is so obsessed with the accomplishments of the individual, we often forget what it really takes to make civilization work.

Even the best of us never turn out to be president, often for very good reasons.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I'll second that.

I'll also say this as well - we're going to have increasing unemployment all across the board as we automate ourselves right out of needing to work. As increasing numbers of people simply aren't needed in the employment world, at least in any financially gainful sense, we'll really want to take the issue seriously of what to do with these people. So much NGO activity could be predicated on this, so much volunteer work; we'd really need to keep people in this situation active and enfranchised. They might not be plugged in to the financial apparatus in their work but they'd definitely be far from useless. Probably better if we started experimenting with it sooner rather than later.

I know that the UK experimented with something like workfare but it was a mess. That might be the way of the future albeit we'll have to figure out how we'll stem a lot of the nastier abuses that tend to crop up with such things.