Is Suicide selfish?

[ToroidalBoat]

Depends on the situation and the intent. I don't think it's always selfish. There's also a big difference between taking away someone else's only shot at life, and taking one's own.

It's interesting how suicide is still such a stigma in the West, even though the influence of traditional Christianity is fading.

 

[HG 400]

what's a good reason to kill yourself?

Not wanting to live. That's good enough.

You really are a disgustingly selfish person, you know? I'm not even saying this to try and insult you or shame, I just think you have no idea how incredibly morally bankrupt you are because you're blinded by your own selfishness. You are quite literally saying that if a person is in such crippling overwhelming misery that they're ready to take their own life, they shouldn't do it because you will feel kinda sad about it, maybe even for a longish time, and they should consider your feelings first.

That's appalling. You are appalling. You are an appalling, disgusting human being. Just look at what you're saying. You're telling people with a case of the sads so extreme that they are literally ready to die to escape it that they should stay alive being that miserable, indefinitely, because if they die you'll have a much smaller and manageable case of the sads. You are looking at massive, unthinkable cases of the sads and saying "No, that's not as important as whether or not I feel a little bit sad and they should accept that." This is like telling a starving man he should give you his sandwich because you're slightly hungry. Your sense of entitlement is incredible, and your myopic blindness to it utterly disgusting. You might consider yourself a good person, you might do good things, make the world around you a little better, but I want you to know that no matter what you tell yourself, you are such a fundamentally selfish person that you assume starving men should give you their sandwiches.

You need to reevaluate your moral compass, because assuming your feelings should be the center of it makes you an appalling piece of shit, dude. Appalling.

 

[Sergeant Politeness]

You're telling people with a case of the sads so extreme that they are literally ready to die to escape it that they should stay alive being that miserable, indefinitely, because if they die you'll have a much smaller and manageable case of the sads.

So what about suicidal people who regret it right before they go through with it? The kind who suddenly go "oh shit I don't actually want to die"? They do exist; that bitch who convinced a dude to choke himself out in his car, he regretted it halfway through. She told him to go through with it anyway, and he did. People who survive it usually end up regretting it.

Second, many suicidal crises are self-limiting. Such crises are often caused by an immediate stressor, such as the breakup of a romantic relationship, the loss of a job, or a run-in with police. As the acute phase of the crisis passes, so does the urge to attempt suicide. The temporary nature and fleeting sway of many suicidal crises is evident in the fact that more than 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt, including attempts that were expected to be lethal (such as shooting oneself in the head or jumping in front of a train), do not go on to die by suicide. Indeed, recognizing the self-limiting nature of suicidal crises, penal and psychiatric institutions restrict access to lethal means for persons identified as potentially suicidal.

What about suicidal people who do it (or threaten it) for attention, as a cry for help? They also exist. They can't figure out how to get help, so they try to elicit attention instead. You can't group all suicidal people into the same category. They all have different motives. You wouldn't want people to get help instead of ending what is in all likelihood temporary pain?

I'm just saying, death is kinda permanent. There's better solutions. If you really feel like you can't handle it, fine, do it. I'll deal. Don't pretend like it's some big moral issue that I'm minimizing the pain of the mentally ill when you're minimizing the pain of the people around them. It's not like the death of someone close to you is something you shrug off, that's bullshit. Emotions are erratic, sporadic, and lie to you. I've felt that, friends of mine have felt that. Shit has looked bleak many times and we've carried on and had brighter days. Your feels are a fucking stupid reason to kill yourself. If I'm bankrupt for that, cool.

Also, are you telling me you wouldn't make fun of this person?

 

[Sure Thing Idiot]

Selfish is an abstract word when it comes to suicide. People say it is(or often cowardly), but if the question is worth discussing at all then so is the idea of what selfish even really means, say, socially and ethically. When you say someone is selfish it usually means someone is imposing or an opportunist to gain the benefit in their situation. Like if that guy over there took all the free samples, or Kelly took all the hours at work, that's selfish. If you exclude people who talk about killing themselves for attention to look at the situation instead, on a case by case basis, I don't know if it's point-blank selfish, because people do it for different reasons. Sure, there are selfish ways like suicide by cop, because you're forcing someone else to be involved. Threatening suicide because your boyfriend or girlfriend dumped you, that's selfish, again, because it's forcing someone else into your shit.

If someone is a million dollars in debt and they're about to have everything repossessed and they lose their job, don't tell anyone, but go and kill themselves, I don't know, that's just dark because obviously that person felt there was no hope left to live any longer. Some little girl somewhere gets repeatedly raped by a family member or gets sold off to marry a man she never met five times her age, kills herself, is that selfish? Some people are just completely mentally unhinged, while others may have chronic depression they try to powerhouse through every day. Some people are suicidal but never talk about it and then snap. Some people genuinely don't want to be alive. As a blanket statement, no, I don't think it's selfish because I can't possibly put myself in the mind of a girl who had acid thrown in her face and was then ostrasized by her community, nor can I imagine being never happy at all.

The question itself also begs the question entirely. If someone has a terminal disease(or depression, extreme trauma (or whatever) wants to die, is it not also selfish to expect them to stick around simply because it would hurt you?


Selfish is the wrong word, I think. Maybe I'm wrong. It seems like such an abstract word when you use it for suicide because suicides aren't just suicide, they're each unique and done for different reasons. Can a suicide be selfish? Yes, absolutely. Is suicide itself selfish? I don't know.

 

[HG 400]

So what about suicidal people who regret it right before they go through with it? The kind who suddenly go "oh shit I don't actually want to die"? They do exist; that bitch who convinced a dude to choke himself out in his car, he regretted it halfway through. She told him to go through with it anyway, and he did. People who survive it usually end up regretting it.



What about suicidal people who do it (or threaten it) for attention, as a cry for help? They also exist. They can't figure out how to get help, so they try to elicit attention instead. You can't group all suicidal people into the same category. They all have different motives. You wouldn't want people to get help instead of ending what is in all likelihood temporary pain?

I'm just saying, death is kinda permanent. There's better solutions. If you really feel like you can't handle it, fine, do it. I'll deal. Don't pretend like it's some big moral issue that I'm minimizing the pain of the mentally ill when you're minimizing the pain of the people around them. It's not like the death of someone close to you is something you shrug off, that's bullshit. Emotions are erratic, sporadic, and lie to you. I've felt that, friends of mine have felt that. Shit has looked bleak many times and we've carried on and had brighter days. Your feels are a fucking stupid reason to kill yourself. If I'm bankrupt for that, cool.

Also, are you telling me you wouldn't make fun of this person?

So now you're basically saying the starving man should give you his sandwich because if he works really hard he could have a roast dinner instead.

Morally bankrupt, dude.

 

[Matthew Moulton]

If you want to see how "fun" this line of thinking can be, find yourself a suicide support group with at least one parent who has lost a kid to suicide... and then incessantly preach to the depressed participants about how people who commit suicide are selfish, weak, stupid, etc. "Hilarity" will then ensue...

 

[Kiwi Jeff]

What about the people who kill themselves because they're bored?

 

[Picnic_Boy]

:powerlevel:

Yes.

If you are in constant physical pain, then it's at least understandable, and I sincerely hope that no one on the boards ever finds themselves in such a position. There is a point where physical pain drives you to a point of madness, and you honestly aren't capable of caring about the feelings of others. But even in that case, it causes pain to those that care about you. A better question, I think, is, 'Is selfishness always wrong?' Sometimes, it can't be helped.

If you kill yourself because you're depressed and can't find a girl/boyfriend that understands you or can't maintain your current standard of living after a shakeup at work, then fuck you hard. Everyone that cares about you is going to fall asleep a couple of times a week trying to push your death out of their minds, wondering what they could've done differently. It's going to last the rest of their lives and it'll probably cause them to fail in the exact same way you did, you loathsome piece of shit. Hopefully they'll be stronger than you, but probably not.

:islamic::powerlevel::islamic:

 

[HG 400]

Everyone that cares about you is going to fall asleep a couple of times a week trying to push your death out of their minds, wondering what they could've done differently. It's going to last the rest of their lives and it'll probably cause them to fail in the exact same way you did, you loathsome piece of shit.

lol no it's not, holy shit. What kind of weak shit is this? People die. Most of the people you love are likely to die before you. You get over it. It's not life-shattering, it's not unsurmountable, it's normal. That's what literally everyone who has ever lived does, and has been doing since people have been around. If you're so weak that you can't even cope with the basic fundamental reality of life and death that all of us are expected to live our lives around, then you should just kill yourself. Nobody would blame you (except entitled little pissbabies like you, I guess)

 

[sbm1990]

It really depends on if people give a fuck about you or not. If nobody gives a fuck about you, then I wouldn't really consider it selfish, tbh.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

lol no it's not, holy shit. What kind of weak shit is this? People die. Most of the people you love are likely to die before you. You get over it. It's not life-shattering, it's not unsurmountable, it's normal. That's what literally everyone who has ever lived does, and has been doing since people have been around. If you're so weak that you can't even cope with the basic fundamental reality of life and death that all of us are expected to live our lives around, then you should just kill yourself. Nobody would blame you (except entitled little pissbabies like you, I guess)

lol That's sociopathic.

Yeah, death happens. If you choose to inflict the grim realties of death on someone, you are either insane or a piece of shit lol.

I feel sorry for your loved ones, and hope you never put your sociopathy into practice lol.

 

[HG 400]

lol That's sociopathic.

Yeah, death happens. If you choose to inflict the grim realties of death on someone, you are either insane or a piece of shit lol.

I feel sorry for your loved ones, and hope you never put your sociopathy into practice lol.

So you think people should suffer through long miserable lives they don't want to live just so other people don't get bummed out for a while that they're no longer around being miserable? That's sociopathic.

 

[cuddle striker]

if you're fucked up or in pain that can't get fixed it's selfish for people to want you to stay alive and suffer just to spare their feelings.

if you're after attention and wanna hurt people it's selfish to kill yourself for that. just key their fucking cars or something.

oh and for fuck sake, please, don't leave a goddamn mess. leave a clear note for the first responders. use pills/gas in a bag/something contained. be in the bathtub, in a tarp. none of this melodramatic messy shit that I'll have to scrub up. don't leave it unclear. "I was in intractable pain and wanted to escape it so I took (whatever pills)." that's all your note needs to say. don't waste money and time to make other people investigate and clean up your shit.

in other words if you gotta you gotta, but you don't have to be a dick about it.

 

[Mysterious Capitalist]

The cases where suicide is objectively justified are very rare, I believe, but everyone is free to do whatever they want with their lives, even throw them away. To say that they shouldn't do it for the sake of those around them is like saying that the mother should not abort for the sake of the life in her womb or for the sake of the father that really wanted the child: "her body, her choice", remember?

If you want to kill yourself, seek help. You're probably just throwing a massive tantrum that's easily solvable with medicine because your brain refuse to produce (or produces too much) of some stupid chemical. Nothing more, nothing less.

That being said, I personally believe that, outside from the cited rare instances of objectively justified suicide (like the chemo example someone made in the thread), you are weak and retroactively deserved to die anyway. Life is for the living, for those that are willing and able to take it and ride it to the bitter end. Everyone else is just a waste of resources.

But at the end of the day: is it selfish? It is as selfish as wanting to have control of your body regardless of what other people think, I believe. So I'll vote no.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

So you think people should suffer through long miserable lives they don't want to live just so other people don't get bummed out for a while that they're no longer around being miserable? That's sociopathic.

Yes. Life is miserable for most humans. Life sucks and it doesn't stop sucking until you die, but that doesn't give anyone the moral right to make it worse for others. Does suicide make sense sometimes? It totally does. I could (and probably will) wind up consumed by bone cancer, and beg for death. But to suggest such a request won't have long-lasting, detrimental effects on people I care about more than myself is either nice or, well, sociopathic.

I genuinely hope you won't throw in the towel the first time you need a bedpan. Your loved ones (and you) deserve better.

 

[HG 400]

Life sucks and it doesn't stop sucking until you die, but that doesn't give anyone the moral right to make it worse for others.

Cool so if you're in a shit marriage you should stay in it because your husband will be sad for a while that you divorced him?

It's your life. Nobody elses. Nobody else has the moral authority to tell you it's wrong to opt out.

 

[trueandhonestfan]

No, I don't think it is. Killing yourself for a stupid reason like some people on the internet is stupid, but I don't think people who kill themselves because they're actually depressed are being selfish.

I really hate seeing that fucking line about how suicide is just a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Fuck off, you don't know the person's situation so you have no right to criticize them. I imagine these people are the kind of really happy people who think that depression is the same as being sad because you had a fight with your friend. Or they're really immature and live in their own little world where other people's troubles are non-existent because it's unrelated to them.

 

[Daughter of Cernunnos]

I don't think it's selfish. It's just mental illness. Not everyone gets the help they need. It's a very sad thing but it doesn't help the survivors of people who died by suicide to call them selfish for what they did.

 

[hotcheetospuffs]

just don't leave behind a mess, or make it someone else's problem.

What's that movie where they have suicide booths? Those would be a good idea...

 

[RG 448]

It's selfish to hold someone's severe mental illness against them because it inconveniences you.