Most people these days don't know how to struggle on. They give up, they fall back on whatever vice is available, or worse yet, this "freedom in death" mentality when in actuality you give up freedom of choice by killing yourself. I'm not sure what caused this weakness in society, nor do I know how to fix it.
At risk of sounding like a total bundle of sticks homo without getting into specifics, I'm no saint either. And yet I was able to find the strength to come back after hitting bottom. Why is this?
I'm not religious. In having an understanding of both religious and non religious interpretations of suicide, and dealing with my own personal life, I couldn't really come to any other conclusion.
Fair enough, I'll play along.
You can't have freedom of thought and will, or any thoughts at all for that matter, if you're dead, something the suicidal should take into account. It all ends the moment you take your own life.
I see suicide as selfish escapism. You give up everything once you take your own life. No escape from the mean ol' world to enjoy if you're dead.
Fair points. I'm going to share my actual opinion now. It may seem at first that it is what I wrote before, but it is not quite.
Besides reproduction life has no intrinsic value. Any value it has is a value the person experiencing it decides it should have. There are many factors that go into figuring that value, which means that it is different for every person. Societies are built around the common factors in that value, and in our society a very high value is placed on life in and of itself. Part of that is our religious history, part of that is our fear of death.
I personally do not fear death, it is simply the natural end to life, and the idea of things beginning and ending is something I find a good deal of comfort in. I am not suicidal, I am young, and there is much I want to experience. Someday however I will not be young (most likely), and I may not have any desire left to experience life. I may simply be done. When that day comes I rest easier in the present knowing that I will have the capacity (even if not the legal right) to kill myself. That's the thing we haven't said yet either: Is a law (or society) dictating whether or not a person can kill themselves any less arrogant and self-serving than a person actually killing themselves? And isn't it all academic since you can't exactly send someone to jail once they are dead?
That said, a lot of suicide is due to people being in a non-typical state of mind for a prolonged period of time (something most would call mental illness). So to say that people of sound mind and body should be allowed to kill themselves because they are exercising their freedom of will, and then to use that as a reason to legalize suicide, does a major dis-service to people that would not want to kill themselves if it were not for a state of mind out of their control. The problem is that many people have difficulty empathizing with people of sound mind and body that have simply decided to choose when and how to meet their inevitable end. They assume all suicide is due to mental illness, or view people committing suicide as weak because they have no concept of a complete life.
So my opinion, as it currently stands, is that it is very difficult to know when someone should be allowed to take their own life, but a blanket law that disallows all forms of suicide also does a dis-service to certain individuals (and functions) in society. Essentially people should be forced to explore every option besides suicide, but should not be disallowed from choosing it if they truly want to be finished with life.
As an aside, I think as our human population continues to increase fewer and fewer societies and cultures are going to view suicide as inherently bad. I think there will eventually come a tipping point where there will simply be too many people for governments and societies to care about disallowing some from leaving of their own volition.
Also also,
this "freedom in death" mentality when in actuality you give up freedom of choice by killing yourself. I'm not sure what caused this weakness in society, nor do I know how to fix it.
The idea that that is a weakness in society is a purely constructed moral value. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it has no inherent truth. Not that any of our moral values do.
My mother lived in mexico for several years in her twenties. She told me once of an old man that was visiting a dia de los muertos party of sorts. He was fairly well know in the community, and towards the end of the night he started saying goodbye to people in a rather odd manner. He was being very formal, and final, in both his speech and actions, when one of the guests asked him why he was making it seem like they would never see him again he declared that it was because he had decided to die in his sleep that night. He did. He did not take any actual action towards the end, but by morning he had died in his sleep. Did this man commit suicide, or did he simply decide to stop living? Is there a difference?
