Suicide

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

I remember Camus said, and I think this ties into your argument between sensical and non-sensical implications of suicide, that suicide was an action so absurd that it overrides all tails of existence with just one action, something we try to do throughout our lives and fail with everything we do. But suicide, in all its absurdity, is so absurd and so ridiculous an action that it contradicts everything that is ridiculous and absurd about the individual's life(their sadness, despair, angst, etc...) with something that can rid it all away or end it from the now.

I hope that makes sense, and I'm sure I'll be chewed out for that, but that's one of the conditions I find applicabe.

Recieved puts up a very good argument.

 

[Received]

Thing is, suicide considered as an absurdity can motivate a person to commit suicide. Absurdity, as Camus held, is just as much felt as it is cognitively realized.

The dichotomy of biology and the mind causes all sorts of problems. Consciousness is, relative to evolutionary history, extremely young -- some say limited specifically to humans, others to higher level primates. The struggle for survival, however, is much older. Our body, in other words, is much older than the mind. This explains situations where we can reason to a T the absurdity of acting certain ways (such as fearing death), and yet our bodies still revolt and break down in fear or anxiety. There's really no extreme use in reasoning over certain things; our bodies are still have their own preferences. Discipline can take care of a lot of things -- sexual desire, anger, resentment -- but I doubt it can take care of a fear for death, at least not in an easy way.

This somewhat relates to the idea of suicide and absurdity. Our bodies, moreso perhaps than our minds, rebel against absurdity. There are psychological studies that unveil people getting physically afflicted because of interpreting (through consciousness) certain events. Apropos: the absurdity of suicide can lead one to suicide through his biological underpinnings. It can make him severely depressed, to such a point where reason doesn't really matter anymore. Indeed, as Camus pointed out in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, suicide is hardly ever a result of reflection.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Thing is, suicide considered as an absurdity can motivate a person to commit suicide. Absurdity, as Camus held, is just as much felt as it is cognitively realized.

The dichotomy of biology and the mind causes all sorts of problems. Consciousness is, relative to evolutionary history, extremely young -- some say limited specifically to humans, others to higher level primates. The struggle for survival, however, is much older. Our body, in other words, is much older than the mind. This explains situations where we can reason to a T the absurdity of acting certain ways (such as fearing death), and yet our bodies still revolt and break down in fear or anxiety. There's really no extreme use in reasoning over certain things; our bodies are still have their own preferences. Discipline can take care of a lot of things -- sexual desire, anger, resentment -- but I doubt it can take care of a fear for death, at least not in an easy way.

This somewhat relates to the idea of suicide and absurdity. Our bodies, moreso perhaps than our minds, rebel against absurdity. There are psychological studies that unveil people getting physically afflicted because of interpreting (through consciousness) certain events. Apropos: the absurdity of suicide can lead one to suicide through his biological underpinnings. It can make him severely depressed, to such a point where reason doesn't really matter anymore. Indeed, as Camus pointed out in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, suicide is hardly ever a result of reflection.

I completely agree. But, also in the essay, Camus assumes Sisyphus as the very character of human life, and deduces that even despite this intent of suicide, this intent of the absurd, there is still an integrity in man. I only read the first couple of pages and the last chapter--which I believe summarizes, in a more poetic way than an actual essay, the entire essay--so if I get a bit lost with you, my apologies.

So would you say suicide is precipitated more so through experience than of contemplation?

 

[Received]

Absolutely. Seriously contemplating things stops up action -- Dostoevsky's Underground Man proves this perfectly; experience is more comprehensive, and while it does almost necessarily entail at least a little consideration/reflection, it allows the person to be more pushed by the biological factor I talked about earlier.

For Camus, the logical response to absurdity isn't suicide but revolt. Because the absurd lives because of man -- the absurd based in the dissonance that results from being unable to have the world translate itself to a reasonable system for the individual --, suicide would throw the baby out with the bathwater, or as Alan Watts would say, it's a way of solving a headache with a decapitation. Absurdity is gone, yes, but absurdity makes no sense except through consciousness. Therefore, revolt; therefore, Sisyphus.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Absolutely. Seriously contemplating things stops up action -- Dostoevsky's Underground Man proves this perfectly; experience is more comprehensive, and while it does almost necessarily entail at least a little consideration/reflection, it allows the person to be more pushed by the biological factor I talked about earlier.

For Camus, the logical response to absurdity isn't suicide but revolt. Because the absurd lives because of man -- the absurd based in the dissonance that results from being unable to have the world translate itself to a reasonable system for the individual --, suicide would throw the baby out with the bathwater, or as Alan Watts would say, it's a way of solving a headache with a decapitation. Absurdity is gone, yes, but absurdity makes no sense except through consciousness. Therefore, revolt; therefore, Sisyphus.

But Dostoevsky's Underground Man represents an entirely different type of death. One that's quite beyond even suicide. In my honest opinion that the Underground Man is more a trend now then suicide: Indecision and introversion in the face of one's thoughts.

And for Camus, one was left at a crossroads between revolt and of suicide--the point where man must decide between nihilism and continuing on in a fruitless life. Wouldn't you agree that suicide, as Camus explains it, is rather more a rash decision, made at a moment of self-possessed clarity, than a considerate one?

 

[Received]

Of course, Camus called Sisyphus happy. That's surely pushing it. He was in Hades, y'know, and presumably he couldn't commit suicide if he wanted to. Even the possibility of suicide can be comforting -- "It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night." -- Nietzsche

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Of course, Camus called Sisyphus happy. That's surely pushing it. He was in Hades, y'know, and presumably he couldn't commit suicide if he wanted to. Even the possibility of suicide can be comforting -- "It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night." -- Nietzsche

Nietzsche also said that too much truth becomes numb and that happiness cannot be known without first seeing that despair exists.

 

[Received]

But Dostoevsky's Underground Man can be an entirely different representative to society. One that's quite beyond even suicide. In my honest opinion, the Underground Man, is more absurd than those who commit suicide.

Not entirely different. His life is absurd not because he considers suicide, but because he doesn't live. In a sense, he is incarnated death, saturated with resentment and despair -- incarnated nonbeing, antithetical to the Nietzschean Overman, for he lives before good and evil.

And I think Camus would consider it rash, certainly, and clarifying in the sense that one refuses to reason things through and consider his situation and the absurdity of his action.

 

[Received]

Nietzsche also said that too much truth becomes numb and that happiness cannot be experienced without despair.

Yup. Truth is a subset of man; and happiness has no value without despair (an idea originally hit on by Kierkegaard, followed up by Camus).

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Not entirely different. His life is absurd not because he considers suicide, but because he doesn't live. In a sense, he is incarnated death, saturated with resentment and despair -- incarnated nonbeing, antithetical to the Nietzschean Overman, for he lives before good and evil.

And I think Camus would consider it rash, certainly, and clarifying in the sense that one refuses to reason things through and consider his situation and the absurdity of his action.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that the Underground man was essential non-being. He still feels, rather through despair and through resentment, but those are still feelings. You can use Camus statement about just having the comfort of suicide can be reassuring to life: In this sense though one can reflect this into one where there is something in dichotomy to the despair and resentment. I wouldn't say the Underground man is lost to restoring himself to action.

But, as said, Camus assumes that when one concludes suicide, when one reaches that focal point, no knowledge and no reason is really passed through--They've already decided their death, envisioned it and become numb to it--Like Ibbieta in Sartre's The Wall.

 

[Received]

Yeah, but the existentialists (particularly Kierkegaard) like to emphasize the difference between action and meaningful (authentic) action. A person can be lost in near-passitivity and still resemble most anyone else. The meaningful action is actualized through will or spirit or freedom, or however you would have it. The Underground Man, because he is devoid of love as a backdrop from which he can authentically act, is virtual non-being (obviously not complete non-being).

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Yeah, but the existentialists (particularly Kierkegaard) like to emphasize the difference between action and meaningful (authentic) action. A person can be lost in near-passitivity and still resemble most anyone else. The meaningful action is actualized through will or spirit or freedom, or however you would have it. The Underground Man, because he is devoid of love as a backdrop from which he can authentically act, is virtual non-being (obviously not complete non-being).

Doesn't the Underground Man act as a warning also to elitism? For instance, he considers himself more conscious of others, one who overcomes the boundaries of society and the normal, willing, acting individual within it.

Also: He seems to understand that he is human, and in that respect he is still in the grasps of humanity itself. This is especially applied when he speaks about how he cannot even become an insect, and that he's quite mad how he cannot become an insect, but nevertheless finds himself better--does this imply his spite thinks that all humanity should be reduced to an insect(since he is a higher or more, in his mind, authentic and correctly envisioning individual)? He holds more of an aversion for society or humanity as a whole, instead of a despair. He does so in disgust--could then we blame society for the Underground Man?

The trouble for Kierkegaard, in my opinion, is that his definition of authentic action was based purely upon emotion--in essence, Kierkegaard wished to rid logic completely(which is rather ironical in his writing) from the basis of most(especially for Christianity and of living authentically)--I've seen it as a trend, especially among Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, to put emphasis upon either reason or emotion; but never a synthesis of the two. One has to remember that Kierkegaard despised the Greeks, and wrote one of his University Thesis' on why the citizens of Athens were right in condemning Socrates to suicide.

 

[Received]

Kierkegaard was far from disdaining logic or reason; what he, and Nietzsche later, was for was returning man to a comprehensive entity between two polarities: action and thought. Kierkegaard was for meaning, which was actualized through the Logos (Christ); and this meaning was both transphysical and transrational (in the sense that you didn't discover it through reasoning). This meaning is what makes life whole; reason may be the form this meaning takes for an individual (at least at times), but the important point is that reason (and the senses) are subordinate to meaning, and this is far from being Calvinistically anti-reason or anti-sensate.

The Underground Man's curse is his consciousness. In Kierkegaardian terms, he is stuffed up in the thought polarity; he can't act, and even when he does, it's meaningless. Because he is saturated with consciousness, he very easily contrasts himself with the world around him. He is more human in the sense that he recognizes the possibilities involved with being human (the sensate, fraternity drunk, for example, is far from realizing this), but ideally less human because he doesn't actualize these possibilities -- or as Dostoevsky seems to imply, because he can't. Bondage is the realization of possibility with the tormenting inability to actualize them (in which case possibility arguably is false).

Whatever the case is, despair existentially qualified isn't an emotion -- it precedes emotion; it is grounded in our being. Despair, in Kierkegaard's words, is the refusal (or inability) to be oneself, and to be oneself means to strive for one's own particular meaning, rather than pandering around with trivialities and meditating on one's own misery.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Kierkegaard was far from disdaining logic or reason; what he, and Nietzsche later, was for was returning man to a comprehensive entity between two polarities: action and thought. Kierkegaard was for meaning, which was actualized through the Logos (Christ); and this meaning was both transphysical and transrational (in the sense that you didn't discover it through reasoning). This meaning is what makes life whole; reason may be the form this meaning takes for an individual (at least at times), but the important point is that reason (and the senses) are subordinate to meaning, and this is far from being Calvinistically anti-reason or anti-sensate.

The Underground Man's curse is his consciousness. In Kierkegaardian terms, he is stuffed up in the thought polarity; he can't act, and even when he does, it's meaningless. Because he is saturated with consciousness, he very easily contrasts himself with the world around him. He is more human in the sense that he recognizes the possibilities involved with being human (the sensate, fraternity drunk, for example, is far from realizing this), but ideally less human because he doesn't actualize these possibilities -- or as Dostoevsky seems to imply, because he can't. Bondage is the realization of possibility with the tormenting inability to actualize them (in which case possibility arguably is false).

Whatever the case is, despair existentially qualified isn't an emotion -- it precedes emotion; it is grounded in our being. Despair, in Kierkegaard's words, is the refusal (or inability) to be oneself, and to be oneself means to strive for one's own particular meaning, rather than pandering around with trivialities and meditating on one's own misery.

Are you Christian existentialist?

 

[Received]

To the teeth. But this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy and assimilate ideas from non-theistic existentialists. I like Kierkegaard first, Nietzsche and Camus second, other theistic existentialists third.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

To the teeth. But this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy and assimilate ideas from non-theistic existentialists. I like Kierkegaard first, Nietzsche and Camus second, other theistic existentialists third.

In my opinion they aren't that fundamentally different. Except for Kierkegaard, who seems to be the only 'proclaimed' existentialist who took his time in deducing better ways to assimilate with God, I do believe most don't delve too deep into religious argument--Well, I forgot Nietzsche. Most just assume God doesn't exist and place themselves with man, the latter of these ideas is something that is all too real--despite the arguments against the first.

In anycase: Do you find the Underground man lost? Or, for better wording, beyond his humanity because he is so conscious? I remember in part two of section one he says something that's stuck with me quite a bit: "To be too conscious is an illness--a real thoroughgoing illness." This seems to suggest that he's all too aware of the fact that he's the way he is because he's too conscious of things: Something Sartre would call "Consciousness of being consciousness of things." But in that sense many of us can be seen as being too consciousness of things, and thus we're all readily cursed, to some extent, to the fate of the Underground Man--And surely, as Walter Kaufmann pointed out in his subscript of the translation, there are most certainly people like the Underground Man in our society. So as you put it, hes achieved what many would like to; to underline the fundamental possibilities laying with our lives, but fails in the one place that counts: to live it.

Thanks also for the clarification on Kierkegaard. I've only read certain essays and his writing on the angst of Abraham. And I finally understand Sartre when he says: "Life begins on the other side of despair." Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Received]

You're most welcome. I think if you want an easier place to pick up on Kierkegaard's central ontological concept of meaning, try reading Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

I wish he would of write some fiction. Except for his parables, there's nothing really easy about him. =(

 

[TexasSky]

While suicide is by its nature a very traumatic and depressing phenomenon, I nonetheless believe that a person's right to their own life is the most fundamental human right. This includes the right to die how and when they choose.

Out of interest, does anyone have any arguments against suicide?

I worked as a suicide prevention counselor for years and years. I have had many, many, many people thank me for helping them hang onto life. I have never once had anyone curse me for helping them hang onto life.

I have, though, unfortunately see the total devastation that sucide leaves behind for others. The loss of any loved one is painful, but with suicide the pain is almost unbearable and seems to last an eternity.

Suicidal ideation goes hand in hand with depression. That depression is caused by any number of things. For some it is caused by one single moment of extreme emotional pain that is so severe that they forget everything except that pain. Given a chance to heal from that pain, to talk through it, they begin to see hope again, to remember that there was joy before that pain and there will be joy again. If, however, they are not stopped long enough to work through that pain, they never get the chance to find the joy that follows.

Some are going through extreme stress, abuse, neglect, terrible living conditions. They don't know how to cry out for help, or they have cried out and no one took them seriously, so they give up. They don't really want death. They really want that pain to end. They want hope.

For some it is totally a brain-chemistry issue, and can be treated with medication as easily as treating the flu.

Over ninety percent of people who have attempted suicide or admitted suicidal ideation report that they don't want to die, they just want whatever is hurting them to stop hurting them, and they have given up hope. More than 50% are seriously, clinically depressed. (Brain chemistry).

Twenty to twenty-five percent are intoxicated via drugs or alcohol and have had their self-control lowered and their impulsive behavior raised by a whatever has intoxicated them.


It is a myth that most people who threaten suicide never attempt.

It is another myth that someone who attempts and fails repeatedly never will suceed.

I see someone used the phrase "manipulation" and I understand why they would think that, but honestly, that is almost never the intent of people who express suicidal ideation or the intent of people who actually attempt.

The usual pattern is:

Someone is hurting beyond what they can stand.

They try to talk to someone, but no one listens, or no one takes it seriously, or someone judges them for being honest about their feelings. They end up hiding those feelings for awhile, and they get worse. They are not taken seriously about how severely they are hurting.

They MAY begin to threaten suicide or they MAY admit to suicidial ideation. People may nor may not listen to them. If people listen, and let them know that someone does care, that someone will try to help them through the pain, they cling to life long enough to regain their own will to live, and to seek help.

If people brush them off, laugh at them, tell them they are not serious - they feel usually do one of two things.
They either do something that they hope will make people take them seriously, without meaning to die, but often dieing because they miscalculated. Or, they just decide to die, and make sure they do.

In any case - - given the chance to heal, the chance to regain hope, the chance to treat the depression - - formerly suicidal people are almost always grateful someone cared enough to help them.

And that is the argument against suicide. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary pain, and it is unfair to the suicide victim to be robbed of the future because they are momentarily blinded.

It is unfair to the people around the sucidal person too though. It is NEVER something that only hurts the person who died. Friends and loved ones will have tremendous pain to deal with, along with a misplaced sense of guilt. They may have been trying everything they could to help the person, only to feel they failed the person. Often the friends of a suicidal teenager, depressed over the friend's actions, will become suicidal.

Then there are the emergency workers.

A few years ago I was at work at a counseling center affiliated with a major University when a call came in. I could hear the most terrifying, gut wrenching screams and cries in the background as the person on the line demanded to talk to a licensed counselor ASAP. I asked, "Are you in danger?" The answer was no. I asked if someone else was in danger. The answer was, "I can't talk, just get someone here now!" I said, "Do you need an ambulance and police?" I was told, "Yes, but a counselor first."

Given the circumstances - - one of our top counselors answered the call. Then a call came back to us.
"Get the whole counseling team here stat."

It was just before Thanksgiving. Holidays are always a high risk time. A young man had called his older sister to give him a ride home for the holidays, seen his roommate off for the holidays, told his girlfriend goodbye, then hung himself in the dorm room. When he didn't show up downstairs, his sister had gone upstairs looking for him. Hers was the most pronounced screaming I heard on that phone that day.

The Resident Assitant for the hall, just a college student himself, had heard the screams, along with other college students still in the dorm. All of the young men and women running to the screams came upon the site of a young man they had shared a living space with for 1/2 a year, hanging. A lot of the other noise on the phone was from those young people.

By the time our lead counselor arrived, he had an fairly large group of hysterical staff and college students, and this young sister, a campus police officer throwing up in the corner, and a dead body still dangling in the room. He was a Navy officer, and a professional counselor, so he took down the body, laid it out, and then called in the rest of the counseling team.

The family of this young man were all supposed to fly into our city airport, then drive to a small town near us, where the older sister and her new husband lived, to celebrate the holiday. Instead, a team of University Officials and Counselors met the plane, and explained to them that their youngest child had ended his life because, according to his note, his life was over due to a bad grade.

See, he had his heart set on being an Architect, and he'd failed a class. The note indicated that he felt he'd let down everyone who had faith in him, that he had no future, that he didn't want to be a burden. His parents would have given everything they owned for a chance to tell him that they didn't care about his career, or his grades, that he wouldn't be a burden. That there were always options. Had he come to the counseling center we could have helped him get on with the career he wanted. Professors and Deans ARE willing to work with students in such cases.

But he didn't seek help. He didn't get help.

Now, for who knows how long; his sister and his parents will remember Thanksgiving as the time he died. The young people who lived in that dorm will live with the memory. The RA kept asking us, "why didn't he talk to me?" So no doubt, the RA will be affected. I certainly am, and I did not ever see the body. We had very young counselors, finishing their Ph.D., who went in that day - I still hear from many of them. One of them quit the profession though, said the pressure was too much.


I own some chat rooms.
Years ago I had a rather busy RPG chat room and we got a lot of kids into it. One day I signed onto my computer and a girl pops up on my IM and starts chit chatting with me. She indicates that she has been waiting for me because she heard I did some counseling and that I knew some things about drugs.

That got my attention. I knew she had issues in her life because from time to time she would say things in the chat room that concerned me.

She related that the previous night she'd wanted badly to attend a party with her friends, but that her parents had refused to allow it, even though they went to a party themselves. They left her at home alone, and she was angry, and feeling neglected and hurt. She wanted to teach them a lesson, so she went on line and asked a bunch of people how many tylenol she could take without dieing. How many she could take to make her folks feel sorry for neglecting her.

The idiots on the chat line had apparently had a nice little discussion about it, and came up with a number for her. She said that she "only took that many", but now she was a "little scared," but that it "probably okay because I feel okay."

By now she had my undivided attention.

I asked her how many pills, what strength, etc.. I made her go find the bottle and read it to me. What she took was her mother's surgical prescription dose. The kind they give to some people after surgery when they don't want to give them narcotics. It is powerful stuff for adults, and she was a 14 year old kid.

I grabbed the PDR, looked it up, then called the local ER and asked them if I was reading the PDR correctly. They assured me that I was. I asked them what the odds were the kid was fibbing. She had said she felt no pain. A doctor came on the line and told me, "Tylenol is a pain killer, but it also attacks the liver. You feel fine because it dulls the pain, but it is dissolving your liver. If you don't get it out of a person's system within a certain length of time nothing can be done to save them. If you get in there early enough to prevent death, you may still have life long organ damage."

I went back to the girl, begged her to tell her parents. She was afraid they would be mad and make her go away. I didn't understand that at the time, I did by the time it was over.

She kept insisting that since she felt fine, she must be fine, that she would call me at my home (I gave her my number) if she felt sick. I kept her talking. About anything and everything I could, and in the mean time I was pulling the registration records for the chat room, and the chat logs, and every administrator on our site. We were looking for where she lived, who she was, anything that might help us find her.

Eventually some of her chat line friends explained to us that she had all kinds of issues with her parents. They were, her friends said, rich socialites. She felt that her only real friend in the world was her brother, but her brother got in trouble for possession and they sent him off to live with other relatives to teach him a lesson. Then they came down hard on her, restricting her more than they had before, and, she thought, costing her her friends.

The friends told us enough that we could track down the city and state. I called the local sheriff's office, and explained the situation. I knew it could all be a lie. He said if it was, that needed to be dealt with too. He made a few calls to various principals in town, and found one who said he thought he might know the family. He remembered a prominent family withdrawing a student after the student got in legal trouble, and thought he had a sister.

By now the girl had had the drugs in her system about 10 hours, and I'd been trying to find her for about 6 hours. The sheriff promised me he would let me know, one way or the other, what he found out, and took my number. I figured I'd never hear from him, and I prayed if I did hear from him, it would be to chew me out for a false alarm.

About an hour later he called me back. He told me, "We found her, and she admitted to taking the pills, her parents confirmed pills were missing, we got her to the ER. The doctors say she is going to have some health issues, but she will live. Her parents wanted me to thank you, and to give them your number." I gave him permission to give out my number, and I got a call from the girl and her parents about three days later. They all promised me they would be in counseling. I kept in touch with them all for about 3 years. The girl would send me thank you cards for years after that. Last time I checked on her, she was on her way to college and thought she was in love.

These are the arguements against suicide.
Lives should not be ruined or wasted, because of temporary moments of hopelessness, bad judgment, or depression.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

My apologies for not responding to the whole post. As far as I can tell, it is aptly summarised by the final paragraph, so I'll respond to that.

These are the arguements against suicide.
Lives should not be ruined or wasted, because of temporary moments of hopelessness, bad judgment, or depression.

And what if it's not temporary? My reasons for being suicidal, for instance, aren't the kind that go away. I've just learned to ignore them.