Suicide

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

How do you materialists condemn it? If life is inherently meaningless and has a value that must be directed from within, what happens when instead of new experiences it only brings new pains? If you support an elderly person's right to a dignified death, how can you reject someones right to ultimate cessation?

[MarxSchmarx]

How do you materialists condemn it? If life is inherently meaningless and has a value that must be directed from within, what happens when instead of new experiences it only brings new pains? If you support an elderly person's right to a dignified death, how can you reject someones right to ultimate cessation?

Well timing's everything. Obviously there's little point in condemning it after the fact, but before someone commits suicide if we can intervene to prevent them from doing so, we should. Suicide isn't really a rational choice in the vast majority of circumstances. One shouldn't be non-chalant about it.

[Hermes]

How do you materialists condemn it? If life is inherently meaningless and has a value that must be directed from within, what happens when instead of new experiences it only brings new pains? If you support an elderly person's right to a dignified death, how can you reject someones right to ultimate cessation?

I don't think that all materialists do condemn it.

The difficult part, of course, is knowing whether or not life really will only bring new pains, or so many (or so great) pains as to outweigh the pleasures. Often, when the person is making the decision, their minds aren't completely healthy (depression, etc) so their reasoning may be off. Sometimes I think their reasoning is valid.

I dunno

[Yuppie Grinder]

Materialism =/= Nihilism

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

I think people make fundamental errors in trying to talk someone out of suicide. Trying to point out the folly of destroying yourself and the emotional devastation that would cause doesn't really work with a person who is truly sick of existing. In the end, suicide is really just someone's last attempt at escaping their troubles. Call me reactionary, but i don't think that works. Consciousness doesn't really end at death. Maybe i'm high on the opiate, maybe my so called visions are merely schizophrenia, but i do doubt the purely materialist hypothesis. Which is probably the only reason i haven't offed myself yet. Suicide can't be used as an escape because there is no escape. Any attempt at ending your suffering merely extends it, whether that extension is in the form of hell or your stream of consciousness being forever frozen in your final feelings of dismay. Maybe i'm deluding myself. But the delusion does work. I've even thrown the heresy card at a person trying to comfort a teenage girl due to this. Not because I'm heartless, but because certain stigmas need to be continued.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think being a materialist makes it all the clearer that induvidual consiousness is fleeting, tenious, unique and worth preserving.

But also I have no moral problems with people who want to end their own life and think people should be allowed to do so painlessly if they absolutely feel the need without shame or moral judgement against them. I think there should be a process before medical euthenasia is performed though - it's irreversable after all and with support many people can come through very physically or emotionally painful times.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

I think being a materialist makes it all the clearer that induvidual consiousness is fleeting, tenious, unique and worth preserving.

But also I have no moral problems with people who want to end their own life and think people should be allowed to do so painlessly if they absolutely feel the need without shame or moral judgement against them. I think there should be a process before medical euthenasia is performed though - it's irreversable after all and with support many people can come through very physically or emotionally painful times.

If we're gonna think like that a bullet to the brain seems so much more easy

[GoddessCleoLover]

If we're gonna think like that a bullet to the brain seems so much more easy

Putting a bullet in one's brain is always ones individual prerogative. On a social level, IMO the goal ought to be to build a society where people want to live, not die. With respect to painful and terminal illnesses euthanasia ought to be a last resort. At least in the USA "the war on drugs" has intimidated many physicians into not prescribing opiates despite their efficacy. If opiates were administered to dying patients, then we could reduce the cases of euthanasia to a bare minimum. It is desirable to do so because socialism ought to be life-affirming rather than death-affirming.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If we're gonna think like that a bullet to the brain seems so much more easyWhy? Without the stigma of suicide, I think people would prefer a less dramatic exit. Bliss yourself out and pass while sleeping. Additionally, non-stigmatized and openely available psychiatric treatment and lifelong medical care would also decrease the chances of someone going into clinical depression and suddenly killing themselves. The dad of a friend of mine in high school shot himself after being mis-diagnosed with a terminal illness - things like this would be greatly reduced in a society where there is an emphasis on medical treatment and people aren't expected to bury their emotion and problems (in order not to seem "weak") and where mental illness isn't seen as a personal defect.

Suicide is just fact - there's no way to legislate it away. So I think a rational way to deal with it is to bring it out into the open and try and minimize "hasty" or desperate suicides which may be the result of passing trauma or pain. "Cry for help" suicides are well known anecdotally, but I have to imagine that a great deal of these are the result of living in a society where most people don't have access to decent professional help with these issues like the rich do (and have since at least Roman times when "talk therapy" was used by the elite) and depression or mental illness and even physical illness are stigmatized. Ending the rat-race, ending poverty, and building up a much better health infrastructure would no doubt reduce quite a bit of stress which leads to all sorts of anguish and disorders. But some people, for whatever reason, will want to end their life. So I think the only way to respond to this is the minimize extra factors which may cause people to do this, and then to allow for a safe way for people to do this, if there truly was no other option for them.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Why? Without the stigma of suicide, I think people would prefer a less dramatic exit. Bliss yourself out and pass while sleeping. Additionally, non-stigmatized and openely available psychiatric treatment and lifelong medical care would also decrease the chances of someone going into clinical depression and suddenly killing themselves. The dad of a friend of mine in high school shot himself after being mis-diagnosed with a terminal illness - things like this would be greatly reduced in a society where there is an emphasis on medical treatment and people aren't expected to bury their emotion and problems (in order not to seem "weak") and where mental illness isn't seen as a personal defect.

Suicide is just fact - there's no way to legislate it away. So I think a rational way to deal with it is to bring it out into the open and try and minimize "hasty" or desperate suicides which may be the result of passing trauma or pain. "Cry for help" suicides are well known anecdotally, but I have to imagine that a great deal of these are the result of living in a society where most people don't have access to decent professional help with these issues like the rich do (and have since at least Roman times when "talk therapy" was used by the elite) and depression or mental illness and even physical illness are stigmatized. Ending the rat-race, ending poverty, and building up a much better health infrastructure would no doubt reduce quite a bit of stress which leads to all sorts of anguish and disorders. But some people, for whatever reason, will want to end their life. So I think the only way to respond to this is the minimize extra factors which may cause people to do this, and then to allow for a safe way for people to do this, if there truly was no other option for them.


Excellent post, although I believe that a post-revolutionary society ought to profoundly discourage suicide and ought to strongly encourage suicidal persons not receive treatment for their underlying condition rather than commit suicide.

[Art Vandelay]

It isn't selfish to want end your life, what's selfish is forcing someone to stay in this world when they truly don't want to. Suicide is a symptom.

[GoddessCleoLover]

It isn't selfish to want end your life, what's selfish is forcing someone to stay in this world when they truly don't want to. Suicide is a symptom.

I agree that suicide is a symptom, IMO it is a symptom of profound unhappiness. To my mind it is a duty of a socialist society to seek to assist a suicidal person by treating the symptom in order to prevent the suicide.

[Art Vandelay]

I agree that suicide is a symptom, IMO it is a symptom of profound unhappiness. To my mind it is a duty of a socialist society to seek to assist a suicidal person by treating the symptom in order to prevent the suicide.

Absolutely. My only point of emphasis, is that when all is said and done (and hopefully the person has been given all the treatment and help possible) it is ultimately each individual's decision to make.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Aye but at the end of the day i believe that certain societal taboos should continue indefinitely, including incest and suicide.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't think anyone here is encouraging suicide (or proposing that every worker co-op have a death-machine installed in the break room) and I think we all agree that a more pleasant life where induviduals have more power and control in their daily lives will greatly decrease some of the fundamental causes of stress and depression and just mental mal-formation. But on the other hand I also don't think we can simply socially construct a full barrier to sucicide - people are pretty physically frail and can and have found ways to do it even under supervision, so I think the alternative is to try and put it out in the light of day so that potential warning sings are less hidden and people can try and get help before they reach total frustration and depression.


Aye but at the end of the day i believe that certain societal taboos should continue indefinitely, including incest and suicide.Incest involves more than just an induvidual decision and generally today relies on a power-dynamic. Though sucicide obviously impacts other people through the loss of someone, it is fundamentally different because it is almost impossible to stop someone who is determined to end their own life. We can try and convince them otherwise, but that's about it, and I think in a non-exploititive society people would try and have an "intervention", for lack of a better term, to try and convince the person to seek treatment and try and work through it.