Is suicide immoral?

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Ozymandias
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Favorite Philosopher: Loren Eiseley

Re: Is suicide immoral?

Post by Ozymandias »

To build on Lucylu's advice here,
Also have something to occupy yourself while in said period of rest. The human mind is healthiest when it is busy, if you just sit around all the time thinking about suicide, the thoughts will exaggerate themselves in a sort of echo chamber. Do something, really anything, that takes you're mind off it. I think something as simple as working on a puzzle might have this effect.
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Felix
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Joined: February 9th, 2009, 5:45 am

Re: Is suicide immoral?

Post by Felix »

For the record, this conversation with Platos stepchild started in this other thread that was locked:
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... &start=120

PS, You've received some good advice in this thread, but to get out of the hole you're in, you'll need to change your perspective. You're seeing death as some sort of solution, which is irrational.
When I say I'm futureless, what I mean is I have no purpose, no job, and soon no home. I have no incentive to be productive; I don't feel that I can contribute anything to anyone.
As has been suggested, there is a social service safety net to help those who are jobless and homeless, purpose is something we each need to find or invent for ourselves. Judging by your posts here in this forum, you're a smart guy, but you're using your intellect as a weapon against yourself, in a destructive rather than productive way. As long as you're doing that, the future will look dark and dreary to you and you won't want to face it. Life offers you alternatives, death offers none.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Platos stepchild
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Re: Is suicide immoral?

Post by Platos stepchild »

You're right, of course; you're all right, about everything that's been said. But, as I've said, suicide is unconscionable to me. And, as I've also said, my life is unconscionable to me, as well. It does come down to a choice: a stark and terrible choice, terrible in it's loneliness. Somewhere, deep and hidden inside my mind and my heart, I must choose life over death, or else death over life. I want to understand that choice, and follow it like a groupie. I want to see it germinate into a healthy decision to live well.

But, the flowering of that decision is nowhere to be found. I can only know "the flower" once it's withered. I've never thought to ask this particular question, before: where do decisions and choices really come from. Oh, I imagined, of course that some homunculus, a "miniature me", both wiser and more foolish than me, churned out all my decisions, both good and bad. And I, like any good middle-management flunkie waited to mindlessly execute the directives of the "front office".

I'm like a commoner who never gets to actually see his king. All I ever see is the pomp-and-circumstance of an absentee monarch; the homunculus is just a ventriloquist's dummy wearing a cheesy suit. But nevertheless, choices are very real, regardless of where they spring from. It's like a mother-animal giving birth in the wild. Although we may see her cubs foundering on wobbly legs, we never get to see the actual birth, taking place. It's shrouded in a mystery we're not meant to expose.

So, I await the choice which I pretend I'm not really making. I'm both magician and audience. Oh, yes; I'm terrified of stepping into the outskirts of my last moment of life, only to realize I can no longer "step back". Knock-knock, knocking on Heaven's door. But, as long as I can stay in the penultimate-moment, I can keep pretending. That's my safe place, where I don't have to finally say "This is my decision", or "That is my choice". It's a netherworld where both life and death get lived out by extras hired on the cheap.

The question of freewill has always seemed so, well...so academic. I honestly don't know whether, or not I'll "freely" choose life or death. The fear of not knowing the answer to that perennial riddle has gotten mixed-up with my fear of dying. I'll never be able to sort it all out. You know, that's the first hint of modesty I've shown in a long time. For what it's worth, maybe it's a start. Donne was right: no man is an island, although I've spent most of my life trying to be an isthmus. I desperately want to be a bridge, with unsure abutments anchored on unsure depths, just as long a they're the depths-of-life, and not of death.

-- Updated December 16th, 2016, 3:46 am to add the following --

The conversation stopped rather abruptly. Did it just run it's course?
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Felix
Posts: 3117
Joined: February 9th, 2009, 5:45 am

Re: Is suicide immoral?

Post by Felix »

PS, Re: losing your home, if you're in the U.S., there are government agencies that were established or expanded after the 2008 housing crash, that will help those who are in danger of losing their homes. I don't know exactly what they offer as I've never consulted one, but I presume they give out grants to subsidize rents and mortgages. If I were you, I'd look into that. If you need specific references, let me know, and I'll see what I can find. Good luck, life is never as bad (or good I suppose) as it may seem.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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TSBU
Posts: 151
Joined: August 17th, 2016, 5:32 pm

Re: Is suicide immoral?

Post by TSBU »

Maybe the first question to ask would be: Why should I care about it? But, with the definition provided, saying that "moral" is equal to "right", and with no further explanation, yes, of course, it can be right.

Of course, like every choice in life, it has a context, and depending in that context, it is right or wrong.

But talk about morality isn't usually talking about simply right or wrong, it implies other people, etc. There can be many reasons to choose suicide, but I'd say that in many cases, the person doesn't care about this world and what happens in it, in fact, the person is trying to go out of this world, the entire world. It doesn't matter if people get hurt, it doesn't matter anything, cause in that cases, suicide is "Just escaping every pain and every thought about pain".
Maybe that's the case in wich we think when we talk about suicide, cause killing yourself in order to get money for your family or things like that (after all, nearly every job, and every treat with other humans, implies sacrifice of our time and effort) implie death just as a secundary effect of the choice.

I usually don't like this kind of threads, sometimes I've thought that people thinking about killing themselves can see them and see in them the final step leading to suicide. I mean, this is talking about people we don't know, in cases we don't know, in a very complicated field. What do your answers to this thread implie in real life? There is not an easy answer, we are not the same, we don't have the same lifes.
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