Platos stepchild wrote:I want to rephrase the question, and instead ask is my suicide immoral.
Ah. Well, I think it depends on your dependants and responsibilities. The majority of us will have someone who would have to endure real grief when we die. So a good question is, have you ever experienced real grief, eg of losing a sibling, parent, child, best friend or partner? For me, whenever I have contemplated life and death, I have always hit a wall when I think of my mother sitting alone in her house, crying in grief. Losing a child must be the worst pain imaginable, and I just could not do that to her.
And then there are real dependants. Do you have any children? If so, I think that you have a responsibility to live for them at least until they are older and have a strong support network around them.
You also have to deal with the responsibility to yourself. Maybe this is not an 'I want to die' but an 'I don't want to live like
this'. What is it in particular that you cant stand about living? I would suggest having a complete change of life first- Tell your friends and family you need time to yourself to reflect, cut out alcohol etc, travel the world if necessary and change your perspective. Do something completely out of the box. Get some adrenalin pumping through you.
It would be a shame if it was simply a wrong belief or a deep frustration that ended your life when the next chapter was going to be great? It is often 'darkest before the dawn' and as they say we 'have to hit rock bottom' before we change. This is cliche but was so true in my case. Maybe this is the point at which you suddenly realise what you want out of life and whats important to you. You can start over ie become an adult- truly taking responsibility for your own life and living 'on purpose', taking responsibility for your own behaviour/ decisions, admitting you were wrong? If you are blaming everyone and and everything else for your feelings then you
will feel like s**t, and completely powerless.
What do you want out of life that you aren't getting now? Whats stopping you from wiping the slate clean, moving, deleting all your contacts, retraining and starting over?
In short, no. I don't think suicide is immoral, per se, but it can be irresponsible, selfish and a terrible waste.
Happy people don't commit suicide, and there is a train of thought that says happiness is a choice rather than a predisposition. I'm of two minds on the subject. I do appreciate that some people are almost pathologically miserable but I also believe that people change. Changing a core belief and taking responsibility for ourselves can make the world of difference.
Ozymandias wrote:
Philosophical discussion is different from philosophical advice, though.
If you're looking for advice, I firmly believe that unless you're in a vegetative state or a medically confirmed state of permanent pain, suicide is more a question of wisdom than of morality or ethics, and if so, I absolutely think it is unwise. Principally, because life is almost always guaranteed to change, and often it is for the better.
Sage advice. Things do change. It is somehow very difficult to imagine that our feelings will change as we seem to have a predisposition for self righteousness and difficulty really planning for or seeing ourselves in the future. These things aid our short term survival in most cases but can also cause a great deal of emotional discomfort along the way.
-- Updated December 14th, 2016, 12:24 pm to add the following --
Platos stepchild wrote:
Here's a question: I'm contemplating suicide because I'm futureless.
There's your wrong belief. I bet you repeat that to yourself a thousand times a day.
N.B You wanted to have a real discussion about suicide, warts and all, but instead you've begun emotional blackmail of other posters by threatening to commit suicide and asking for tips. Maybe you get off on this aspect of it..the power over others, the drama etc?
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts". -Bertrand Russell