What do you think of suicide, seriously? The people who commit

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>>43821
>Do some people's lives just hit a point where there genuinely is no purpose in living any longer
I think that's a pretty good summation.

I don't see suicide as a sign of weakness. If anything, it's the ultimate sacrifice.

It's a tough world.

>>43821
I don't judge people who commit suicide. I think of committing it myself all the time. I'll never actually do it, though. I think that living an unfulfilling life is better than no life. I guess I'm just a pussy.

>>43823
>I guess I'm just a pussy.
Nah. It's natural to fear death. We're wired for survival. If you're into the Abrahamic religions you go to a place of suffering for all eternity. If you're an atheist you cease to exist. Even old pagan traditions death was a much worse place to be than among the living. The reincarnation religions have their own punishment like going from a reasoned person to a fucking cricket, lads. Any way you look at it it's better to be alive unless you are suffering while alive.

I don't think it's wrong or selfish to kill yourself as long as it's not a burden on others. Just make sure you have your affairs in order and try to die as painlessly as possible.

>>43821
I think suicide is okay as long as it's rational - but that's really not the case for most suicides. Most people who commit suicide have acceptable lives. And the most difficult part is that it's difficult to assess whether someone is being rational about wanting to commit suicide, or merely thinks they are being rational when some mental illness is weighing down on them.

As said, it's natural to not commit suicide. There's something going wrong with the development of human society that makes people commit suicide. Suicide has been increasing for decades, despite the standard of living exploding.

My personal theory is the increasing lack of connection in society. Tribal and community groups have been breaking down more and more over the decades. People live their lives as individuals in isolation. You're a kid growing up, and your parents move. Most if not all of your relationships are severed. You graduate high school and go to college. Most of your relationships are severed or fade over those years. You graduate college and move for a job or a spouse. All your college connections are then severed or fade. Then by that time, very few people are putting themselves out there anymore, looking for real friends, because they're busy with work, their spouse, or children. Even if you are looking for that, it's difficult to know where to look. Sure you can pick up a hobby, but you need more than one thing in relation to become a friend, and it can be difficult to make that transition.

People weren't meant to live so isolated and to have so frequently abandon and move on from their social networks. The way we relate to each other is increasingly shallow as well. Even if we have an in-depth conversation here, it's absolutely nothing compared to having this conversation in real life. Now most people's "friends" are just avatars on Facebook or numbers in a phone, but not real friends, not really.

A few disconnected thoughts:

1. I don't think of suicide as being any special. Suicide is just one form of death, and like other forms of death I approach it from a neutral point of view. It's neither “strong” nor “weak”. There is no such meaning in death. It simply is. Ultimately, what drives a person to suicide is outside their control, in the sense that your thoughts are also outside your control. Your thoughts simply happen - you don't will them into being. Fundamentally, there's no such thing as a rational or irrational suicide, because there's nothing really logical about the universe to begin with. Our concept of rationality and irrationality is merely a human construct - a pattern that we impose upon our environments by choosing to recognize it, just like cause and effect are patterns that we simply choose to observe.

2. It seems to me that most forms of suicide are caused by mental anguish rather than physical anguish - which is interesting, because mental anguish is by far the more avoidable and manageable of the two. Ultimately, our thoughts are a manifestation of our environment as perceived through the filter of our experience. If you want to change your thoughts, you either need to change your environment, or you need to change the way you perceive your environment. Usually, that means giving up something which you don't want to give up.

As it turns out, we have a great aversion to the thought of giving something up, so much that we (ironically) are willing to give up our entire lives just to prevent having to give something up. But if you can give up, for example, your sense of desire for something which you don't have, you can break the negative spiral that leads to depression and suicide. I realize that this is easier said than done, and the method of doing involves either fantastic power of will or great dilligence, but it's something you can consider if the thought of suicide at all scares you.

>>43869
(cont)

>...but it's something you can consider if the thought of suicide at all scares you.
Or death in general, really. The concept of death is only terrifying to somebody who lives his life in the future, rather than the present.

We spend all our lives working towards some distant future goal that we always feel like we're on the brink of reaching. Failure to reach this made-up goal is often what drives us to depression.

If you want to rid yourself of negative thoughts, you have to learn to forget about both the past and the future. Are you willing to make that sacrifice, or would you rather commit suicide so you can cling on to your hopes and dreams until your dying breath?

>>43857
>The way we relate to each other is increasingly shallow as well. Even if we have an in-depth conversation here, it's absolutely nothing compared to having this conversation in real life.
I want to disagree strongly on this point. Personally, I've always felt like it's possible to have significantly more engaging discussions about way more serious topics than in real life. Maybe I'm just autistic, but on the phone or in front of a person I just can't say what I truly think. It's much tougher to break the ice on a difficult subject, and you're much more on the defensive with your emotions. It's also much harder to say something that breaks the mold of what people expect from you. It's also much harder to choose your words to accurately convey what you really think.

tl;dr I don't think I would ever be having this exact conversation with anybody in real life, ever. At best, if I got to know somebody on a really intimate level I might have a conversation like this, usually at night and on the phone. (The extra distance helps open up the barriers and make you feel more like you're alone)

But here on the internet I can have a conversation about my innermost feelings with total strangers. Is this not the height of connectedness?

>>43874
(cont)

That said, I do want to agree with the rest of your post. In particular, I think that what matters for the definition of `friendship` is not so much the content of the conversation, but rather the long-term emotional attachment you can form.

My conversations on the internet might be more engaging, but they're also brief and disconnected. I don't form any lasting acquaintances. On the other end of the spectrum, you can have a long-term friendship with somebody that you don't go into depth or discuss serious topics with.

You don't always have to get both from the same person. It's the same problem that many people face with relationships - they go into them thinking about some particular, media-engrained picture of what a relationship is supposed to look like, and get disappointed when they can't get everything they want out of their partner.

It's far more satisfying to understand the relationship you have with your environment and avoid stretching it to meet some ideal. If you want to change something about that state of being, go with the grain - don't try and force it

Do you guys think there will be a suicide wave of liberals with Trump's election?

It is the ultimate form of self-empowerment. As long as you are not ready to commit suicide you have no control over your own life. You can be forced into suffering in awful situations. Once you truly cross the threshold and embrace suicide as an option the whole situation flips. Every day you continue spending on earth is of your own volition. You're not here because your parents put you there, you're not here because you have to be - you'll always be here simply and only because you want to be. It opens a whole new perspective on life.

It is probably the most fundamental liberty. It's *your* life, you should be able to freely decide about it, including making the decision to terminate it. Free will means nothing if you can't choose to peace-out on your own terms.

I agree that suicide should be a rational decision. Acting out of impulse, crisis or psychological illness is not supported by free will. I experienced this almost overwhelming irrational urge to off myself one particularly dire night many years ago. Shit was not pretty and I'm glad I pulled through. But sucide as a rational decision is perfectly fine.

>>43844
>If you're an atheist you cease to exist.
Yes, but this is the beauty of it! You make it seem like there would be someone to evaluate this. There isn't. The moment you die, you're not anymore. Which means you can't hurt anymore, you can't regret anymore, you can't experience your loved ones suffering, you can't even make a single thought. How is this terrifying? There's literally no way for any harm to come your way anymore. Even if you objectively make the worst decision of all time - there's only one person who most definitely doesn't care anymore: You. There is no reason whatsoever to fear death as an atheist.

The categories of whether death is better or worse than life don't apply. Because after death there isn't anything and no way to experience it. The subject is gone. It's the ultimate peaceful comforting relief. I look forward to it!

>>43844
If you're a Taoist or Nihilist, you already don't exist.

>>43955
I think mainly it is me that is afraid of death, and I'm just projecting on the thread. I'm an atheist so I subscribe to your line of thinking to a point, but I don't find comfort in not existing anymore. It is a lot better than the religious punishments of death, but still a negative in my mind. I'm kind of an Epicurean in that I spend most of my time seeking pleasure from learning, fantasies, and the visceral. When I die all of that goes away. Sure, I won't experience anything bad when I die, because I won't be experiencing anything at all, but I want to stick to this life as much as possible to wring the juice out of it.

>>43966
Oh? Please elaborate.

>>43821
>What do you think of suicide, seriously?

Are you 18 with your first broken heart? Well, suicide is not such a great idea.

Are you 75 with nothing in front of you? You lived your life? Why not choose when to end it, then? http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/aug/20/cover/
Or just eat a fucking bullet. Fuck 'em.

>>43975
>I'm an atheist so I subscribe to your line of thinking to a point, but I don't find comfort in not existing anymore.
The thing to realize is that there's fundamentally no difference between your birth and your death.

This is something I've never understood - why are people afraid of their death, but they're not afraid of your birth? The “nonexistence” after death is the same as the “nonexistance” before birth, so why is only one of the two scary to us? Is it simply because you don't know when you will die?

If so, then how come that makes it worse? You will die when you die, does that prevent you from enjoying the moment? Are you unable to enjoy a song on the ratio if you don't know how much longer the song will last?

You already both exist and don't exist, in different points in time. Stop focusing on what the universe will look like in 1000 years and focus on what the universe looks like right now. Stop thinking about the future. Stop planning, stop having hopes and dreams. Just live in the moment.

https://ashspace.org/contribs/carthago_deleta/living_as_a_suicidal.php

>>43975
>I think mainly it is me that is afraid of death, and I'm just projecting on the thread.
I see, sorry for poking the bear then. But why do you bring this up in a thread about suicide? Suicide (apart from the crisis situations I mentioned) is a choice. So as long as you think "wringing the juice" out of life beats non-existance, you've made your choice. But this is no reason to shun having the option.

Do you think we can agree that life itself doesn't inherently have value? I posit it's only valuable in so far as you do something with it (like you said: experience, learn, feel pleasure, etc). But then it's easy to imagine a situation where this goes away or becomes unattainable. Say in a freak accident your head is dunked in acid and you permanently lose your vision and hearing. How many of your pleasures just went out the window? If that's not enough, imagine said accident made you a paraplegic. With no movement and virtually no sensations left - would you still rather hang on? If so, how about if we add constant chronic pain to the equation?

I don't think it's natural to fear death at all. At least for me my will to live is deeply conditional on the kind of life I would be able to lead. To keep on living just for the sake of being alive sounds delusional.
Mind you, I am not above fear of death in specific situations. If I happen to lose my legs and eyes but I know I'm the only one who can save my daughter from certain death I'll be fucking terrified my body would give out before I could rescue her. But once she's out of harm's way I would strongly consider embracing sweet sweet nothingness.

>>44051
>But this is no reason to shun having the option.
But I didn't do that. I even endorsed suicide as long as you have your affairs in order and not become a burden to someone else. I just personally fear non existence while you are of the opposing opinion. If life becomes too painful of course I would kill myself, but as far as I am now it seems kind of inconceivable until I actually experience that kind of pain.