Discussion Do you believe in Rational suicide

[MBG]

I'm planning on CTB not because I want to die but because, if my doctors are correct and I'm "average," I have about 4 years to live and years 3 and 4 I wouldn't put a dog through. The Golden Rule applies to how you treat yourself too.

Many patients we cannot cure but we can keep them alive for years in a state akin to torture. It's not like many people here where life brings no physical or psychological pleasure, it's where you are slowly, progressively physically and/or psychologically being destroyed.

That's not living IMO.

 

[Teleftaía Anapnoí]

I totally believe that. I am a scholar of Cioran and I highly recommend his book called "On the heights of despair". He tries to address a rationalization of suicide. He suffered a lot from insomnia and wrote his book at night walking the streets in the open. It is an intense book. But in the end, even he says that "life disgusts him as much as death", which is why he doesn't kill himself. The rationalization of suicide led him to deny it, as is common in philosophers of this type. But even so, the journey is good and thinking about suicide from the perspective of rationality is very important. I cannot believe that suicide is something impulsive and irrational. I spent a lot of time planning my death and how I would get out of this black iron prison that is life.

But yes, suicide is very sad indeed. It's full of emotion and feeling involved, but I don't think it's totally irrational.

 

[vanadium23]

(In response to the original post): There are plenty of people without any mental illness who commit suicide. There are also plenty of mentally ill people who don't have impaired judgement and commit.

 

[4everHeartBroken]

Everything "rational" is also emotionally involved. We are usually oblivious to that, which is okay. There are links to cognitive and suicidal tendencies, not only in human, but also in animals (whales for example). Plus, everyone is experiencing that will in different ways. In my case, I wish the pain to stop - I view it as emotionally heartbreaking, AND chemically imbalances in my neurological conditions. I also want to put another emphasis, that with myself I make a hard distinction between "wanting to not live" and "wanting to die". The latter is not relevant to me, in a "rational" way. And still, at least for now, our view on this (scientifically speaking) is so limited that those sentences are almost synonymous. Alongside those feelings you can always have a love for part of your life, and hope. I have the love not the hope tho lol I'm sorry for blabbering. Stating reality as rational vs delusional usually doesn't work for me at least, maybe others can share their thoughts

I just want to say that I can relate to this post. Thank you for spreading my thoughts into nice words. Very well said.

 

[sserafim]

I believe that suicide is a rational response to the reality of this world. Having to work for a living for 50 years just to survive. Having to become a slave to capitalism and society for the rest of your life...

 

[Final_Choice]

I think suicide is a catch-all action to escape from everything. As such, I think it can be rational but ultimately depends on why said person wants to do it and how much thoughts/preparations have been put into it.

 

[InAgony]

If you are suffering greatly and there no end in sight, then it's rational to want to put an end to it.

I hate this mantra that the public have adopted that "things will get better, just talk to someone". So I'm sorry, but things don't always get better, sometimes they can't and talking doesn't always solve the problem.

 

[Argo]

Do you think rational suicide exists or do you believe that suicidal tendencies are a result of mental disfunction?

Definitely. I believe in suicide for bad reasons and good reasons. Good reasons are when there's genuinely no clear path in sight to live a meaningful or valuable life(edit: Oh, I guess also technically some sort of self-sacrificial act that results in one's death can sometimes have good outcomes. Very rare, rarely motivated by clear thinking, but possible, so I'll add it). Bad reasons are the same as bad reasons for anything else, like sometimes you hear people doing things out of negative emotions like spite, or guilt, or self-hatred, or sheer selfishness, etc. If someone hates themselves for example, I don't think "They must live on! There's nothing hateworthy about them!" Or anything like that. It's possible that suicide is still a rational choice in their life. It's just that doing it because of self-hatred, would be confused at minimum, and usually tragic if there is no rational reason. The people who are going to disagree with me are ones who think any position anyone holds towards themselves, must be valid because it comes from them. We're just gonna disagree there unfortunately.

Every suicide is a tragedy in some sense, but not every suicide is a blessing.

 

[Cakeisalie]

Yes, unfortunately I wasn't born into a Kardashev type 4 civilization, where it would perhaps be easier to solve cognitive problems or modify attributes through genetic engineering, since these random "attributes" are largely to blame for the suffering of living beings. My way of thinking since I was a teenager was "if I can't have and experience everything, then I prefer nothing to non-existence",It makes me sad just to use Google earth because the first thought that comes into my head is that there are thousands of places and infinite combinations of events and people that I could never experience or meet, thus making wealth obsolete, so if like in the movie Matrix, Morpheus offers me 2 options, the first being "wealth, beauty, fame..." and the second option was 2 bottles of N, while he was talking I would have already drunk the bottles of N.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I think that suicide is always rational no matter what

 

[Doemu]

I believe that suicide is against biology, so it's causes mental disfunction, but that's doesn't mean that mental disfunction it's the cause of the suicide, but the consequence. I think suicide can be perfectly rational.