Does suicide even matter

[Tintypographer]

I've gone down this road so many times that even the decision to rationalize or not is completely futile. So much doesn't actually matter in the big scheme of things and so much of the world is simply jerks trying to convince each other to buy crap that our world and place in it just doesn't matter. My greatest gift to everyone around me is simply helping them finish stupid assignments so that they can use the effort to buy crap. I don't matter and would only be missed in the perspective of not being present to solve useless things for people.

I only hear from people on the things that others need from me. With deep concern. And yet when I look at what I'm doing it has all the value of the TPS reports from the movie office space.

I hear that my family and children would never be the same if I committed suicide but 1) would I be there to feel bad? (probably not if there are no ghosts) and 2) will their unhappiness and emotional dysfunction matter in 500 or 1000 years.

And before you state some sort of "what if one was going to cure cancer?" question, I don't believe in predestination or that anything really matters cancer or otherwise. Cancer has been present for millions of years of animals and 10-13k of human cultural history and it hasn't really changed.

I like to turn this around and ask, "can you tell me what impact peasant in medieval France over 800 years ago via either suicide or an accident had on the world". What's his or her name? What butterfly effect did they create? None. Statistically they didn't matter and none of us will ever matter. Certainly not in 3 generations and not in 500 years. We will all become irrelevant and the world actually works to make us irrelevant today. On a geologic timescale all the garbage we build and do will be unrecognizable in less time than it took the dinosaurs to die. My kids don't matter, my family doesn't matt r, my job doesn't matter, how I die doesn't matter, all the stupidity that people fight about online doesn't matter. What people are scare of most is that they are irrelevant. Humanity fears becoming not important. The real free people are the homeless and ignored. They don't have to fear and claw their way up from.the entropy of historical irrelevance, they are already there. The rest of us work in a sort of fog of muck trying to make our beliefs and goals matter. We create cults and politics as though something matters and we want to remain relevant. We imagine and rationalize that we are good or virtuous or that others are bad and evil but we forget that even the rationalization is irrelevant. None of it matters.

I sit in my life wishing I had never existed to even realize what I see. I'm so tired of the tropes of seeing beauty in a small thing or making one person happy. I live in complete irrelevance and dying today or tomorrow or yesterday would never have any impact on the solar system. Even the net mass remains the same. My contributions are garbage and the world is a giant dump. I can't believe how down and hopeless I feel right now.

 

[all_is_vanity]

No, it's one of the most pointless acts out there. So why do I still want to do it? Because it's all there is. So you die, what changes. People are stilled killed and raped and suffering keeps going. You're replaced by someone new. Suicide is an attempt to escape. But no such thing exists, not while we are field over. This is hell after all

 

[coldblood]

Nothing matters, you're right. You can choose to succumb to that or make the most of it. you can do a lot on this earth with the mindset that nothing matters, but that involves distracting yourself from existential dread. On the other hand, sometimes the existential dread is quite overwhelming and not being here seems like the appropriate response. Sometimes, existential dread can be beautiful and give life meaning. Sometimes, it can take meaning away. It all depends on your own personal perspective.

 

[NambaSutra]

I agree with you well said. I can't stand my family and if they feel bad for a while by my death I think I'm ok with that. But they'll die too eventually and nobody will remember anything. Nothing I do matters, frankly I don't do much anyway, I'm so depressed I don't even watch TV or play games anymore. Mostly I try to avoid my very triggering family and sit around feeling very very bored and miserable with life.

This isn't who I used to be but I think it's all I'll ever be in the future.

 

[borderline-feline]

I don't think that anything matters on a cosmic scale. All of the energy in the universe will someday be so far apart that it's unable to do anything, the heat death of the universe, if you will. Humans aren't special; we're just another species of ape.

All of that said, humans are very social (and selfish) creatures. Most humans value human life above all else, even bodily autonomy and quality of life. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.

The folly of man is that he often sees himself as different from animals, believing his species to be the center around which the world revolves. Many models of theology, especially Abrahamic theology, propagate this idea simply because it's comforting, no matter how untrue it all is. That's one of the downsides of humans evolving in such a way that we tend toward religiosity.

 

[Sluggish_Slump]

When you zoom out and look at ourselves from that far-away point of view, it's easier to dissociate and feel as though nothing matters, but unfortunately we can't live our day-to-day lives through these lens. I don't think this argument can support our right to die peacefully in a dignified way. Nihilism is a double edged sword, because it can also be used against you - someone could say your suffering doesn't matter, and if you want to die, we won't allow it and lock you up in a cell without access to any tools you can use to CTB.

 

[Tintypographer]

I'm not using it as justification for suicide. It's just a bit part of my depression and hopelessness. There was a WSJ article this weekend by a professor talking about the pain of constant suicidal ideation and depression. The psychological clinical methods don't seem to be able to cure this malady and it's horrible to live with day after day. Regardless of the justification for suicide, fears of it, stigma etc. I don't want to live in this world anymore. I didn't choose to be here, I've hated my life regardless of my privilege or opportunity, I'd gladly offer it to anyone underprivileged to take my place and let me disappear with no existence ever. It's not specifically death that I crave, it's the desire to never have been and have no memory and no one remember me.

The nihilism is only the symptom of why I feel so bad. The things I hate most are rationalizing, cognitive reframing, looking at something through a different lens and celebrating small achievements. That sounds like I'm deliberately sabotaging myself but I hate those things with a greater passion than I have for being depressed.

I have been frustrated with therapy for years.andnive been through a lot both forced and volunteer. I hired a fitness coach through CrossFit and they helped me immensely with a program. They looked at my weaknesses and gave me daily exercises to work on and we tracked progress. My regular doctor had me needing to cut back on sugar as I was reaching a pre diabetic state. We had meal plans and vitamins and healthy eating to track.

Every therapist I've worked with seems to expect me to figure out why I feel bad. They don't diagnose and give exercises or recommendation. They ask "why do you think you feel that way?". If I knew I would definitely build a set of steps to fix things. But the only steps seem to be "let's practice looking at your situation in a different way"

When I couldn't do a pull up the goal wasnt to visualize a pull up then do it and have me diagnose why I couldn't do a pull up.

It was let's start with these exercises then move to bands then try to get one pull up.


The trainer never said "why do you think you can't do a pull up and what do you think you should do and let's reframe how your lack of pull ups should be viewed"

I'm complaining about different things but I truly feel therapy is broken for me. I dislike it. I went to meditation once in yoga and although it wasn't for depression it had steps: step 1 do breathing exercises ... And that format worked.


But therapy seems to be all about me discussing what's wrong and how I should teach myself how to feel better. Or is that all there is to therapy?

 

[LaVieEnRose]

I'm not using it as justification for suicide. It's just a bit part of my depression and hopelessness. There was a WSJ article this weekend by a professor talking about the pain of constant suicidal ideation and depression. The psychological clinical methods don't seem to be able to cure this malady and it's horrible to live with day after day. Regardless of the justification for suicide, fears of it, stigma etc. I don't want to live in this world anymore. I didn't choose to be here, I've hated my life regardless of my privilege or opportunity, I'd gladly offer it to anyone underprivileged to take my place and let me disappear with no existence ever. It's not specifically death that I crave, it's the desire to never have been and have no memory and no one remember me.

The nihilism is only the symptom of why I feel so bad. The things I hate most are rationalizing, cognitive reframing, looking at something through a different lens and celebrating small achievements. That sounds like I'm deliberately sabotaging myself but I hate those things with a greater passion than I have for being depressed.

I have been frustrated with therapy for years.andnive been through a lot both forced and volunteer. I hired a fitness coach through CrossFit and they helped me immensely with a program. They looked at my weaknesses and gave me daily exercises to work on and we tracked progress. My regular doctor had me needing to cut back on sugar as I was reaching a pre diabetic state. We had meal plans and vitamins and healthy eating to track.

Every therapist I've worked with seems to expect me to figure out why I feel bad. They don't diagnose and give exercises or recommendation. They ask "why do you think you feel that way?". If I knew I would definitely build a set of steps to fix things. But the only steps seem to be "let's practice looking at your situation in a different way"

When I couldn't do a pull up the goal wasnt to visualize a pull up then do it and have me diagnose why I couldn't do a pull up.

It was let's start with these exercises then move to bands then try to get one pull up.


The trainer never said "why do you think you can't do a pull up and what do you think you should do and let's reframe how your lack of pull ups should be viewed"

I'm complaining about different things but I truly feel therapy is broken for me. I dislike it. I went to meditation once in yoga and although it wasn't for depression it had steps: step 1 do breathing exercises ... And that format worked.


But therapy seems to be all about me discussing what's wrong and how I should teach myself how to feel better. Or is that all there is to therapy?

Dabrowski’s Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults - Davidson Institute

When people undergo a great trauma or other unsettling event—they have lost a job or a loved one dies, for example—their understanding of themselves or of

www.davidsongifted.org

Maybe this article could offer some novel insight. It's still relevant even if you don't think of yourself as "gifted."

I'm not sure therapy can really help with this. At least pretty much all the therapists I saw were unable to even think in these kinds of terms (one of the most enviable traits in my opinion). You'll have to come to your own understanding of how to reconcile with these things. I know it's tough because once you have these kinds of thoughts you can't really go back to approaching life as you did before: "the ring bell can't be unrung". Depression can definitely make you sensitice to these questions, which can worsen your depression, creating an endless loop. At the very least you aren't alone in grappling with these questions, whatever solace that is worth.

There's not really any contesting that "nothing matters" in the long-term. Someone could use that to approach all your decisions in life, but I think the real effects of your decisions are a component that's being missed if they used that approach.

Perhaps the fact that it doesn't matter doesn't matter as well. People can live out their lives without getting hung up on whether they effect any sort of lasting difference because they're here and they might as well use this time. I could see myself thinking like that if life weren't so painful. But I think it's a valid argument for any person contemplating suicide to consider.

 

[FuneralCry]

It's true that life is just a futile and unnecessary distraction from the fact that we are just destined to cease existing, where this existence won't even exist as a distant memory. Nothing could ever matter to us eventually as one would need a consciousness to even think about anything, the reality is that our existences are so incredibly insignificant and there is no escaping from this fact. I believe that humans often delude themselves that existence is meaningful as they don't want to come to terms and accept that this pointless struggle leads to nowhere and is all for nothing.

 

[philia]

no, it doesn't matter. we are such small creatures yet we make everything such a big deal. most people just live their lives thinking there is anything they should worry about when there is no such thing.