It’s Not Instinct — It’s the System That Pulls You Away from Suicide

[TheVanishingPoint]

Many believe there's a "survival instinct," something ancient that keeps us clinging to life even when everything inside us is screaming to leave. But I believe that's a lie — or rather, an ideological oversimplification.

When someone is determined to die, it's not instinct that stops them.
It's everything else.
It's people, systems, roles, events, words, distractions — forces from outside that serve a very specific function:
to divert, delay, dilute, confuse, and ultimately erase the goal.

An entire society activates to keep you alive, but not out of love —
because your self-determination is terrifying.
Because your gesture threatens the entire foundation of a system built on the dogma that life is sacred and obligatory.

And so they appear, all at once:
– New relationships
– Useless projects
– Therapeutic paths that don't heal but monitor
– Emotional distractions that don't speak to your truth, only to their fear

It's not a survival instinct that holds you back.
It's a complex, cultural containment system, built by those afraid of your act,
who have learned exactly how to stop you without seeming like jailers.

Someone suicidal often doesn't know how to sustain the goal over time.
Someone pro-life, on the other hand, knows exactly how to pull you away from that goal.
And that's how they win.

So it ends with you, let's say, standing on the eleventh floor. You look down.
And suddenly, a fear grips you — and you don't even know where it comes from.
You call it a "survival instinct."

But a samurai doesn't feel that fear even with the blade at his throat,
because in his society, those mechanisms don't exist,
and in fact, what he is doing is honored, legitimized, and approved.

Here lies the difference: it's not instinct holding you back — it's the world refusing to let you go.

And that's exactly why impulsive suicides often succeed:
because the emotion of the moment overrides all these social mechanisms.
But that window is short.
If the act isn't completed within it, the system reorganizes, reclaims you,
and stitches its cage back onto you with the thread of illusion.

And that's also why romantic suicides so often succeed:
because they exist in a shared emotional peak,
where society hasn't had time to intervene,
and where the intensity between two people momentarily annihilates all containment systems.
Two minds united in the same disobedience,
before the world has time to tell them they must stay.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I agree. thought of similar things and other things related to this

 

[timechained]

I'd say it depends on the method some methods you are literally fighting your body, but yea it is really learned behaviour that results in us being aware of death/injury that stops people.

I believe most impulsive suicides aren't impulsive, if we could talk to those people I imagine we'd realise they visualised/practiced many times.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Personally, I see SI as more of an instinctual avoidance of danger. So- it's hard to not drop a pan handle when it's hot for instance. That's a reflex action we have little control over.

I'd also argue that some objects/ circumstances are more naturally frightening than others. We're evolutionaraily programmed to fear things like heights, fire, snakes. (Suicide by snake. That would be a new one.) Swords are relatively new to us.

However, you'd thinking cutting ourselves would be abhorrent. It is actually to me. I'm massively squemish. I couldn't for instance, self harm that way. I'm not sure that many people are so determined that they will stab or slice themselves either but- I'd recommend caution. We have members here who have failed trying.

Still, I feel like, knowing we are about to suicide can make us feel squemish. Looking down at the drop off a bridge, about to drink SN, feeling the rope around our neck, I think that may trigger a varyingly strong survival response in many of us. Obviously, some methods- like jumping are going to feel more visceral than others. That's partly why some of us try to get things like SN. We can at least picture ourselves drinking something.

People have also been known to actually grab branches whilst hanging, pull bags off during inert gas without consciously deciding to stop themselves. That I would also class under SI. Effectively- the bodies reflex action once more.

I'm not sure we can fully guage how much SI we'll actually face until we have actually made a physical attempt. Have you attempted yet? May I ask? Not encouraging you to of course. I haven't made an attempt yet. I have this hope I will be able to 'out- think' my SI but- I just don't know.

I think it's also the natural avoidance of pain or, hurting ourselves. It's like when we say- I want to be dead but, I don't want to experience the physical sensation of dying- likely pain and fear.

It's certainly society that ensures we likely will have to go through pain and fear to exit but, that's a reasonable thing to want to avoid. We also want to avoid only maiming ourselves. That's also a reasonable and painful possibility.

I definitely agree though that- in addition to our own biology kicking up a fuss, we also have to get over all the sociological, familial and religous prohibition.

Truthfully though- I think if more people were less afraid of the process of dying (in pain,) I suspect we would see a lot more suicides. There are quite a number of members here who are at the end of their tethers. They seem like they would actually release their connections/ obligations to society, family etc. It's really 'only' fear of pain/ failure and more pain holding them back. That's my impression anyhow.

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

Culture, religion and ethics form and domesticate basic instincts. The natural instinct to survive is suppressed by culture to make soldiers carry out suicide squats without thinking. The illusion of an afterlife in paradise creates martyrs and suicide bombers. All this helps a community to be succesfull mostly in war.
If there were a suicide culture or cult, it would be probably much easier to kill oneself. I saw a movie in which a KI convinced people via internet to kill themselfes. They should do it to minimise their CO2-footprint and save the planet for further generations.