wordsonscreen
Peanuts aren't nuts! They're seeds!
- Jan 21, 2021
- 728
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Feel free to read and respond! Any recommendations or thoughts are welcome!! Let me know what you think/feel :)
All communication inherently is a two way interaction. There is a stimuli and a response, whether or not the response is received. We are biologically wired to recognize and predict one another's reaction and act in ways that will bring about the most favorable outcome - joy, comfort, envy, etc.
Furthermore, every action we take is a form of message we send. Whether we buy chicken or carrots at the store, or if we give donations or not, or the way we walk — they all say something about us. Everything we do is an expression and each of us is biologically tuned to read those behaviors. Thus, I argue that everything we do is communication. We are a social species and our survival has depended on how well integrated in social groups and in our environments we are. We have evolved to communicate.
Majority of the communication in the world has a receiver. For instance, if I speak to you - even the way you move your eyes communicates a message to me. Even blocking or ignoring someone is a message. Human relationships never end but simply change. Positive love relationships shifting into hatred is another form of connection. We have a relationship with everything that we carry a memory of - whether that being is in our lives or not, whether they are alive or not. So, relationships don't end but merely change (even if the change involves blocking communication).
This notion of unending communication seems to break down at the point of death - specifically voluntary death.
I do not believe that the act of suicide inherently displaces someone as a rational agent. Mental health is complex and exists on a spectrum and I do not believe that unbearable suffering is inconsistent with meaningful insights and logic. In fact, I believe that people that go through acts of voluntary deaths keep quiet due to fear of judgement and internalized shame. We, as a society, are thus blind to the experiences accessed by thousands of individuals that cross the line of living to survive. The act of living to move towards intentional death demands investigating the nature of almost all human behavior and we, as a society, deprive ourselves of the lessons learned at this threshold by clinging to outdated and false ideas of what is and isn't a valid experience.
Almost everyone that kills themselves at some point thinks about the notion of whether or not to write a suicide note. And if so, then how? Everyone carries matters they wish to share because, in some way, something is not right. Something hurts - no one really kills themselves out of joy. It almost is as if a suicide note would consist of the most important and most meaningless words in one's life. They hold meaning to whoever is still alive. But they have no meaning to the one that has departed.
The laws of communication fall apart.
What is there to say if I am not around to receive a response? If I am removed from the equation, because my world has ended, then it leaves half an equation which the remaining people will complete amongst themselves. When someone dies, the world, as they know it, ends. If I kill myself, the world ends. I have never and will never know the world without me in it. Everything I have experienced, every joy, every drop of rain on my skin has been felt through a filter of what we call "I". So then, it seems that when such a being would write a note to arrive after their exit, it will create a response that will never be received. The intent may be to say unsaid things or try to create personal closure. But the reality is that the message will resonate in a world that the departed does not exist in because they don't exist. It's a non-world.
~It's important to note here that I'm not suggesting anything about what happens after we die. What we know is that we do not truly surely know but we will all find out. The experience of death is one we all have and know almost nothing about. I do not want to discuss or approach questions of religion or god. But whatever happens - whether there is life beyond or not - "I" as I am now, ceases to exist. That, we know. And everyone is entitled to their own beliefs as long as they don't harm others.
Whatever is written in a note, the writer has gone through thinking about several possible reactions. They chose their words based on a reaction they wanted or they chose their words based on what they want to get off their chest. However, I am uncertain if those two are different at all. This is where the limitation of communication is clearly visible. Everything we say or do is almost biologically designed to create a response. I'm now uncertain if there is such a thing as an "authentic" action. Because nothing exists in a vacuum. Even feeding hungry children without telling anybody would create an internal response of self worth which would affect external interactions. Everything is part of a chain reaction. There is almost nothing that can be said that will not create a response - regardless of the intention. Even a non message is a message — "I did not care enough or want to leave a note", "I was too overwhelmed to leave a message", "stay confused, you'll never know why". I am as much a part of the whole as the whole is a reflection of me - this becomes vastly difficult to separate as one prepares to intentionally depart.
Often times, at this brink of voluntary death and planning the final and most important (important because it changes everything in an often irreversible way) act of one's life, one has to choose between the values one has chosen throughout life, or untamed expression which may create a negative reaction. This is when people wonder what even the point of communication is. Why not just focus on the good so the social norms of people still alive are not shaken? Why not preserve the ongoing norm, even though it has resulted in one's demise? Why express something painful that will be heard but one will never get to feel heard? This question is key.
It is a truism to say that life is vast and complex. What is important to note is how we have set up society to contain this vastness in nearly structured boxes. Part of this effort includes restrictions on what is culturally sanctioned to experience and what is taboo — this inherently places many people in the fringes of society. And forces others to deny parts of themselves so as to remain in the culturally acceptable box. I believe that suicide notes contain things that people never feel safe enough to say in their lives because the consequences would be unbearable. People want to be able to express the depth of their suffering without being shunned or seen less than. And this is often why suicide notes contain information that is typically culturally unacceptable. One gets to imagine the response based on what they've observed and learned through socialization. The note is sent. And one removes oneself from the consequences - even positive ones. The world ends - at least for the one that leaves. The message arrives in a world that does not exist.
Through anecdotal experiences and some (very rare to find) peer reviewed studies I have found that suicidality overlaps with experiencing qualia that is unacceptable in society and taboo to experience in life. This can include the vast depth of existential loneliness or personal trauma or even just seeing the sheer horrors of humanity - all of which are realities, but we must shut them out in order to be a functional member of society. Often, these experiences are strictly medicalized and pathologized even when they are available to all of us. This isn't to say that joy and safety isn't preferable over suffering - of course it is. I believe that no one deserves suffering. But I do think that there is some strange freedom in witnessing the realities of existence in order to have a more complete understanding of the universe we live in. I, of course, hope that it does not end in suicide for anybody. But the reality is that it does. Some people cannot go on and witness the breakdown of the functionality of society, including communication.
Do we really communicate authentically when several fundamental human experiences are taboo? When people die of suicide, the details are often hidden in media. While I understand part of it is to control suicide contagion, it also limits the voice of people that have touched a threshold that they didn't return from. It is a space outside of what is the norm. Looking at earth from space is vastly different than drinking tea in a cafe. Similarly, looking at everything a few moments before voluntarily dying is vastly different than making plans for dinner or dying an unwanted natural death. It is seeing one's reality and, to some level, rejecting it. Part of the rejection is knowing that what they have access to is mutually unacceptable in general human society.
One might argue that, for instance, hallucinations must be medicalized. They can be treated so they should should be - and I agree. There is a missing step here. This medicalization doesn't leave room for someone to experience the validation of the rejection of their reality (in this case, hallucinations). Their very valid reaction to their experience of reality of what is medicalized and not the problem itself. Here is a clearer example - if one developed major depression as a result of homelessness — the treatment will often target depression and not the social circumstances surrounding the "reaction". This inherently leads to a community level gaslighting which "treats" the very valid and normal response to an abnormal situation. I am not against medicine — I am defining the ways in which people that have access to certain experiences are left with very little options as a result of the current predominant norms.
As you see, communication does break down.
If I tell you everything — it can't be bad enough because it didn't kill me. You believe that I can go on. If it did, god knows you wish I had spoken earlier. If only I had called a suicide line and received ways to distract myself for 10 more minutes until the commitment changes. No matter what — there is a level of experience that thousands of individuals feel that has no space in current human society. There is an inherent rejection of a frame of human qualia which limits true communication. Furthermore, our biology limits (and also benefits) communication by consistently assessing the environmental response. I argue that suicide notes perhaps carry the most authentic communication possible because one cannot receive a response. It is unfiltered and the expectation is the lack of any consequence.
As someone that has been walking this line, I see that our communication is vastly restrictive due to stringent norms that we have selected as a community. My hope is that one day we evolve into a kinder and more loving species. For now, we must listen to and uplift the voices of individuals that are looking from outside in. They see things that people living in Wall Street don't. Those voices carry messages from a threshold that I hope no one has to reach.
