Venting My rationale for suicide

[citysnowfall]

I don't know why I feel the need to talk about this. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself. Maybe I just want to understand better why I'm still alive.

A lot of folks believe -- not necessarily here (in fact I doubt many of you have this view) -- that suicide is irrational.

Since I was young, I've always had the same opinion on suicide. Suicide is always an option that is rational immediately upon going beneath "baseline" happiness, dipping beyond neutrality into unhappiness.
I like to think of it as cashing out. You take your total happiness or unhappiness in your life, and you end it.

Of course, suicide itself drives happiness down. The act of killing oneself is tremendously difficult due to survival instinct. So the amount of time it takes to commit suicide, multiplied by how unhappy it makes you, is the total net loss of happiness from your life. But, if you expect to live most of your life below baseline, then "cashing out" and taking the overwhelming negative immediately is sometimes best.

Thinking about it like this, a short term spike of unhappiness vs. a long term unhappiness, actually makes suicide the rational choice in a lot of situations, the only irrationality coming from the survival instinct itself.

 

[Kodama]

Same feeling !

 

[BadChanges]

Suicide is the rational choice for those who struggle may it be depression, endless physical pain, whatever. Not committing suicide is crazy, in fact.
Most people don't experience suicidal feeling because they are being led by their mind and hormones that life is not bad. But when that settles they will also feel how miserable life is.

Most of us see the truth, that life is suffering, and if not at the current moment, then eventually it will turn out to be. There is no other way.

 

[Rachel74]

Suicide isn't a choice to world so those that chose that way are selfish.
I hope one day we will be given this choice.

 

[Jean Améry]

You don't need to explain let alone justify why you want to post. Post whatever you want: it's what the forum is for.

I can't find a flaw in your logic. On the contrary: I think it's sound. Of course the kicker is determining when would be the appropriate point in time to kick the proverbial bucket. We can't foresee the future so we don't know for sure how our lives will go, we can only make educated guesses.

Your reasoning is called act utilitarianism (UT): if a certain action yields a net positive result in terms of well-being (pleasure - pain) it's morally good, if not it's bad.

Of course humans are social creatures and for most of us our lives matter at least to some people. It's difficult to estimate what effect one's suicide would have on others so it's pretty darn tricky to weigh their unhappiness against one's own unhappiness and deduce whether suicide is appropriate/rational or not.

I applaud your reasoning skills. Imo we need more critical thinking and philosophical debate on the topic of rational suicide.

Please do share your thoughts with us whenever you feel like it.

 

[Kodama]

Your reasoning is called act utilitarianism (UT)

Like this concept...

 

[citysnowfall]

Your reasoning is called act utilitarianism (UT): if a certain action yields a net positive result in terms of well-being (pleasure - pain) it's morally good, if not it's bad.

Of course humans are social creatures and for most of us our lives matter at least to some people. It's difficult to estimate what effect one's suicide would have on others so it's pretty darn tricky to weigh their unhappiness against one's own unhappiness and deduce whether suicide is appropriate/rational or not.

Well, I take a very selfish approach to suicide. I do not address the happiness of others in my argument, because I also believe that being sad at someone's death is somewhat irrational (not to say it's a bad thing. on the contrary, I believe that rational thinking is often more damaging than irrational thinking).
I believe that a solely self-centered argument in favor of suicide is indisputable. The problem is convincing others that this self-centered argument is valid. Call me solipsist, but it won't matter what other people feel when you die, because the graph is immediately terminated. There's this idea that the world will go on without you, but I believe that the world you leave behind is pointless to address. I don't know of an afterlife that isn't eternal, and whether your afterlife is eternal nothingness, pain, happiness, peace, whatever, our time on earth is comparatively zero, and so decisions regarding death should not be made based on your impact on the postmortem world but rather premortem world and any possible afterlife. This is how I try to convince myself away from my guilt, so that I can more easily ctb.

Of course, it doesn't work. I am human, and I'm willing to bet that anyone reading this is human too. Sometimes our bodies and minds betray our reason, and when this happens, the best course of action is to develop a philosophy that best helps you cope.
Essentially, my argument amounts to the following:

I want to kill myself to minimize my suffering, believing that my total suffering over the course of my natural life outweighs the total happiness, and despite the suffering that my suicide will cause me personally, in the time before I die, it's a drop in, to quote Jean, the proverbial bucket.

"Don't kill yourself because others will be saddened by your death"

Well, wherever I'm going, it's not likely that "others" will be relevant.