Venting Suicide as Natural Selection

[Escargot]

I've long been thinking about how I fit into this life and this world. What sort of meaning there is, and what sort of life I want. I've come to the conclusion that I am not suited for life itself, and no longer want to continue with it.

It is in this conclusion for myself that I began to think are there things that make people not mentally suited for life that runs in there genes? There's mental illness in my family, and I wonder if suicide is a natural expression of natural selection. Just like animals not physically adapted to survive will die out, can natural selection present itself in the form of mental illness?

 

[Downdraft]

Rates of suicide have gone up instead of decreasing. Natural selection can't explain "suicidal genes" coming out of nowhere. Plus suicide is often due to external factors out of your control.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Suicide can be rational

For example if anyone over 18 could purchase nembutal for $20. How many people would take it?

What is the more rational choice

1 . Work hard every day work a job , chores , fix problems , suffer every day then get up and do it again the next day then again every day for 50 years then suffer the torture of old age for 30 more years
Or

2. Take a single drink of nembutal

 

[Reflection]

Rates of suicide have gone up instead of decreasing. Natural selection can't explain "suicidal genes" coming out of nowhere. Plus suicide is often due to external factors out of your control.

I kind of find it ironic that despite "professional help" being more abundant and accessible these days it's kind of barely doing anything to treat psychological problems and mental issues.

 

[-nobodyknows-]

Personally, I would say so. It presents itself slightly differently though

 

[lamargue]

others would see it as such, as they view it as simply weeding out those who fail to adapt to the modern conditions of everyday life. i personally do not view it as such. there is only a biological imperative to proliferating the species, not a logical one, unless the latter is meant to support the former. the evolved sapience of the species seems to run counter to the social darwinian impulse

there might be natural selection in adapting to social conditions, wherein a failure to meet these results in suicide; the faineant and genetically unfit are cast out and forced to cloud their own self-worth. in that sense, social regulation is correctly derived from biological impulses which gate-keep reproduction

 

[wCvML2]

Depends on whether suicide is seen as a deliberate choice or a last resort. If suicide is seen as a deliberate choice and the suicidal could have passed on their genes if they chose to do so, then their suicide would be artificial selection rather than natural selection. Because suicide is a self-imposed elimination there is some vagueness about it. Anyways, many suicides are by people who already passed on their genes and they weren't eliminated from the gene pool when they committed suicide, so suicide isn't really about selection.

 

[dust-in-the-wind]

I chose not to procreate because of my mental illness. That would count as natural selection. So my gene pool will go extinct, thank God.

 

[JustAnotherSadMan]

Rates of suicide have gone up instead of decreasing. Natural selection can't explain "suicidal genes" coming out of nowhere. Plus suicide is often due to external factors out of your control.

I bet increased ratea are due in part to the possibility that we experience more prolonged stress than humans in previous eras

 

[JustA_LittlePerson]

I kind of find it ironic that despite "professional help" being more abundant and accessible these days it's kind of barely doing anything to treat psychological problems and mental issues.

World goes to shit, people kill themselves. World gets stable, less people do.