Toxinebulaic
winter is coming
- Aug 2, 2023
- 25
Suicide is not selfish.
There's an idea that I was recently reminded of by a post on this forum which I have responded to. I'll try to add on to my original points, but there is a bit of ground to retread. And so retread it I shall, because this is a sentiment that has actually popped up multiple times in conversations with family and friends. The idea that suicide is selfish. To all of us, it is an immediately dubious statement just on account of all of the people on this forum. No one here seems particularly selfish, at least to me, and there's only one obvious thread that holds everyone in this community together; interest in suicide, no matter what form that takes. So if this massive community of people who support one's bodily autonomy insofar as it concerns their right to commit suicide, plan to commit suicide, and have committed suicide is not a melting pot of selfish and evil individuals, then what gives? Where does this sentiment even come from?
I want to make clear as I haven't before that everything I say is an opinion, and it isn't final. It's just a screenshot of what I believe at that moment, and you're free to let that screenshot influence your belief in whatever capacity you decide. I don't have any amount of confidence in the notion that I'm some kind of philosophical genius whose beliefs are objective and true. I can be wrong, and I'm more than open to dissenting opinions. That being said, I believe the idea that suicide is selfish is a result of our society's collective reluctance to accept the role it plays in suicide, and the hate people hold for that which they do not understand.
Many people can't possibly fathom the idea of killing themself. It's so much pain, so much effort, and all for what? To deprive yourself of a life that most people consider sacred just on principle? That seems insane! It's a divergence in philosophy that branches from the inherent value that most people assign to life. This is a topic that has been explained better than I ever could by @Meretlein in Some Thought on Suicide. At the point where these beliefs diverge, someone who is pro-life will not understand all the factors that caused somebody to commit suicide, or pin the suicide on such specific factors as to be incorrect. To rationalize the suicide and avoid coming to terms with the immense weight that society has put on many disenfranchised communities which is the actual source of the pain and sadness which not only caused the suicide but has reached the pro-lifer through that suicide, said pro-lifer will call their suicidal loved one selfish.
Let's be clear about something. This is not a bug of society, it's a feature.
People have such confidence in the majority that they will go so far as to demonize their loved ones and call them selfish just so that they don't have to call the society that mistreated and tortured their loved one for what it is. Again, many people have written in much greater detail why exactly society has failed the suicidal so catastrophically. Violating the bodily autonomy of somebody who is suffering so much they want to kill themself is not only immoral, it's hardly short of barbaric. But it's so easy for people to ignore it. Calling suicidal people selfish might as well be the definition of blaming the victim, and it's one of the reasons that I consider this forum so important.
If I had a lifetime to research and think out my arguments, I'd turn this into a specific analysis on all of the ways that society has failed the suicidal, but that would require that I unravel capitalism, the medical system, politics, opinions, free speech, and the value we place upon our individual right to control our body based on our beliefs. Maybe I will talk about all of those individually at some point, but I think it's beyond the scope of one individual log. I've been trying to cut these off at around 1500 words at the maximum.
So instead of talking about all of that, I want to talk about something more abstract and philosophical. What does being selfish even mean? I'd like to start with something that @leloyon said in the original thread that inspired this log.
This is brilliant, but it's also indicative of the strategies that malicious people will use to make innocent people look bad. Selfish is so broadly defined that you can call anybody selfish for doing anything that benefits them in any way and still sound kind of right. A pro-lifer and a suicidal guy stare each other in the eyes and call each other selfish. Who's right? I don't know, who do you want to be right? It's an impossible argument because by the logic that most will employ when they are maliciously and falsely calling someone selfish, everybody is selfish! There's a school of thought that says everything and everybody is selfish. No matter how self sacrificial and "selfless" you may act, you're only doing that to appease your inner goals. What's more selfish than that? In reality, this is a problem of framing that is present everywhere on the internet. Break something down to its most basic parts and use negative language, you'll find that you could stare down the pope and call him a rotting meat sack of bones and blood wearing pulpy plant fluff manufactured and refined by people who are destroying the environment for our gain. The best part is, you wouldn't be wrong.
You've used a bunch of technically correct statements to evoke exactly the wrong feelings, but if you do this at the right time in the right place, anything and anybody can seem messed up and evil. This is why ambiguous words like selfish are great. You're technically right, even if you're evoking all of the wrong feelings and ideas. It's insane how easy you can trick people into believing things that our obviously and provably wrong, so long as it makes them feel good. The terrible thing about psychology and philosophy is that if you do enough mental gymnastics you can prove anything. You can find a way to convince people that 1 + 1 = 3 so long as you obfuscate enough. Plus, obfuscating is easy when you don't need to think about whether you're correct or not. You can say whatever you want and won't even need to worry about being correct so long as you sound confident. The game is played by people who know how to make statements that are short, quippy and wrong or at least non sequitur to the argument. Statements like "FixThe26." Statements like "facts don't care about your feelings." Statements like "life is precious."
You can make them believe anything, just make it short, make it quippy, and make it rhyme. You could make a transphobic doctor seuss book out of all the times somebody with an agenda has created memorable propaganda out of a quippy rhyme. This is the battleground on which the war against ambiguous and misused language is fought. Words like selfish are ripe to be exploited because you can call anybody selfish for doing literally anything and still technically be right. This allows negative labels to be slapped onto people. Even the term I just used, calling someone "a person with an agenda" can be attributed to anybody. If you want something, you have an agenda. By that logic, everybody is selfish, everybody has an agenda, and while we're at it, let's just go ahead and say that everybody sucks.
And you know what? The worst part is that some of the time, those labels are true of anybody. Everybody is selfish sometimes. Everybody has an agenda sometimes. Everybody sucks sometimes. This is why we can't let ambiguous language pave the road to rotten and invalid view points that would be dismissed at face value if all the people who could deny them weren't marked as selfish villains forcibly shoving all within their cult toward the metaphorical bus station. Knowing about rhetorical strategies does not make you immune to them, but always remember that the truth isn't subjective. It's not up for debate. 1 + 1 does not equal 3. Life is not inherently precious. Suicidal people are not inherently selfish.
People who believe that suicidal individuals are selfish stand terrified by the implications of the alternative.
Humanity does not get the privilege of ignoring such uncomfortable information
We need to fight that cowardice every step of the way.
