Venting What causes people to become so intolerant when it comes to people making their own decisions/ctb?

[_Minsk]

i had the pleasure to meet this kind of person in a chat (not here or related to ss) and i'm always confused why people act that way. i mean where do they take the right to criticize/shame someone about their own decision(s). i don't want to hate or offend anybody, those people just make me upset, cant help it..

 

[Notwinnernotawin]

Because most people are conditioned to view suicidal people as weak or they're just too busy judging those people based on their beliefs to understand how life can get so bad to the point one wishes to commit suicide.

 

[Anonymoussn]

We have an instinct to survive. This is instinctive in that even though we can be suicidal, and genuinely want to CTB, we still have this instinct that makes us do everything we can to survive. This instinct, along with the instinct to not want to cause pain to ourselves is something that makes us not want pain and death to be afflicted to others. Most people don't want to die, or suffer pain. So empathy causes people to not want others to suffer pain, or death. I think that, generally speaking it is a thoughtful intention. It might be an ignorant thought, but it's one that was formed through love and care, and with only the best intentions.

 

[Toptock]

Humanity has what's called a "Death Drive." A fairly hard to understand desire to confront mortality. The subject of self-ctb has been at the front of theology and philosophy for as long as people have sat on steps. It's Nature. Its not to say we all desire death, but when people bring up the topic it then becomes a war of attrition, with some adamant that the sanctity of life supercedes the living desire.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Give no fucks.

People tell other people what to do, think, or feel because it gives them a sense of control. They think they know what goes on in another and can explain it to them and solve it for them. Yet can they control or do they know themselves?

I just recently posted on the most recent Stoic discussion thread about this very thing. Ancient Romans did the same damn thing the OP is pointing out, and Seneca said, when it comes to suicide and methods, this is the one time to give no fucks about your fellow humans and try to please them:

"Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life. Moreover, just as a long-drawn-out life does not necessarily mean a better one, so a long-drawn-out death necessarily means a worse one. There is no occasion when the soul should be humored more than at the moment of death. Let the soul depart as it feels itself impelled to go; whether it seeks the sword, or the halter, or some draught that attacks the veins, let it proceed and burst the bonds of its slavery. Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone. The best form of death is the one we like. Men are foolish who reflect thus: 'One person will say that my conduct was not brave enough; another, that I was too headstrong; a third, that a particular kind of death would have betokened more spirit.' What you should really reflect is: 'I have under consideration a purpose with which the talk of men has no concern!' Your sole aim should be to escape from [disastrously ill] Fortune as speedily as possible; otherwise, there will be no lack of persons who will think ill of what you have done."

This made me think of arguments about others' methods when we personally may find them too painful or otherwise undesirable. There is never a lack of persons who will think ill of it!

But it also made me think of passive suicide methods, such as by train, cop, or traffic. It's this line in the quote above that points out to me the ethical consideration of life intersecting life in such instances, and why it's difficult to go along with and think well of passive methods in terms of morality or ethics:

"Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone."

Seneca's talking about the Stoic ethic of considering one's responsibility to others alongside their own desires. In accomplishing death, no such consideration is required. However, if one is, at their last moment of life, interacting with and employing another at during an intersecting moment of the other's life in order to bring about that death, then it is no longer about making such a death acceptable only to the one pursing, enacting, and achieving it.