Discussion Why do you think suicidal thoughts in the human species evolved?

[hopelessgirl]

Why did we become suicidal?

 

[LivideLamb]

very interesting questions. I would also love to hear the theories on that. I don't know if that is exactly the same subject, but you might find this video interesting :

 

[Pain In The Ass]

I suspect our sudden development of intelligence and abstract thought has enabled us to understand enough to be able to consider whether being alive is worth it or not. It's probably an unfortunate side effect of intelligence that we can do this, rather than something we purposely evolved the ability to do. Adam and Eve were banished from the garden of Eden, paradise, for eating the forbidden fruit; their eyes were opened and their innocence, lost. It was at this moment they knew... they fucked up.

 

[FuneralCry]

In this life wanting suicide can be perfectly rational. Suicidal thoughts are a rational response to this life, as life is full of suffering. Life is just a pointless struggle for the sake of it. For me, wanting suicide is the only thing that makes sense. I do not see my life as being worth living. There is so much that could potentially go wrong in life and things could get much worse. I see people who want to live as being delusional.

 

[rationaltake]

In this life wanting suicide can be perfectly rational. Suicidal thoughts are a rational response to this life, as life is full of suffering. Life is just a pointless struggle for the sake of it. For me, wanting suicide is the only thing that makes sense. I do not see my life as being worth living. There is so much that could potentially go wrong in life and things could get much worse. I see people who want to live as being delusional.

I agree with you. But some people enjoy life and have purpose in life. They would say you and I are delusional. Instead of delusional I would say people have different experiences of life. Your point of view makes sense given your experience of life. If people have a positive experience of life wanting to live makes sense.

 

[°Celsuis_Caesar]

I hear some animals commit suicide, don't know if it just happened to be accidental or a decisive thought

 

[Nolan96]

There's the Darwinistic argument that it helps weed out people with poor genes, but I suspect that suicidal tendencies emerged in the species more as an unintended consequence of higher cognition than for their own right.

Dolphins commit suicide too. There was a case where a study was funded for a scientist to live in a large enclosure 24/7 for a year with a dolphin, and they developed a strong emotional connection. When the funding was pulled after the year was over and the dolphin was put in a smaller enclosure all alone, the dolphin became depressed and commit suicide despite being in good physical health by forcibly staying at the bottom of the water and refusing to come up for air.

 

[Ada]

I hear some animals commit suicide, don't know if it just happened to be accidental or a decisive thought

When some wild animals get old and weak they lay down and wait for death to find them.

 

[jimmy7754]

When some wild animals get old and weak they lay down and wait for death to find them.

Kind of how I feel as an old athlete on this website.. except I have to find death being on top of the food chain and all.. isn't that exhausting?

 

[hopelessgirl]

There's the Darwinistic argument that it helps weed out people with poor genes, but I suspect that suicidal tendencies emerged in the species more as an unintended consequence of higher cognition than for their own right.

Dolphins commit suicide too. There was a case where a study was funded for a scientist to live in a large enclosure 24/7 for a year with a dolphin, and they developed a strong emotional connection. When the funding was pulled after the year was over and the dolphin was put in a smaller enclosure all alone, the dolphin became depressed and commit suicide despite being in good physical health by forcibly staying at the bottom of the water and refus

ng to come up for air.

There's the Darwinistic argument that it helps weed out people with poor genes, but I suspect that suicidal tendencies emerged in the species more as an unintended consequence of higher cognition than for their own right.

Dolphins commit suicide too. There was a case where a study was funded for a scientist to live in a large enclosure 24/7 for a year with a dolphin, and they developed a strong emotional connection. When the funding was pulled after the year was over and the dolphin was put in a smaller enclosure all alone, the dolphin became depressed and commit suicide despite being in good physical health by forcibly staying at the bottom of the water and refusing to come up for air.

Wow yeah I wonder what the future of the human race will look like. Sometimes I feel it's a bit of a shame I aint gonna see it.

I suspect our sudden development of intelligence and abstract thought has enabled us to understand enough to be able to consider whether being alive is worth it or not. It's probably an unfortunate side effect of intelligence that we can do this, rather than something we purposely evolved the ability to do. Adam and Eve were banished from the garden of Eden, paradise, for eating the forbidden fruit; their eyes were opened and their innocence, lost. It was at this moment they knew... they fucked up.

This sounds about right :-)

 

[Velvet Fortress]

I don't think it's a natural consequence of evolution. The human mind is built to absorb things that are constructed culturally and to calculate the best solutions.

Someone some day concluded that taking the leap was the better alternative to slowly dying or to suffer. It became a thing people talk about and consider. And here we are.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Why did we become suicidal?

imo a human can think or believe anything. And we see so many different religions, beliefs , opinions on things, different thoughts. How many novels, individual personalities, thoughts, websites do we see billions each one saying something different. Suicide is just one belief out of billions a human can have imo.

I just reasoned that we all die anyway. It's just that by me committing suicide with a quick painless death i will avoid a lot of suffering ,pain , including a certain Death a certain natural death through a stroke, dementia, nursing home cancer, paralyzing accident,or homelessness starving cold on the streets.

i mean the end result is the same whether i commit suicide or let aging slowly torture me to death. . We all die. The difference to me is how much suffering am i willing to endure and for what reason? i see no reason to suffer so ctb avoids a lot of suffering imo for me anyway.

 

[hopelessgirl]

I don't think it's a natural consequence of evolution. The human mind is built to absorb things that are constructed culturally and to calculate the best solutions.

Someone some day concluded that taking the leap was the better alternative to slowly dying or to suffer. It became a thing people talk about and consider. And here we are.

So basically it's a rational choice :-)

imo a human can think or believe anything. And we see so many different religions, beliefs , opinions on things, different thoughts. How many novels, individual personalities, thoughts, websites do we see billions each one saying something different. Suicide is just one belief out of billions a human can have imo.

I just reasoned that we all die anyway. it's just that by me committing suicide with a quick painless death i will avoid a lot of suffering ,pain , including a certain Death a certain natural death through a stroke, dementia, nursing home cancer, paralyzing accident,or homelessness starving cold on the streets.

Good point!

 

[Al Cappella]

What a great question! Not easy finding answers because studying suicide has been problematic—it's such a taboo subject. Moreover, what study there has been has been largely devoted to a psychological narrative = product of mental disease, etc. And that ppl commit to avoid suffering.

I've always wondered, then, why it is in historical periods of extreme suffering (WWI/WWII, plagues, famines, etc) you don't see suicide rates going through the roof? Rates do go up and down, sure, but they don't double. So there must be something else going on, like culture, or a genetic component.

I do know that humans are the only ones that suffer, as suffering is experience in n the face of judgement. Good and bad only exist in language, and without that pain is just experience.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I don't think evolution is much of a factor. Suicide tends to be very personal for any person who feels compelled to do it. I guess one could argue that suicidal and/or antinatalist people who have yet to procreate are actually doing DNA and nature a favor by not passing down their faulty genes or tendencies but obviously there are also plenty of environmental factors that probably play even more of a part in most suicides than genetic factors do.

Having children also likely does nothing to prevent people from becoming suicidal nor is it guaranteed to cure someone who already is so that's another reason why I don't think nature is fully in control when it comes to these things. Of course humanity in general is complicated and some find ways to go against DNA even with its tricky ways.

I get that it does feel like a real "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" situation sometimes since if a certain number of people are intellectual/empathetic/rational/whatever enough to choose not to have children, then we are eventually stuck with almost all of the children of the world being born only from the unenlightened/narcissistic/uncaring types. We might even already be seeing that right now. Obviously these children aren't guaranteed to be exactly like their relatives but certain emotional tendencies do get inherited and they will at least be more likely to develop a proclivity for continuing to contribute to making the world a worse place for everyone. I'm not suggesting to outbreed them, far from it. Even doing that likely wouldn't help enough either which is why I said it seems like everyone is screwed either way.

 

[likeabaginthewind]

In this life wanting suicide can be perfectly rational. Suicidal thoughts are a rational response to this life, as life is full of suffering. Life is just a pointless struggle for the sake of it. For me, wanting suicide is the only thing that makes sense. I do not see my life as being worth living. There is so much that could potentially go wrong in life and things could get much worse. I see people who want to live as being delusional.

Ahh. Reminds me of Camus. Makes me want to piss on the grave of the Absurd

 

[hopelessgirl]

What a great question! Not easy finding answers because studying suicide has been problematic—it's such a taboo subject. Moreover, what study there has been has been largely devoted to a psychological narrative = product of mental disease, etc. And that ppl commit to avoid suffering.

I've always wondered, then, why it is in historical periods of extreme suffering (WWI/WWII, plagues, famines, etc) you don't see suicide rates going through the roof? Rates do go up and down, sure, but they don't double. So there must be something else going on, like culture, or a genetic component.

I do know that humans are the only ones that suffer, as suffering is experience in n the face of judgement. Good and bad only exist in language, and without that pain is just experience.

Great answer.

So maybe language is the problem as you say. That's what mindfulness kind of says as well and also Alan Watts, something like: anxiety is a product of us constantly labeling stuff around us as either black and white. And in this way we are not free to experience without labels, which means like you said that we constantly categorize expérience into something good or bad. This is definitely what I am doing. Never able to be free from it. Nothing ever being good enough.

I'm reading a book on affective neuroscience, and there it is written that often people with low levels of seretonin commit suicide. Actually, seretonin is also very low during our REM-sleep (which is when we dream)... And so we can maybe say that having low levels of seretonin also when we're awake, turns living into kind of a "nightmare".

"But in line line with our theme that dreaming is related to emotionality, low brain seretonin characterizes the dream state, it also promotes heightened emotionality, both positive and negative. It is a neurochemical state that leads to impulsive behavior in humans, even ones as extreme as suicide". - Jaak Panksepp

In the end we're biological machines driven by hormones and brain structures... "We can't make love without art" according to Alan Watts. Maybe we can't commit suicide without language. Freedom from a nightmare.

 

[VoidDesirer22]

I think it was William James who theorized that we evolved consciousness to regulate a nervous system that had grown too complicated to regulate itself.

Suicide could be interpreted as an extension of this manual regulation process. When we perceive our body and brain to be malfunctioning then we have an urge to eliminate ourselves completely. We obviously are the best observers of our own state, so we do not want to bother the tribe with our own dysfunctions that we perceive better than anyone else.

Also, because the purpose of life is to realize that we fundamentally are vehicles for our selfish genes to propogate and nothing else.

 

[balshoi77]

We're suicidal because we're living unnatural lives. End of story.

Then why isn't everyone suicidal?
Answer: Genes

 

[GideonVandaleur]

If you're familiar with the concept of cellular apoptosis then it's not too difficult to stretch the same concept to apply to individuals within a society. Meaning that when cells malfunction they commit suicide as a mechanism to prevent say a malignant cancerous tumor from forming and to make room for healthy cells to replace the damaged ones. Think of individuals as cells and society as the body and a similar pattern emerges on a social level.

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

The human brain is a very complex system and the more complex something is, for example a computer or its program, the more likely are malfunctions. This is only statistics. Saying this I claim that suicidal people are wrong wired. With my paraphilia autassassinophilia I feel definitely wrong wired.

 

[s66]

There's the Darwinistic argument that it helps weed out people with poor genes, but I suspect that suicidal tendencies emerged in the species more as an unintended consequence of higher cognition than for their own right.

Dolphins commit suicide too. There was a case where a study was funded for a scientist to live in a large enclosure 24/7 for a year with a dolphin, and they developed a strong emotional connection. When the funding was pulled after the year was over and the dolphin was put in a smaller enclosure all alone, the dolphin became depressed and commit suicide despite being in good physical health by forcibly staying at the bottom of the water and refusing to come up for air.

yeah I don't think it's a very good darwinistic trait, for one look at all the people who are breeding like crazy - they're not usually the pinnacle of the species, most are bottom of the barrel, almost like that film idiocracy