I mean we make an attempt to stop most suicides on the basis that they’re pursued from a kind of irrational train of thought. This isn’t to say that that’s always actually the case, but we can’t be sure of that, so most people wouldn’t look at a guy jumping of a bridge and then say “hey do a flip on the way down”, you know? We can kind of assume it’s more of a last resort, than like a casual pastime or decision that you might just kinda make cause you kinda felt like it. That’s just talking about the psychology of people who try to kill themselves mostly, though, for the vast majority it’s as a last resort rather than due to a more “rational” reason, or, a more philosophically motivated reason.
It’s a much safer assumption to assume they’re irrational, anyways, for the same reason that capital punishment is not really a great idea. If you take the opposite as a blanket decision, it’s irreversible. If you put out someone who’s on fire, or otherwise save someone who’s suicidal. you could always just kill them later.
Devi@kbin.social 8 months ago
But we can say that with any suicide, if a guy stands on a bridge holding a rock tied to his leg then we will still try to save them because we understand they're going through something.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 8 months ago
That’s not the question here. It’s about intention, not your reaction.
Anyway, the equivalent here would be rather jumping after the guy to rescue him 2min after he jumped. You may endanger yourself and you might rescue a half-braindead shell of a person.
Don’t kid yourself, besides talking him out of jumping, nobody would do anything.
Devi@kbin.social 8 months ago
There's thousands of cases of people putting themselves in danger to try to save suicidal people, including jumping into deep bodies of water.
However, my point was on intention, someone committing suicide isn't right in the head so to say "well they did it on purpose so we shouldn't help" is silly.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 8 months ago
Again, that’s not my point.
But again anyway, it’s also silly to assume they’re not right in the head. You don’t know their situation. And it’s even sillier to assume that I implied helping them would be wrong. Helping them while endangering yourself and making the situation for the other guy even worse is just stupid.
Rhaedas@fedia.io 8 months ago
Also many suicide failures have reportedly had second thought even right after they attempted, such as on the way off the bridge. All we can do is help them if possible, so that if there was regret they might be able to recover their life. The self immolation is a tough example because it's true that survival means a long road of pain, but I don't think we should try and draw lines to determine who should and shouldn't be saved (again, if possible). I'd also rather be hated by them for trying to help than to think that I could have done something but chose an easier route of inaction by mental justification.
Today@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s not intention. It’s the expected quality of life afterwards. I work with kids who had no desire to die when they fell into a pool, choked on something, etc. Sometimes…
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Think again: Your own action is all that you can decide upon.
Later you can try to judge and to grumble and to smartass, but then you cannot change things anymore with that.