Have you lost a close relative? Have you personally lived that pain?
When people call suicide selfish, they’re not talking about your infirm 80 year old.
Why is suicide considered selfish? If your like 80 or something and rely on your family for care. Would it not be a burden off of them?
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I guess watching a 25 year old suffer for the next 55 years is easier to see?
StabbingSky@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Exactly. Even though they rarely admit it, people who have to watch an elderly relative slowly die are relieved when it finally happens (because they’re not suffering anymore).
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Not all cultures have considered it selfish or morally wrong. Some have assisted suicide these days and I think the trend for that is growing.
whaleross@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sigh, once again Ättestupa is a myth.
The Swedish linguist Adolf Noreen started questioning the myth at the end of the 19th century,[5] and it is now generally accepted among researchers that the practice of suicide precipices never existed.
Source: The very article you posted.
Ariselas@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
It’s a really complicated issue once you take religion out of it, at what age is it ok? does someone have to be in poor health? are they leaving friends and family who love them? MAID when someone has a terminal illness is a mercy, but it’s not for everyone.
However, when I think of my friend’s death, she was healthy and only 45 when she left us. I’m an atheist who’s read enough existentialism to respect her wishes, but I’m also sad for it. I don’t believe her decision was selfish, she was obviously dealing with things she couldn’t resolve , I just wish she could have found some sort of contentment in her life.
Patnou@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I always kind of wonder about Hunter S Thompson. If he had something that would be a burden. The world lost a great mind that day.
Ariselas@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
The good doctor was in poor health, but he left us his words and we can’t let the bastards win.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 weeks ago
That is actually pretty metal. No wonder why it’s a Swedish thing.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
“He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it” -Frank Herbert
I don’t think suicide should be considered selfish regardless of age or physical ailment. We are all built differently. It is entirely possible someone could have a life I think is great but they find it absolutely hellish.
While I think there should be buffers in place like mandatory counseling to prevent rash actions and treatable psychological issues, the idea that anyone contemplating suicide is just mentally ill or “doesn’t understand how it will affect others” is incredibly niave even if it seems to be the common sentiment.
Would you tell a person to stay in an unhealthy relationship because it might make their partner(s) sad? No. Is it selfish to leave a job that destroys your mental health because your coworkers might miss you? No.
People’s lives belong to them. Not their friends or family or the government. Them alone.
fraksken@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
My take on this is that people assume suicide is the easy way out. That one is not considering the feelings and hurt it’s doing to the surroundings and loving people.
My own opinion differs vastly from this. No one wants to die, but suicide sometimes is the only viable escape from the pain or situation one might find themselves in. Suicide is self care. Anybody who calls it selfish is incredibly selfish itself (you need to live and suffer because I don’t want to lose you).
Suicide never is easy, nor should it be, but it should not be crininalised or stigmatized. Who’s life is it anyways?
MunkyNutts@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Suicide is self care
One doozie of an oxymoron
orgrinrt@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I honestly came here to say the same: It really isn’t any less selfish to require or demand someone to suffer and remain, just because you want them to.
However it’s still vastly more complex than that. From an utilitarian perspective there would usually be many individual povs like that one, where there are great many people wanting you to remain, while you alone want to cease being. And subsequently the harm caused by the act alone would often have wide impact on several individuals, whereas you remaining would be only one person suffering.
But this isn’t me saying suicide is selfish or shouldn’t be done. This is just me trying to make sense of it as someone who’s struggled with these weighings and dilemmas recurringly in my life when I’ve been at a point where I couldn’t continue, but was kind of forced to. Not by anything concrete, but these exact consequences and this entire struggle to try and work out a way to see it through with clean conscience.
I never could.
But I do know this: Both sides are selfish. And that’s only natural. I don’t think being selfish is necessarily a bad thing. Often it is not. It’s all just a balance in a chaotic, complex world, that can’t ever be estimated well enough to gain any amount of confidence in the things you do. It’s all just too chaotic, too dynamic, too multi-layered and tangled together, to make sense of. All you can know or estimate with any level of certainty, is your own self, and what others present of theirs at any given time. And the time is continuously changing, marching on, and the presentations remain as fluid as the life itself.
You can’t really not be selfish. That’s all you have, if you need to ground yourself in some certainty.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
its a catholic thing which somehow perpetuated into all media, and society.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 2 weeks ago
It might be a burden off of them, but would being relieved of that burden outweigh the added burden of being without you? The reason suicide is selfish isn’t because there aren’t reasons you being gone might benefit someone, it’s because you’re making the assumption on their behalf that your absence would be better for them than your presence.
Your life is part of other people’s lives, just like their lives are a part of yours. Any unilateral decision to suddenly end those relationships is selfish. Imagine if someone you loved just stopped talking to you out of the blue. Even if the relationship had been strained, they’re still someone you love and now they’re just… gone. It sucks, and knowing it was a conscious choice they made makes it suck even more.
That’s not to say there aren’t reasons to be selfish sometimes (though such reasons are few and far between in a situation as absolute as suicide), but being selfish for a good reason is still being selfish.
bryndos@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
It might depend how many parasites vs how many symbiotic relationships you have. Parasites are quite easy to acquire and harder to shake off, and often have powerful institutions on their side like courts and police or gangs or economic power.
Conversely it's quite easy to accidentally fuck up a symbiotic relationship. Or for a relationship to degenerate due to any wavering trust level.If someone suddenly stopped talking to me because I was being a dick I’d at least hope i have enough self-awareness to put the blame on myself. People don’t have to put up with unreasonable levels of dick-ish behaviour. They should have a way out. The pity for the suicide ones is that they couldn't find a better way out.
I'm highly sceptical of those calling it selfish; were they really in a give and take relationship, or were they taking more than they gave - only they know that of course. Though I suspect people often lie to themselves about such things.
Conversely if some of the worlds major parasites suddenly committed suicide then I might call that a rare moment of selflessness.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
There best way to understand suicide is as a form of intimate partner violence: suicide is a form of murder in which the relationship between the victim and their killer is that they are lifelong partners who share a body.
Imagine if you learned that your grandmother had been shot and killed in her bed by your grandfather, who left a note explaining that he had determined that this was in the best interest of everyone involved and then surrendered himself to the police.
The sense of shock and loss would be tremendous. The fact that the killer is someone close to you, who insisted that the killing was intended to be merciful doesn’t alleviate the sense of betrayal. You would still be hit with the trauma of great, sudden, unexpected loss.
kinship@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
I know people are citing Christianity a ton which has huge part in it but the concept is way older.
The Hippocratic Oath already touches on the subject: “I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.[4] Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”.
The concept is way older and tons of medics still take that oath
whaleross@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Early Christianity had a problem. When life was hard but afterlife supposedly awesome, why do the hard part and not just skip ahead? Oh, but then who will toil in misery and pay tithes and be serving the kings army? Ey, presto! Tell everybody that suicide is a mortal sin with eternal suffering and all that jazz! (That in turn sprouted workarounds like killing somebody else and be forgiven for your sins before execution.)
The moralism lives on that life is holy and you leave others to struggle in their misery while you take the easy way out. And this is why it is taken to absurd lengths that people are kept on life support that only serves to prolong their terminal suffering against their own will.
QueenHawlSera@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
If I recall, there were still Christians who intentionally tried to get others to kill them so it wouldn’t count as suicide.