yes this is a serious question. normally i would say "because it hurts people" but why should one person have to suffer to keep other people comfortable? it doesn't make sense and it's unfair to force someone to make that kind of sacrifice. if someone honestly wants to die why is it ok to make them live?
The problem with dying is that that's it - you can't fix dead. Very, very often, the things causing a person to feel suicidal can be addressed, and very, very often, the suicidal person can't see that. When it comes to 'dead forever' or 'suffer for a while longer matters get sorted', I'd rather risk the suffering even if it seems unfair to the suicidal person, because that suffering can be fixed. Dead can't.
im not sure. maybe because people who attempt but don't succeed most of the time are happy that they are still alive? but there are different types of suicide, i would consider suicide as an alternative to terminal illness to be in a class of its own
often, sure, but not always, and there's no cutoff point of "ok, you've tried x y and z and nothing helped and you've been trying a long time, you can rest now". suicide is Always Wrong, Never A Solution no matter what, even when things do not get better and don't appear likely to do so.
For me personally part of it is definitely that it's because it hurts others. I feel I don't have the right to hurt them, even if personally I find living very hard and painful at times. I value the happiness of others over my own and while that has issues I do feel that it is a good thing at times. This is one of those times. This is a tricky thing suffering wise. Because it's not fair to be forced to live I suppose, but it's not fair to make others suffer by killing yourself. Life is hard and it fucking sucks and is unfair to absolutely everyone. So I feel better if I err on the side of valuing others over myself in this case. The next reason is that it won't fix anything. So I died once. So what? I'm just going to be reborn. Even if conceivably I have a less shit shake of things next time around I'm still going to suffer. It's not a solution for me. It's not a solution for anyone I don't feel. Because I don't believe it actually ends suffering. All it does is simply...Lets you wake up into a new nightmare. That's it. This one applies more beyond just myself. And now for my super personal reason that doesn't apply to anyone but myself. The other thing that keeps me from hurting myself is that, again this personal, I feel that it's cowardly. Life is hard. It's painful and it sucks and it'd just be a lot easier to die I feel at times. If not because I think that would end it necessarily but because it would give me another chance at things. I'd get to reroll the dice and see what pops up. But what does that say about me personally? It says that I wasn't strong enough. It says that I was too afraid to keep living and that I was selfish enough to value my own happiness and the hopes that I might have an easier shot to let others suffer. I hate nothing more than I hate cowards and liars. Nothing. I'm not going to let myself be a coward. Though again that's personal and applies to myself alone. There's no rest for the dead because the dead don't stay dead very long at all.
yeah, often things can be dealt with? but not always. including with brain stuff, i think. i don't know how to feel about the terminal illness thing, i feel like that suggests physical illness is more real than mental illness? it gets complicated there because they're different, but are they REALLY, i don't know.
rebirth stuff, if you believe it, is a reason to keep yourself alive possibly, but doesn't really apply to keeping others alive. i don't like the idea of hurting others, but frankly i feel like "you have to live no matter what and we will enforce this with forced feeding and hospitalization" hurts people, and why should that be prioritized as being better?
It definitely applies to keeping others alive because for me that is how the world actually works. I'm not going to compromise my morals and cosmology simply because someone else doesn't believe in it. I gave you my reasons as to why I feel that this should be prioritized over a person's want to die. That is why.
When we are thinking suicidally, we are not entirely lucid, and thus not well-equipped to make the choice. It's kind of a catch-22. Not wanting to survive is ipso facto evidence that our thoughts are fubar, and we can't trust our own thinkpans for the time. And i know that it can feel like you're seeing things clearly, maybe for the first time, when depression and other self-destructive brain weasels are doing their thing, but it is in fact occlusion. Lucid thinking would continue seeking ways to overcome or circumvent or just escape the conditions that create suffering, or seek methods to endure it until new opportunities arise. Occlusion will incorrectly proclaim that the suffering is insurmountable and interminable. I suppose in the rare circumstance where an outside party can objectively confirm the hopelessness of a situation, such as a terminal illness, it is possible that auto-euthanasia can actually be a lucid decision. But as the people experiencing self-destructive thoughts, we have to accept that we are occluded, and we have to accept the validity of an outside perspective telling us that we are not lucid. It can suck to give up such a fundamental sense of agency, but it is a necessary survival decision, even when we don't want to survive. Bc the suffering we feel truly is temporary, that's the insight we have to accept from outside our own heads. Death is permanent, it is overkill, it is an unnecessary solution. It's like burning a house down bc the stairs are collapsing - the stairs can be repaired and the house made a safe and hospitable place, the house can have a future, but burning it down erases all that. Suicide nukes the suffering but the splash damage takes out all other possible futures, all future moments of joy, all future creations, everything. It is perhaps the worst possible solution to the problem of suffering.
Oh that's another thing I should have mentioned that plays into it for me. I don't trust my own thoughts when I'm that upset because they're just not well informed. I do feel a bit uncomfortable stating that no one can be lucid about their want to die though. Still, I feel that in some cases like my own it is important.
in my mind they are different, and to me considering them different doesn't invalidate mental illness. i think i consider mental illness to be more fixable than terminal illness -- which doesn't mean i think mental illness isn't valid, but like, mental illness things in general can be fixed or helped given the right support system. terminal illness can kill people in horrible ways, regardless of money or access to medication and treatment. a terminally ill person can be getting the best care in the world and still die an excruciatingly painful death, but someone getting the best mental illness care in the world will probably get better, even if it takes a long time. though there is a slight grey area in that brain stuff can be both physical and mental, so the line isn't always clear.
..........meh everyone here sees the world in such a fundamentally different way from me its hard to even parse this let alone respond if it works for you it works i guess
The reason I find most persuasive is that it's dead probability branch. If I live, then there exists a chance that I will go on to live a fulfilling and happy life. You can argue over the particular likelihood of that if you want, but it's definitely there. Heck, some interpretations of the universe might hold that probability to be evidence of a branch-universe in which that future is a certainty, given that I am alive. Being dead is a dead branch in that respect. That way, there is no probability of me going on to live a fulfilling life, or at least no life like my current one. Instead, there's a 100% chance of nothingness. Now, nothingness itself might be considered a bad outcome depending on how much you want to see the future of the world, your friends, family, etc, progressing through time, but even barring that it's certainly not a good thing. Nothingness creates no new positives, and indeed doesn't create any new bad things other than that loss of potential (which imo is a tragedy in and of itself, but eh, perspective). I don't want to let go of that possibility for future happiness, even if it's small. And the truth is it actually isn't small at all. Depression makes it seem like it isn't, but the statistics bear out, and if one keeps living then they generally come to be really glad that they are alive. And you will too. Hang in there FUCK BAD CHOICE OF WORDS I mean, keep going at life! I think you have so much worth and I love seeing you around! You won't regret living. Trust us on this.
That's just how a lot of things are at times, sadly. It'd be boring if everyone thought exactly the same as me though if that helps any.
nothingness by definition can be neither good nor bad, because it's nothing. it's a lack of anything, good or bad, right or wrong. it's not a probability branch because there's nothing there.
ideally, everyone would have access to perfect mental health care but that's not the case and as it is healthcare for brain things is often damaging or abusive and makes things worse. also, some conditions like depression can be recovered from, but care for things like pds is generally limited to damage control ie containing symptoms because that's all we have right now. the care is not necessarily helping the person who's suffering, just keeping them from hurting those around them.
then nothingness cannot be worse than potential goodnes, because that may or may not exist; it can be better than current suffering, which exists.
for some reason "think of all the good things that MIGHT HAPPEN" rings of the pro-life people talking about "just think, that baby could have cured cancer if only you hadn't aborted it!", demanding that the mother suffer for the sake of a potential good thing, and disregarding the fact that maybe both mother and baby would have been facing severe disadvantage that would have made it very difficult for that baby to grow up, attend school and find the cure for cancer.
Potential goodness always exists. And while it does, while that potential could potentially outweigh any current suffering (as there is always a probability of it doing), I can't let that lie. Plus with pretty much any disorder that's going to be the outcome with the greatest probability applied to any life which doesn't end in suicide. So, essentially don't do the thing, it's the wrong choice that results in a prophecy self-fulfilled. It's ending your life before you give it a chance to get better. Don't die before you live, and all that. You'll thank yourself in five years. (Somebody should link me back to these posts next time I'm talking about wanting to die myself tbh)
