Every state of mind to way of thinking can be traced back to the unwillingness to accept the inevitable decay of ourselves. — eddiedean
So, the ancient Christian death seekers were clearly different from those Muslim death seekers who kill themselves now intending to kill others as well. There's a difference between wanting to be killed and wanting to kill others while killing oneself.
But it would seem that in each case it's believed that dying is good, and that God wants us to die in a particular way or will reward us if we do so. And these are dangerous thoughts indeed. Once we think God wants us or others to die, or that it's good that we or others die, we not only accept but seek death; our death or the death of others, or both. Worse, we think we should kill. Death becomes a moral imperative. — unworthy speculator
The death or not others is surely a trivial difference compared to my own death. My own death is in my language an act of identification. Rome, as the secular power is being invited to 'ratify' the identification by performing the office of executor and thus promoting the mere faithful to the status of martyr.
It's not even really a matter of what God wants, since He can doubtless shift for himself, it's more a badge of identification. Which of course is why jumping off a cliff will not do at all. For mass suicides you need something extra in the way of collective hubris. — unenlightened
What i think is that the inevitable fear of death which to them, preoccupied with it as they are, is so scary that they convince themselves, with the power of the group, that death does not hold a negative connotation. The highest level of death denial makes a full circle to come back to the full embrace of it. — eddiedean
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