This discussion doesn’t belong here. You should talk to a therapist, not listen to a bunch of socially awkward, pseudo philosophers. You won’t find appropriate answers here and the consequences could be serious.

You feel you have nothing to look forward to, personally. What is it you want? Truly? Pleasure? I could pay someone to do such at your command any hour of the day. But one might get bored with that. Control? Of what? This world? Sure, that require violence and constant control. Being constantly aware of one's environment knowing at any moment someone who lives solely to slice a knife blade into a vital organ of your flesh may do so. Danger, stimulus, sure, that's natural. This video truly highlights the psyche of what we think of "great conquerors". Who all ended up just the same, dead. Sure people talk about them. Or do they? We attach ideas to people and think they live.

You want companionship. Affirmation. Guess what. Those who truly have things worth affirming need no such thing. So what is it you're truly after?

Sure, it's a good question. The average person, no matter if they "came" from wealth or poverty, sometimes wonders, if they died right now, who would miss them? Why and for what? At the end of the day every person that lives and walks was brought into their circumstance outside of their will and simply tumbled out of a womb. Why do we value one over another? Because of the perceived power they have. That's all. Your depression is an absolute lie. And I could prove it, easily. If I haven't had my eye set on much higher sights. Perhaps you should just refocus your own. Given the fact you've been given everything.

This is a really inappropriate post.

We either live in truth or lies. Such is the stated goal of philosophy. Name one lie that would reasonably be found in said post. Go on, I dare you.

To won't let your rival win the race.

Suicide is wrong because it destroys something that has value. Things have value because they are valued. When something valued is destroyed, the valuer is harmed. Suicide is therefore wrong because it harms the beings that value the suicidal.

The beings that value the suicidal may include friends, relatives, loved ones, and they may also include the future selves of the suicidal. Perspectives change, even if the present suicidal doesn't value their life, their future selves might. If you ever enjoyed your life, you owe that enjoyment to the fact that all of your past selves chose not to kill themselves. Had just one of them done so, they would have stolen that enjoyment from you.

Future selves are just as worthy of protection as present selves. Giving someone poison that kills them in a month is just as wrong as poison that kills immediately, even though the time delayed poison only kills a future self.

Desire for pleasures only applies if you are alive, if you die there is no need for any of that. Same with love, friendship, food, money, etc. — Darkneos

But you are alive, not dead, so you desire at least one of these. Killing yourself permanently frustrates all of the desires you had at the moment you died, and all the desires you would have had in the future.

@Baden, @Jamal, @fdrake,

Will you please put an end to this discussion.

Agree that the reasons you present, being life orientated, predominate. Probably because the dead can't argue in any meaningful way with the living. The barrier we call death only has one side visible to those who we know can mount any arguments for or against suicide. Hence the bias.

The Spiritualists may disagree regards the one visible sided barrier.

With overpopulation and the other rafts of issues that have and still do face us, suicide may get more popular, but its proponents will still only have life based arguments to use.

Maybe what answers you seek can only be found eventually by living, questioning and moving through life. However you find them, you'll have to stay alive to explain them and appreciated the answers.

And agree with T Clark... "You won't find appropriate answers here".

I’ve struggled to find a good argument against suicide ... — Darkneos

Well I have never found a "good argument" for suicide either. Afaik, empirically, suicide does not solve any unsolvable problems or change anything that cannot be changed (e.g. past events, past actions, persisting consequences) and often only deeply harms the suicide's own family, former lovers and/or close friends.

If you are struggling, sir, seek professional clinical help ASAP.

:up:

The argument against suicide is that it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

The argument against suicide is that it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. — LuckyR

Since this discussion hasn’t been so far closed …

I’ve never much understood why permanent solutions to temporary problems ought to be shunned. It’s only temporary problems that have solutions, not the permanent ones. And does one not want one’s solutions to problems to last and thereby be permanent? How then is this supposed to assuage those who are suicidal and have no doubts regarding there not being an afterlife?

But since no one can infallibly prove any metaphysical system of beliefs, physicalism/materialism very much included, there is then a quite viable existential possibility that mortal death is in no way the known of a permanent solution. Namely, that known solution which takes the form of an everlasting non-being. But is instead an open-ended unknown in which awareness persists.

One then not only has to deal with the inadvertent suffering self-murder causes in others within this world, impressionable strangers potentially included, but with the possibility of experiencing things such as regret for the deed well after the act of self-murder is committed. Thereby compounding an already bad case of one’s own experienced suffering in some form of hereafter.

In which case, self-murder then becomes only a temporary solution to a permanent problem of suffering - permanent in that this problem of suffering could survive one’s death to this world, one’s death in the next world, and so forth.

This being one possibility of a Sisyphean reality in its broadest sense.

That said, I endorse this in relation to the OP:

This discussion doesn’t belong here. You should talk to a therapist, not listen to a bunch of socially awkward, pseudo philosophers. You won’t find appropriate answers here and the consequences could be serious. — T Clark

:100:

If it were just one, or just a few, perhaps you would be right, but it seems like the whole of humanity is bent on ending it all. I wonder if your attempt to shut down the discussion is because you have no answer but repression and oppression.

This is the first and last question that philosophy must answer - 'What's the point?' The answer is "love". If you wonder what love is, I can only tell you that it is what you lack, whenever you ask this question. Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. We are not here to be satisfied, but to become satisfactory.

This is the first and last question that philosophy must answer - 'What's the point?' The answer is "love". If you wonder what love is, I can only tell you that it is what you lack, whenever you ask this question. Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. We are not here to be satisfied, but to become satisfactory. — unenlightened

:fire:

I'd put the bar far, far lower. The society puts love on a pedestal and for people that hate themselves, it's difficult. Life is worth that one thing that make's you smile, that one brief OK moment you have, when you forgot how unhappy you are. By ceasing to exist, you won't have even that, hence even those little things makes life worth more than nothing.

And I agree with @T Clark, this doesn't seem as philosophical discussion about the subject. But simply immediately removing the post won't be helpful either. At least I would be sad and pissed if my thread would be simply moved away.

@Darkneos The following is your post:

___

I didn't appreciate the last thread being closed as I asked a serious question about the worth of life and was proven right about what I said about the value of said life and the bias that we have towards it. Society won't ever really advice if people are too scared to talk about why one should persist instead of end it when there isn't any compulsion to keep going.

People there said this isn't the place for it or to seek professional help, which just highlights the problem. That this can't be talked about without suggesting something is wrong with the person, so long as people have that "sweeping it under the rug" mentality we aren't ever going to get an answer to the question. The fear of talking about life being worth living implies a fear of the answers.

It's easier to label such people sick or mentally unwell because that way we don't have to deal with the discussion. I mean...they have to be sick or something to not want to live anymore right? There can't be good reasons for it right? To me that just sounds like people are afraid of the answers and how someone can be lucid and still want it.

The answers in the last thread that I got like love don't really answer the question and I explained why with my first post. Such things only carry weight if one must live or is not able to die.

Stuff like this:

This is the first and last question that philosophy must answer - 'What's the point?' The answer is "love". If you wonder what love is, I can only tell you that it is what you lack, whenever you ask this question. Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. We are not here to be satisfied, but to become satisfactory.

Just dodges the question. Therapists can't help with the question because their assumption is that something is wrong with the person for questioning the notion of going further, which assumes the conclusion. They are biased like everyone else and don't have answers to the question. People just assume it's self evident because of survival drive but if that was the case a lot of people likely wouldn't consider it an option.

And this:

Sure, it's a good question. The average person, no matter if they "came" from wealth or poverty, sometimes wonders, if they died right now, who would miss them? Why and for what? At the end of the day every person that lives and walks was brought into their circumstance outside of their will and simply tumbled out of a womb. Why do we value one over another? Because of the perceived power they have. That's all. Your depression is an absolute lie. And I could prove it, easily. If I haven't had my eye set on much higher sights. Perhaps you should just refocus your own. Given the fact you've been given everything.

Is an utter non answer. Never mind that depression isn't a lie, but that's not what's happening here and I think that also just sweeps it under the rug to avoid a serious talk on the question. Though it does beg the question that if someone is "Given everything" and still wants to opt out then why?

I also find hind sight bias plays a big role in people saying life is worth it. Just because your life worked out doesn't mean others would and wanting them to stick around for your sake and sanity in the rightness of your choice is selfish. People have to stop being so scared to talk about death and the value of life.

So yeah, I'll restate my last argument in the previous thread I made, please don't close this one. I feel like it does a disservice to philosophy to dodge difficult questions.

__

If you feel like rewriting it as a response in this thread, do so.

You should talk to a therapist — T Clark

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option", as is slowly becoming the new normal in "civilized" societies?

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option" — baker

Unlikely

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option", as is slowly becoming the new normal in "civilized" societies? — baker

Pretty sure they don't do that.

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. Filling life with good things, doing what you love, all that junk only has logical weight if one is unable to die until a set time. Barring that I see no reason for living. — Darkneos

The words and usage here is slippery. What exactly is your issue? You have received answers and are dismissive. Maybe it would help if you gave closer thought either to what your point is or how you're expressing it. One approach to boil it down to a single, simple "whether" question. E.g., whether it is better to X or better to Y. Then consider, analyze, and weigh the two alternatives (rinsing and repeating as necessary).

The words and usage here is slippery. What exactly is your issue? You have received answers and are dismissive. — tim wood

They aren't answers thought. Love isn't a reason it's just platitudinous nonsense, same with making meaning. I gave the case at the start why such reasons don't hold water.

Well, then, your issue is the arguments. As such, and compelling only to people for whom they are compelling and you not such, why do you care?

Death gets a bad rep.

The ending of life is unavoidable, and that means the only thing people can do is consider how they may approach it. People also believe ending human life is permissible in some circumstances, such as defending yourself from an attacker with killing intent, or to escape unavoidable, unmitigable, unbearable suffering. In general we have no moral troubles with ending life, only circumstances it's okay in. And always scruples.

There are two ways you could approach suicide analytically - you could look at the conditions that make it a matter of personal preference rather than it being flat wrong, or you could look at the conditions that make it preferential in a moral sense. IE, in the latter case, that it would be the right thing to do to commit suicide.

The latter and the former seem to coincide in the case of unavoidable, unmitigable. unbearable suffering. Which is to say that if one wishes to reduce harm to one's interests, one could end their life on their own terms to avoid pain. If someone adopts a principle of harm minimisation to their own life plans, and already knows they cannot enact them due to their condition, it may be the better option to cease existing than live in perpetual and futile agony. This is not a comparison between the possibility of a life well lived and a life well lived stopped short, this is a gamble between infinite agony and its end. Who could begrudge someone final rest in that instance.

Were it, on balance, shown that in a given condition it were preferable to end one's life than to not, that would be a good argument that one ought commit suicide in that instance. Of course one may choose not to, but doing so may lead to unnecessary agony - the quintessential moral evil. And stupidly also, since death is readily available and cheap.

The question remains whether anyone should commit suicide, for certain, in some circumstance. Were it the only way to avoid unavoidable, unmitigable, unbearable suffering, I would suggest that it is quite rational to gamble that the end of one's suffering is better than one's futile life of agony.

If you're of the persuasion that you do not think that living can be utterly futile and saturated with agony, I don't know what to tell you. All of these things are part of God's design: a violinist who loses their arms, an artist who develops crippling depression and can no longer imagine, the last hope of an expectant mother miscarrying... If it is your position that life is still preferable for them all when faced with the futility of who they are, I ask you on what basis. Your hope that it could and will be better? Do you know them? Do you know their circumstance? If you have nothing but faith that they will adapt to the calamity of their life, that should persuade no one. If they see that they in their essence have been destroyed by life, trust them on it and let them go.

If in response to arguments in support of death, you notice an instinctive disgust and a panic- that's good and healthy. It keeps you alive. But what it is not is a reason to continue living in futile agony, nor a reason anyone without that disgust should adopt your perspective. It's an aesthetic appreciation of life masquerading as a moral judgement that it is worthwhile; a level of positivity which rejects those who suffer enough to want to die.

Rather than accepting that those who live may want to die for good reasons, that response keeps the suffering of others from contaminating your good sense that life is worth living. And you treat people who want to end unendurable agony as barbarians at the gate, by denying them their good sense. If the survival thrashing of your animal brain can be this obvious and unnoticed, so much so that it can climb up your brainstem into your cortex, it isn't surprising why a preference for death would be alien to you.

If you want to see whether someone's death could be preferable to their life, see if their continued futile suffering is guaranteed, and when you've established that, wish them good bye but hope they never leave.

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. — Darkneos

I don't understand this view of compulsion. Whatever this life thing is, it has its own life. I have survived a number of crises because something took over while I was being stupid. We are more than we can talk about. Your premise assumes the contrary.

Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. — unenlightened

Love isn't a reason it's just platitudinous nonsense, same with making meaning. I gave the case at the start why such reasons don't hold water. — Darkneos

Let me see if I can use other words that you can accept more. If one considers only oneself, and only from one's own point of view, then it is clear that satisfaction is only ever transitory, suffering and death are inevitable and the sooner life is over the better.

Therefore, if there is any reason to live, it is not to be found in oneself in any pleasure or satisfaction one might obtain from living.

Therefore, I posit (but offer no proof) a reason for living that is self-overcoming, or self- transcending. This is illustrated in the film Groundhog Day, in which suicide fails utterly to end life but results in a repeating life that goes nowhere. This repetition only ends when everything is put into the day to make it better for everyone.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. I wish I could be more clear about this for you, but I cannot disprove the platitudinous nonsense of your "platitudinous nonsense". If you want to understand, you will begin to understand, but if you don't want to, then you will have make do with the thin satisfaction of winning the argument, and you will miss all the richness of life.

:100: .

I'm going to question what a "reason for living" even is to begin with. I was suicidal from, roughly, 12 years of age to... maybe 16 years of age, and I was quite vulnerable to a relapse for at least a decade more, I'd say. It's hard to tell. I'm over 50 now, and memory isn't... reliable?

I've never been looking for a "reason to live," though. What I was looking for was... determination. Either way: determination to get myself in order, or determination to end it. I think if I'd found determination, I wouldn't be here today. Being a wimp saved my life, for whatever that's worth. I grew out out the suicidal mindset, but the language stayed with me. I still think every now and then, I should just end it. But I've lived through wanting to be dead, so when it comes up now (I don't say this out loud to any one), I'm quite confident that I don't mean it. Wanting to die just feels different.

Something I've often wondered, though, is this: what if I'd really found "determination"? What would I have done? Would I have killed myself, or would have gotten my act together? It's possible, for example, that if I had been the person who could reach the determination to kill myself, might I have been a person who didn't want to kill himself? I'm quite content to never find out, because quite frankly I don't want to go through something like that ever again.

I don't have a "reason to live", though. And I don't feel like I need one. I find that life is... naturally persistent. I've been living all my life, and I'll be living until one day I won't be living anymore, which is a stretch of time only available as abstract protection - I may call it death, but since it's not part of my life it's not a state I'll ever have to contend with. Dying though... Dying is part of life, and a lot of the ways to go are unpleasant. Unless you die really quickly, or just drift off while asleep you'll have to contend with dying. Dying is far more frightening than being dead, to be honest.

So I just muddle through from day to day, enjoy what I can, and take on the rest as it comes. Life is value neutral, though it acquires secondary value - as a perceived binary switch - through the balance of things enjoyable and not. You can switch it all off, but if you do you're dead, and the question of whether it was worth it or not won't apply anymore. While I'm here, I might as well make the best of it, no? Won't always succeed, but, well... that's life. Because I used to be sucidal, and because the language never really left me, though, I have to stay vigilant. You see, a good internal "life sucks" can be quite cathartic, but say it just once too often, and it becomes this... habit, and it takes over the way you think. That's quite frightening. From someone who's been through it: life spent brooding about wanting to die is far more scary than death can ever be. It's a state of mind I don't ever want back.

But at the same time, all this talk about "love", or "life is good"... it all feels hollow and unreal to this day. It's ineffective. At the same time, though, some of it is demonstrably true.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. — unenlightened

Oh, yes, have I ever been through this. Around ten(?) years ago, I remember saying that not much worked when I was in deep, but what ultimately helped me was "doing things and watching people". That's how I phrased it, and it got a laugh out of who I think might have been a suicidal teen. It's really simple. In theory that is. Your wordview's quite a prison; tailored to keep you in.

So if people ask for a reason to live, what is it they ask for? A surefire plan to go through life without suffering? A teleological end so that your live will have had meaning once it's gone? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow you can chase even if you know it's not there?

To me, looking for a reason to live sounds like trap to keep brooding. Life is value-neutral. Without it, you have nothing - which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and when it's gone, it's neither good nor bad, because value has gone out with it. (Er... yes, we have social effects that outlast us and cast tendrils back in time to influence what we do while we can still do things, but my post's too long as it is.)

So, yeah, what helped to get back into the groove was "doing things and watching people", as a younger, wiser me has put it. Life won't necessarily get better, but the bad things get easier to bear, and the good things get easier to enjoy. The latter I found especially valuable.

Not easy, though. Not easy at all. A song that gets it, but promises too much:

Unlikely — T Clark

Pretty sure they don't do that. — Darkneos

Any discussion of suicide and the meaning of life has to take into consideration the legal status of euthanasia and assisted suicide in a particular country/jurisdiction. Individual countries differ greatly from one another in this regard, from those strictly opposed to them to those where they are legal.

Then there are other considerations to take into account, like insurance companies refusing to pay for the medical treatment of the terminally ill, but willing to cover the cost of euthanasia.

Here is an argument against suicide. Killing another person is wrong (other things being equal) and that is not seriously in dispute. It is also not seriously in dispute that it is wrong mainly because of the harm it causes to the victim. The main ground of the wrongness of killing another is the harm death does to the victim.

It is implausible to think that death only harms a person when someone else kills them, but not if they kill themselves. If I accidentally step off a cliff to my death, my death is just as harmful to me if someone had pushed me off the cliff instead.

Therefore, whether self-inflicted or other-inflicted, death is harmful to the one who dies. (None of this is seriously in dispute; 'why' it is harmful - yes, that's in dispute...but 'that' it is harmful is not)

There is clearly a moral difference between inflicting death on another and inflicting it on oneself. That seems obvious too. But there is no difference in the amount of harm it does to the one who dies.

From this it follows that a person has powerful reason not to kill themselves under most circumstances - circumstances in which their continued living would not harm them more, anyway.

That's a case against suicide. It's not a moral case - the conclusion is not that it is immoral to kill oneself (though it may be), but that it is imprudent to do so. The reason it is imprudent to kil oneself under most circumstances is that doing so will harm the one who does it more than continued living would .

It seems like a very strong case too, as if you argue that death is not harmful to the one who suffers it, then you're going to struggle to explain why it is so wrong to kill someone else.

I guess this is a good a place as any. — Darkneos

No.

William Styron wrote "Darkness Visible", a short memoir of his depression. It struck me as conspicuously superficial, but with one point sticking out. Namely, he says words to the effect that the only thing that was worse than his depression was the medical treatment he received for it (he freely went to a mental institution). He writes how he then complied, superficially, with the treatment, just so as to get out of the institution.

It's important to understand that especially in modern Western society, existential topics 1. are tabooed, and 2. what the consequences of breaking this taboo are. Talk about these things at the wrong place, and you could get the police at your door, and then some.

There is a whole art to not talking about existential topics, and it's important to master it. Already simply because of the sheer amount of time and energy that can be wasted in the process if done wrongly.

that was a bad answer, definitely not 100.

Let me see if I can use other words that you can accept more. If one considers only oneself, and only from one's own point of view, then it is clear that satisfaction is only ever transitory, suffering and death are inevitable and the sooner life is over the better. — unenlightened

The same applies to your so called love. At the end it’s still about you and feeling better for yourself it just happens to help others. Though that said that doesn’t mean there is value in it. Like I already explained and why your logic still falls short.

Therefore, I posit (but offer no proof) a reason for living that is self-overcoming, or self- transcending. This is illustrated in the film Groundhog Day, in which suicide fails utterly to end life but results in a repeating life that goes nowhere. This repetition only ends when everything is put into the day to make it better for everyone. — unenlightened

That movie is a terrible example because the loop really only breaks when he wins the girl over, didn’t really have much to do with helping others. But again, it’s a movie it’s not reality and obviously the lesson of most films is to reinforce positive social norms. Try again.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. I wish I could be more clear about this for you, but I cannot disprove the platitudinous nonsense of your "platitudinous nonsense". If you want to understand, you will begin to understand, but if you don't want to, then you will have make do with the thin satisfaction of winning the argument, and you will miss all the richness of life. — unenlightened

Oh I know this doesn’t work because I’ve done this most of my life and it’s just as hollow and empty as the pleasure of the self you seem to place less importance on.