I believe it is important here to make the distinction between what you would like to believe and what actually occurs. If you committ any act, regardless of whether or not it is suicide or not, for your own personal benefit without regard to the benefit or detriment of others, it is a selfish act; you are taking the values of the self into consideration irrespective of everyone else. If you committ suicide and you reached your decision through an act of free will and your own analysis, and you decide to end your life because that is easier than continuing to deal with your problems, then yes, it is a selfish act. Here I wish to make the distinction between "selfish" and "wrong." There are cases in which "selfish" acts are not "wrong." The "rightness" or "wrongness" of the act really depends on the situation in question, but regardless of whether or not the suicide is in the "right" or "wrong," the act is intrinsically selfish, it serves, helps, benefits, the self. Your committing suicide does not benefit me, for instance, it benefits you. (Well, benefit may be the wrong word, but I hope you get my point.)

If you have a case for the act not being selfish, then I encourage you to present your argument/logic/reasoning, but I believe this is one of those murky cases where people often confuse "selfish" to mean "wrong."

To be frank: what's your point? You haven't contradicted anything I said, but you did quote me, so I expected you to. Some people are probably more prone to committing suicide, I suppose you're right about that, but I haven't claimed that everyone was equally prone, or that everyone has unlimited potential. What is it you're getting at?

Well since you have clarified that you consider "selfish" and "wrong" to be separate, my argument doesn't have much to do with you, because I know that suicide is technically a selfish act. I was referring to the common assumption that being "selfish" is "wrong" in all cases, because that is the way that most people are arguing in this thread, as you can see by my original post, which used "selfish" and "wrong" interchangeably.

Suicide in a lot of cases is not Selfish because the person committing the act DOES NOT WANT TO DIE / PERFORM THE ACT UPON THEMSELVES.

O, my bad then.


Then it isn't suicide. Suicide is when a person kills themselves. If a person has a mental illness where they end up killing themselves, then that death should be attributed to the illness, not to suicide.

Suicide is a result of depression which is a result of low levels of seritonin (Pope and Kats). Just thought I'd add some facts here.

What about the guy who sacrifices himself to save 100 people and his family? I guess at that moment he could be depressed. I'm not disagreeing with you only on the part that your saying all suicide is a result of depression.

I mean in the end I guess all emotions are just chemical reactions.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 12 2009, 1:03 am by MadZombie.

That would be noradrenaline -- fight or flight.

Vrael - Thanks for clarifying. I was thinking that by selfish you meant wrong. My bad. But I want to make a point: Everything that benefits yourself is 'selfish.' Including working harder to get a promotion, and trying to get laid ;O

I think this point calls for a little subtopic. Though Wikipedia calls suicide
...it also mentions that many dictionaries formulate it as
which seem very different to me.

In the wiki case, it does not mention the will, the desire to die (intentional is not the same as willful). Assuming the wiki source is reliable and many other dictionaries in fact use the formulation I quoted, the dictionaries imply that the person committing suicide indeed wants to die.

Though norm's point is still not valid - suicide is selfish whether you want to die or not - I am still bothered by the question "do people committing suicide truly want to die?". And I'm not talking about ones instincts that try to stop a person when he/she is trying to jump off a roof, pull the trigger, etc., I'm talking about the spiritual desire to live.

Perhaps those who claim to have suicidal tendencies here can answer my question? Do you guys truly not want to live, or do you want to live but see no hope? Or am I being crazy here?

In my personal opinion, there are two types of Suicide. The kind that you leave a note and want pity from or something, or that other type that entitles, but is not limited to:

Jumping on a live grenade to save your buddies.
Taking a bullet for a lover.
You're trapped, and are going to be brutally tortured for information, or be used for a public execution.
You've gone bankrupt, you have no house, and nobody can take you in, and all you're life has already been shit.

- The bottom reasons here are most certinally legit in my opinion because of the fact that they are for a cause. If you know that everyones going to die from a 'nade and you have the chance to stop it and save everyone else, I'm sure you'd do it.. If you can react.

- Bullet for a lover? Some may not consider this suicide, but if you hop infront of the gun when its pulled, then yeah, thats suicide, because you chose to die. (Or you might take it in the leg, who knows.)

- Usual "Iraq" scenario. Guess what, you have a sidearm with a fresh clip. Take out as many as you can, then take yourself because damnit, I doubt you're going to be saved before your publicized with your head missing.

- Usual nowaday scenario. People need to notice that this is happeneing, and need to help, ie the credit card companies. Yeah, this is mostly everyones fault, but when its killing people and leaving houses open, damnit its time to cut back. Also, if anyone loses their house today, they should burn it to the ground when they leave, so that nobody can profiteer it.

Much of what you've said Darkling I agree with, however I believe the distinction to be the difference between:
1). willful termination of yourself when other options do exist
2). willful termination of yourself when other options do not exist
3). self sacrifice

Personally I wouldn't classify self-sacrifice as suicide, for example, if you jump in front of a bullet for someone, your choice is to save them, and your death is a consequence of your action in saving the other person, not a direct result of your choice, but a result of the person attempting to kill the person you chose to save.

As to the situation where people lose their homes due to debt, I wouldn't dare to refute that there are legitimate cases in which people just get screwed over by life, but I predict a large portion of people who lose their homes dug their own hole through bad choices. I know at least one such couple personally who haven't made the wisest economic choices.

I'm not sure what SEN's policy is on this matter, but this could be misconstrued as legal advice... I ask that you edit it out (the part about advising people to burn their houses to the ground).
Do NOT attempt to burn down a building even if you lose it; you could be charged with but not limited to: reckless endangerment, arson, theft, destruction of property, and anything else a creative lawyer could think of.

Patriotism, FTW.

Knowing as how that SEN's crowd is mostly a bunch of guys age 13 ~ 26, I don't believe that its nexessary if I delete anything from my post, honestly, unless someone is in fact losing their house right now.

Also:

I think it could be both ways for this. If you KNOW you're going to die doing it, I do believe that that is an act of suicide.

Though, swing in an extreme situation. Say your girlfriend is tied up in the middle of a subway station, and the next train is running 5 minutes later then it just said on the wall, and you get plowed by it going to save her, unaware. This is the part that I believe could be taken the other way, being as that you had no idea that suicide was an option. Though, it could always be taken that it is the Subway's fault for running late. Plenty of open possibilities.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 14 2009, 9:30 am by Darkling.

I didn't read all the discussion...
I just wanted to tell you guys that my mother committed suicide when I was 1 year old because her father had died in a car crash. So yeah, I'm really okay with it, but I just wanted to say that the persons who thinks it's a selfish act, it's somewhat true. Same thing for the coward part. But, to me, it's also a bravery act because, personally, I don't think I'd have the guts to do such an act.
Well, that's it.

(For those who are interested, she hung herself in the hospital's washroom when a stupid doctor was supposed to be watching her, but he just didn't come)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2009, 8:40 pm by payne.

But you don't know for certain that the person is going to shoot. They could decide not to shoot. You're not going to move fast enough to save someone after the bullet has already left the gun, so there isn't a 100% certainty that you will get shot until you are in the way and the bullet has been shot from the gun. You also wouldn't know if the one holding the gun would specifically aim the gun to kill you if you got in the way, or just shoot where they were going to shoot; it might miss vital organs.

Usually when someone jumps in front of a gun, it's because the shooter has already fired a shot or is obviously intending on doing so. Such as a bodyguard for president after hearing shots.

SF bridge could use some better way of stopping ppl from jumping. Costs us taxpayers $ to go fetch them. Interesting fact. When that bridge was being built, the developer had safety netting put under the construction workers and it was unprecedented at the time. Not much was invested into worker safety/fatality prevention prior to this. It cost the developer a lot of money to install it, but in the end saved tons of money in terms of not having to stop work, bad press, lawsuits etc.

Awesome bridge.

people has some common basic needs, like having a part of some group and having same partner in life (i guess). so, just love all the people, and stay reasonable. suicide is not surely a solvation (or what) to problems. it may can be good, or bed after all. there could be anything after death. there is always chance to make things better together (alone is pretty bad). just try to realize the feeling good, but useless things you do and try to change them to something intresting and usefull. also, there are people who may need help. it doesn't make them useless couze they are not compleet or cannot act alone. all the humans should find a real common aim (besides killing off eachoter or the like). try to give, and make some compromises. though that must be difficult for the ones who see nothing in their lives, and at one point, suddenly they want to end their lives (maybe just to end the great pain they feel; i don't know any suicidal)

so i just want to suggest, that rather judging the behaviour, all should thing about a better common future or something like that.
forgive me for any insulting or stupid things, those are just ideas (if that matters).

Suicide is really a huge gamble, nobody knows what happens after, perhaps it's a good idea, perhaps not, nobody knows.

I'd rather enjoy my time here as long as I can, that way if it turns out there's nothing/hell then I've one the best I can, and if there's some kind of heaven or ascension thing, then i doubt about 70 years of missing out is going to really matter, y'know?

If you don't value your life, then go ahead and die already. Pave the way for human evolution. Get rid of the weak-minded. Also, make this thread die too.