RRC Archives

Paul3eb wrote:if your life isn't "self-chosen", then how is your death?

beacuse if a person makes this choice they have realized that they are free of laws, rules, forms, bosses, spouses, taxes, bills, beta, they are in control - finally. no laws any longer apply to them.

an author not mentioned yet is the late Richard Brautigan - a favorite of mine though many people have never read him - and very few ever understood him really - myself included sometimes. wrote a very good work entitled "in watermelon sugar" and the classic "A Conferedrate General from Big Sur."

charlie wrote:

Paul3eb wrote:...mental illness and physical pain are out of the realms of this conversation that i'm having mostly with kd....

That kinda limits the discussion to a very small percentage of suicides then. How many people committ suicide when they are healthy?

and i say that exactly, that i believe mental illness is a reason for many of the suicides. but one: i don't think that's what kd is talking about necessarily, and two: people often believe they are healthy so they don't seek help.

There's that "it is wrong, they were cowards" argument again. You were with these guys in their last days? You know something about them I don't that makes you comfortable saying what was right or wrong for THEIR place in time? Honestly, I have enough trouble deciding what 's "right / wrong" for me to do and I'm pretty conscious of what's going on in my head.

no, i wasn't there and i don't need to be. you're opening up a door that would let people get away with whatever they want and say, you don't understand, you weren't there. do you honestly believe that would be the right thing to do? that being said, i'm not saying context doesn't ever matter. just the opposite.

Respected for their decision? Suicide as an action doesn't really help anyone earn my respect, but I similarly will not disrespect them for their decision. I honestly believe most people don't come to this action without a great deal of thought and who am I to question that decision?

in the same way their actions in life may help me to respect them, their action (suicide) makes me disrespect them.

Apples and oranges. Suicide is a very personal thing, those are not.

this is exactly my point: that it's a selfish decision that ignores so many things, not the least of which is the impact that it has on other people. they say your right to swing your fist in the air ends at the tip of my nose. and if you're saying that what they do doesn't affect anyone else, then i would say that you're the one that's being naive. statistically speaking, when one family member commits suicide, it increases the likelihood of the remaining family members that they'll commit suicide later.

I'm not sure if maybe I missed the scope of this argument but from what I have seen suicides are more often than not a result of great pain. If this is not what we're talking about then I'm not sure I have much to add.

define "great pain".. if you mean physical pain, i'd have to bow out also. for me personally, it gets much much greyer there..

KD wrote:beacuse if a person makes this choice they have realized that they are free of laws, rules, forms, bosses, spouses, taxes, bills, beta, they are in control - finally. no laws any longer apply to them.

so is it responsibility they want to run from? and the laws of physics still apply and they say you're stone cold dead. you aren't in control of that either..

Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

Bernie Taupin

Paul3eb wrote:

charlie wrote:There's that "it is wrong, they were cowards" argument again. You were with these guys in their last days? You know something about them I don't that makes you comfortable saying what was right or wrong for THEIR place in time? Honestly, I have enough trouble deciding what 's "right / wrong" for me to do and I'm pretty conscious of what's going on in my head.

no, i wasn't there and i don't need to be. you're opening up a door that would let people get away with whatever they want and say, you don't understand, you weren't there. do you honestly believe that would be the right thing to do? that being said, i'm not saying context doesn't ever matter. just the opposite.

Let people get away with whatever? Like suicide leads to some sort of prize or something? Maybe I'm exposing too many personal demons for the lurkers but unless you've seriously examined suicide as an option I don't think you can have an attitide like that.

Look, my perspective is this. I like to think I've been around the block (with physical/spiritual/emotional trauma) as much as anyone with my very few years but I do not flatter myself in thinking I will keep the same perspective for the rest of my life. I also don't think I can pretend to offer criticism towards others who may have had tons more experience with pain/age/life than me. You fool yourself to think you understand any more than anyone else, especially concerning their very personal emotional and physical pain. Wisdom is something that only comes with experience and I'd hesitate to think I have a monopoly on it, especially when it's someone's else's life we're talking about.

Paul3eb wrote:

Respected for their decision? Suicide as an action doesn't really help anyone earn my respect, but I similarly will not disrespect them for their decision. I honestly believe most people don't come to this action without a great deal of thought and who am I to question that decision?

in the same way their actions in life may help me to respect them, their action (suicide) makes me disrespect them.

It's clear that you have not been in the kind of place that might lead someone to off themselves.

Paul3eb wrote:

Apples and oranges. Suicide is a very personal thing, those are not.

this is exactly my point: that it's a selfish decision that ignores so many things, not the least of which is the impact that it has on other people.

That's crap. Life is tough all over and everything you do affects others. Bums you out I offed myself? Too fucking bad. Here's hoping it doesn't hurt you so bad that you get bummed enough to off yourself. Yeah, suicide could be a selfish action but noone's paying the rent on my body but me. Like it or not I'm not in the philanthropy business, especially when it requires me to sacrifice my sense of self.

Paul3eb wrote:

I'm not sure if maybe I missed the scope of this argument but from what I have seen suicides are more often than not a result of great pain. If this is not what we're talking about then I'm not sure I have much to add.

define "great pain".. if you mean physical pain, i'd have to bow out also. for me personally, it gets much much greyer there..

Knowing a little bit about both physical and the "grey" kind of pain I can tell you that for me physical pain is easy. Emotional and spiritual pain is something no one can help you with. Often times these things all work together, but unless you've had an adult sized serving of them I don't think you can say shit about anyone else that has.

Maybe you've seen much more than me and have untold amounts of wisdom in the short time you've had but I'm willing to bet there are still things about life out there for all of us to learn. My answers only work for me. So I reserve judgement on the kinds of answers others use for themselves, especially when it concerns deep matters of the soul.

charlie wrote:Let people get away with whatever? Like suicide leads to some sort of prize or something? Maybe I'm exposing too many personal demons for the lurkers but unless you've seriously examined suicide as an option I don't think you can have an attitide like that.

i'm not saying anything about prizes and my response was more to highlight that ineffectiveness of saying you have to understand someone to judge their actions.

Look, my perspective is this. I like to think I've been around the block (with physical/spiritual/emotional trauma) as much as anyone with my very few years but I do not flatter myself in thinking I will keep the same perspective for the rest of my life. I also don't think I can pretend to offer criticism towards others who may have had tons more experience with pain/age/life than me. You fool yourself to think you understand any more than anyone else, especially concerning their very personal emotional and physical pain. Wisdom is something that only comes with experience and I'd hesitate to think I have a monopoly on it, especially when it's someone's else's life we're talking about.

i never claimed that i have a monopoly on understanding or wisdom. and i'm specifically saying that i don't understand those people, especially their emotional and physical pain. wisdom is something that comes only with experience.. if you commit suicide, where does that experience come from then? and it's not just experience, it's how you interpret and learn from that experience that matters.

It's clear that you have not been in the kind of place that might lead someone to off themselves.

you're making the same mistakes you accuse me of making.

That's crap. Life is tough all over and everything you do affects others. Bums you out I offed myself? Too fucking bad. Here's hoping it doesn't hurt you so bad that you get bummed enough to off yourself. Yeah, suicide could be a selfish action but noone's paying the rent on my body but me. Like it or not I'm not in the philanthropy business, especially when it requires me to sacrifice my sense of self.

you're exactly right, everything you do affects others. i'm just saying people need to recognize this. if they don't care about how we feel and what they take away from the world, why should they care whether or not we respect their actions?

Knowing a little bit about both physical and the "grey" kind of pain I can tell you that for me physical pain is easy. Emotional and spiritual pain is something no one can help you with. Often times these things all work together, but unless you've had an adult sized serving of them I don't think you can say shit about anyone else that has.

what's an adult sized serving? go back and listen to that npr.com link. that's a fifteen year old girl, raped for two weeks by who knows how many people. she'll go to her home, probably a one room dirt floor house, probably never know what being "full" is, never having clean water or vacinnations, never knowing what hope is or success, living with the diseases and possibly children that those men gave to her. and i'll bet you she lives every day of her life until her heart or body can no longer function.
how many times have all of us been there when the world weighed on us so heavily it felt as those we were buried at the center of the earth? and how many times have those times passed and we've soared higher than we could've have dreamed? "and this too shall pass away" is truer than any of us may know. it's rarely ever as bad as we imagine.. and, on the flip side, often times not as good as we dream.

Maybe you've seen much more than me and have untold amounts of wisdom in the short time you've had but I'm willing to bet there are still things about life out there for all of us to learn. My answers only work for me. So I reserve judgement on the kinds of answers others use for themselves, especially when it concerns deep matters of the soul.

i'm not judging how they feel but what they do. i completely respect and empathize with how they feel.. i don't know of many situations that when i wouldn't respect how a person feels.. but i don't always repsect what they do.

charlie wrote:Maybe you've seen much more than me and have untold amounts of wisdom in the short time you've had but I'm willing to bet there are still things about life out there for all of us to learn.

exactly!

OK, we're going in circles.....

Paul3eb wrote:

charlie wrote:Maybe you've seen much more than me and have untold amounts of wisdom in the short time you've had but I'm willing to bet there are still things about life out there for all of us to learn.

exactly!

I think you miss the point I was trying to make. I think it's conficious that said ......
......knowing that you know only what you know, and you do not know what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Until you walk a day in my shoes, your opinion about my actions concerning myself and my demons are utterly invalid. Thinking you are in any position to make the call on whether someone was right or wrong for offing themselves is a judgmental DAB!!!!

then in that case we can't ever judge anyone's actions..

charlie wrote:..... your opinion about my actions concerning myself and my demons are utterly invalid.

Paul3eb wrote:then in that case we can't ever judge anyone's actions..

I try not to judge anyone's actions but my own, with certain exceptions for outright ugliness.

This topic is sort of fresh for me. A girl I grew up with, not a close friend, but someone I knew and hung with every so often from 6th grade on killed herself a couple months ago. I watched some of her struggles for a long time and though that may not have been my solution I can't blame her. Me being the kind of guy that thinks about stuff like this too much it's been on my mind lately.

It's just that if she were here and someone told her she was wrong for what she did I'd want to take them out back and shoot them in the face. Would that be wrong of me?