Life vs. Death
chubbit
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Primarily, do you believe a person has his/her own right to their life, and therefore when it ends?
Secondly, where does it all go after this huh? A big fluffy cloud in the sky? Soul, reincarnation or null void ending?
What do you think?
I personally am pro life in the sense that a person has their own choice and control over their fate. They are entitled to do what they want at any given point, given the correct ammount of energy. People such as North Americans and Europeans can fulfilling lives while the people who are truly oppressed are not given this freedom. In that sense, anyone could technically end their life, or live their life so long as they know the rules of the world they live in.
Reincarnation would be ideal, but generally I can only seem to grasp that we are energy and somehow energy has to transition, because it is not so easy for it to just cease to exist. I guess I'm still wondering if there are more then just electrons running the place. Anyways. I'm pretty wired at this point in the night.
Secondly, where does it all go after this huh? A big fluffy cloud in the sky? Soul, reincarnation or null void ending?
What do you think?
I personally am pro life in the sense that a person has their own choice and control over their fate. They are entitled to do what they want at any given point, given the correct ammount of energy. People such as North Americans and Europeans can fulfilling lives while the people who are truly oppressed are not given this freedom. In that sense, anyone could technically end their life, or live their life so long as they know the rules of the world they live in.
Reincarnation would be ideal, but generally I can only seem to grasp that we are energy and somehow energy has to transition, because it is not so easy for it to just cease to exist. I guess I'm still wondering if there are more then just electrons running the place. Anyways. I'm pretty wired at this point in the night.
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As for what happens after you die, my approach is what will happen will happen, and there's no sense wasting the precious life we know we do have worrying about it.
By which I mean even if you don't consider it a fundamental right, there's a good chance it's still gonna go down. Outlawing suicide doesn't really do much other than send a message, because, of course, you can't exactly punish someone who's dead.
I'm of the "null void" camp if you consider my consciousness in the abstract. In the physical sense, I suppose my rotting corpse will get incorporated into something else sooner or later - at the very least a decent meal for some decomposers.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yes, I realize depression is a real and debilitating condition, but it can be treated, and anyone, no matter how depressed they are, should be able to see that. I've been pretty badly depressed, but never once did I ever seriously consider suicide, because there is no justification in making other people miserable just because you are.
That being said, I do support euthanasia, provided it is a decision made collaboratively between the ill person (if capable of making decisions) and his/her family. If the ill person is not capable of making decisions, then I would fully support any family that decides to move on if they so choose.
But only after it has been proven that the desire for it is a true, permanent one, rather than a psychotic episode or a stint of depression.
But if someone is, in fact, in their "right mind," it's their body.
But being in your right mind and being suicidal is pretty damned rare.
I hope you won't mind if I play devil's advocate here. I'm not trying to be a dick, I promise.
This is far and away the most common criticism I've heard regarding suicide: That it's a selfish thing to do, because it neglects those who live on, and who will ultimately be hurt by such an action. But in reality, isn't that a little like telling someone, "Hey, you need to stay alive for me?" Isn't that just as selfish, and equal to telling someone what they should do with their life? Should an individual really consider the value of their life and the weight of their pain against the value of another person's (transient) feelings?
I'm not trying to trivialize suicide. I know that people have episodes, and that usually they aren't in their right minds when suicide feels like an option. But if someone honestly, truly feels that their life is not worth living, and that death is their only option to freedom, it just seems wrong to have this attitude.
Then again, I could be overlooking something, or simply being very narrow minded. Any thoughts here? I certainly don't advocate suicide myself, but my perspective is that anyone's life is their own, and I feel suicide is necessarily included in those rights.
My logic behind this is that hurting someone's feelings is akin to punching them in the face. The way I see it, I have a fist, and I should be able to do whatever I want with that fist, right? Who are you to tell me I can't punch you in the face if I want? Because that would hurt you? Well, so what? It's not my face.
I'm not trying to be glib here, I'm just trying to impress the fact that dying on someone who loves you, for no apparent reason (to the person being left behind) is depriving that person of a loved one and, in my humble opinion, if I had to choose between losing a loved one, no matter how depressed/miserable they were and being punched in the face, guess which one I'd pick.
*disclaimer* please note that I'm talking about people who kill themselves out of desperation/depression. Please see my previous post for my opinions of euthanising terminally ill people.
Uhh... there are some problems with that logic.
I disagree and can assure you I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
edit: In other words, if you deal with people you will eventually hurt their feelings in some way. In the case of suicide, the individual probably doesn't even realize the hurt they cause.
Given.
I think that many suicides occur because they feel (incorrectly) that they won't be hurting any one else's feelings, and see no viable alternatives. They're ridding the world of a nuisance.
Do you believe it's possible to forfeit that right? I notice a lot of self-described "pro lifers" tend to also be pro capital punishment.
So if someone calls you stupid it's A-OK to pull a gun on them in self-defense, right
Or at the very least call the police and press charges for aggravated assault
Yes--why wouldn't they take the full consequences of their action into account? That doesn't mean that suicide is never defensible, but rather, that much like in anything that we do we consider the repercussions on those around us.
I guess you've never heard of harrasment?
Being called stupid, and walking into a room to find your sister hanging from the ceiling/bled out all over the floor are very different levels of pain and trauma. The fact that being consistently called stupid can have lasting psychological effects may give you some inkling of the damage that finding the dead body of a loved one, killed by their own hand because they didn't think you loved them and that their very existence was more painful than anything that could possibly be found in death, might cause.
Also being called stupid generally doesn't illicit a cripling amount of guilt for actions that you never took, or never knew to take.
Seconded.
But then those involved aren't even really missing the person so much as the relationship and the place that the deceased once occupied in their own lives. The living have problems, not the dead. We mourn their passing because we acknowledge what they meant to our own conscious existence, because if we gave any regard for what they meant to themselves, we'd probably be more at peace with their decision to end their own lives.
That said, suicide seems wasteful and cowardly, but not necessarily selfish. What does one gain from one's death, which is effectively an abdication of consequences, beneficial or otherwise?
By what definition? Peace implies an experience. Death is to life as nothingness is to substance. It's simply the lack thereof.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Good. I suppose I'm defining peace as lack of pain, equivalent to oblivion.
Lack of pleasure as well as pain, or any stimuli whatsoever. It's simply beyond any conscious comprehension because it requires, by definition, nothingness. Which we can only attempt to interpret in the form of blackness or empty space.
Yes. For a person that considers suicide, the resultant conditions are acceptable as a cost. There are various assumptions implicit in that statement, I trust you to identify them.
Pretty much I always have a desire to kill myself to find out what happens after death, which is something I've been analyzed and treated for. But really I'm not depressed, I just really want to know what happens after death.
That last part was probably a little too revealing, but whatever.
Also, if get hit by a bus and wake up to see God, I'm going to be in some deep shit.
I support euthanasia, and people's choices, if I had a terminal disease that wasted m away, oor was in great pain, why put off the inevitable? If I was a vegetable kill me, what is the point of my continued existance if I can't do anything? It would not be allowing my family and friends to move on.
But none I think do there embrace.
The exception of course is terminally ill patients, who I feel should have a right to end their own life and to transfer that right to a third party if they do not feel they will be competent to make the decision.
Aside from jumping out of a window because you think you can fly, the mental illness that results in suicide attempts cannot be characterized as "not being able to comprehend what one was doing."
It's an attempt to escape the pain caused by the illness.
Those are the kinds of "I'm your big brother and I know what's best" laws that make us all less free.
Yeah?
How does it make you less free?
Harassment is entirely different from assault, and it requires a hell of a lot of effort for a relatively minor punishment as compared to something like assault, which requires very little effort but massive consequences.
Look, I'm not saying that emotional pain is all shits and giggles, but when your opening statement in an argument is "hurting someone's feelings is like punching them in the face," you're not just inflating to emotional damage to absurd levels (if someone hurts your feelings, they should be thrown in jail), you're trivializing violence, and you've got a hell of a lot to do to make that position defensible.
I'm not free to kill myself.
You don't want to kill yourself though.
anyone who tries to impose thier will on another person attempting to end thier own life is violating that person freedom to choose thier own fate, an idea that the United States of America was founded on.
This is not anything like a moral or personal issue, it is simply a matter of respecting another persons choices.
No, you don't.
If you did, you'd be dead now.
The point is that most of the people who kill themselves are mentally ill and not properly in possession of the mental faculties to which the recognition of full legal rights is awarded. Their rights are not being violated when they are prevented from carrying out their will.
So how is society to tell who is in possession of their faculties to the extent that they possess the full rights of an adult?