"I never asked to be born"

The vast majority of people who kill themselves are under twenty-five. They haven't acquired anything near the perspicacity needed for it not to be a rash decision that nobody who is even indifferent to them - hell, nobody who isn't a spiteful shoe-stain - should guide them towards. If you're twenty-four and you have people close enough to you to beat themselves up over your death, you probably could have had a good life if you'd waited out the storm.

edited 5th Dec '11 5:03:10 PM by DomaDoma

Hail Martin Septim!

So you say, but that hardly strikes me as an objective truth. Most likely, I just don't agree with your apparent axiomatic assumption that life is fundamentally a good thing, or even worth experiencing, which makes us unlikely to see eye to eye on the issue.

...Is this the part where I'm supposed to advise you to kill yourself? Nuh-uh. Not biting.

The axiom that life is worth protecting and you don't want to see your son die over a fleeting impulse may not be one that you share, but civilization would be in dire straits if everyone felt the same.

Hail Martin Septim!

The right to end your own life is kind of icky for me because I don't believe in free will, but if I were to assume it exists (which I do all the time for the sake of discussion), there's still the problem that we as a society generally assume that you're only able to exercise your rights to the fullest once you've gained an amount of life experience deemed sufficient (aka turn 18). I'd generally defend a right to end your own life but there are just sooo many things that make the matter complicated:

- Assuming a suicidal person (for the sake of argument lets assume he's like 25 or something) can be cured from depression with psychological help, should he still have the right to end his own life or should society be obligated to prevent suicide and get him help (which goes against his will, though this gets complicated even further when trying to determine if the person wouldn't actually prefer getting professional help over suicide)

- The fact that suicide deeply hurts everyone who cares about the person is another matter that shouldn't be overlooked, although I don't believe ones rights for autonomy should be infringed upon for the sake of "protecting" people from emotional pain, even though the autonomous action in question wouldn't infringe on their autonomy.

- Lastly, if suicide were made to be like "do it if you want!", incidents where people extort other people by threatening to suicide would probably significantly increase. It already happens, I'm sure, and it's not really a good thing because it puts a lot of pressure and unwarranted "responsibility" onto an innocent person for no good reason. (Unless you want to argue that the person shouldn't feel pressure because suicide is nothing to feel bad for or something like that...)

Murrl LustFatM

Um, what?

As for the rest, of course people don't want to see their loved ones die; that we don't want to lose things that give us pleasure is pretty much a given. However, it doesn't really have much to do with what I've been saying.

Well, legislation against suicide misses the point by a mile. You don't get rid of existential despair by punishing it. But acting as an individual I would feel perfectly entitled to infringe on my hypothetical husband's right to smoke in bed, never mind his right to die. Am I the only human being on this thread?

What I was saying in my last reply was that a general attitude of "hey, life is essentially meaningless and probably won't amount to anything, so what's the use of trying or getting attached" does not a healthy society make.

edited 5th Dec '11 5:22:59 PM by DomaDoma

Hail Martin Septim!

Eh, Captainbrass already won the thread. But I'll toss my two cents in anyway.

No, no one asked you. Plenty of people are going to do things at you without asking. You're here now, the only ticket out happens to be one-way...and no one knows where that train lets out at. I'd say making the best of here and now (in terms of life vs. death and taking a chance on reincarnation/heaven/eternity in wormy earth/etc. etc.) is probably the safest and most effective option.

If you really feel like checking out, go ahead. But you owe your friends and loved ones a chance to weigh in. I've got standing arrangements with every friend I truly care about regarding this, for both myself and them. Suicide is not a solution; its merely an action, and not a particularly effective one.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

A persons memories from infant and earlier is probably almost gone. Maybe you asked but everyone forgot.

However I like to think I blackmailed my parents into concieving me because I got bored of not existing and then we all forgot about it.

The only time I heard the phrase used, outside of tv, was when a parent was bitching at their kid about the cost of the kid's upkeep.

Please.

For me, there is a great difference between not being born and dying. As it stands, I do not want to die, but have absolutely no objections to not being born in the first place.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

It's obvious nobody's going to have any objections if not born.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

No matter how horrible your life is/was, there will always be at least one case of someone who had it worse than you.

Funny, I've only heard that phrase associated with mainly Americans.

Not to diminish any pain of Americans, but I think we forget that we have more options than other countries in solving our problems.

So either start doing what you can to improve the situation or go ahead and off yourself.

And by you I mean a general human outside in the world, not th OP or anyone in particlar.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

How is that even remotely relevant? If you're - for instance - blind, deaf, paraplegic, and in chronic pain, will it really improve the quality of your life to know that there is someone out there with the same issues and really bad acne?

I don't think this is a good reason. Sure, there are people who have it worse, but that may not mollify everyone who's not a starving African child in Somalia. In fact it may well be a dismissive platitude.

edited 7th Dec '11 4:10:30 PM by mailedbypostman

The way I always heared the phrase "I never asked to be born" is as an argument against the "you were born, so therefore you have to get married and have children whether you want to or not" argument.

If you want any of my avatars, just Pm me I'd truly appreciate any avatar of a reptile sleeping in a Nice Hat Read Elmer Kelton books

It's simply a matter of no matter how hard your life is, it can always get worse. BUT the flip side of that is that it can always get better. Nothing is as hopeless as you think it is. We see people survive horrific things. Instead of being discouraged by your own issues, look at these people as role models and inspiration.

Instead of a defeating and whiney attitude like "OMG! I didn't ask to be born!" I would rather hear:

"I really hate my life. What do I have at my disposal to change this? What steps can I take and where can I ask for help in making these steps work?"

edited 7th Dec '11 7:29:17 PM by Gabrael

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Coming from someone who works with children mostly who have been the victims of various levels of trauma, you think I would have more sympathy for adults dealing with the same things. Sometimes. But not always.

And yes, there is something my colleagues and I called "Crash Awakening". It's when we take the private practice patients, most of the time upper middle class to upper class, middle aged people who are suffering from various depression and anxiety disorders who just don't want to work with their doctors, and are always so down and sometimes emotionally combative, the ones who are just determined to continue being sick due to various reasons, but are still social functional and take them to where I work.

We escort them into the non-violent youth ward. We show them the extreme cases. The ones who don't get to go home to their nice suburban homes and don't have a chance at college. And we explain to them that these individuals can't help themselves. These patients are probably going to be with us forever. But the functioning individual can and they have to make a conscious choice to either work with the treatment, or just go home.

The last person I did that two was a loaded mother of three. She was an alcoholic whose depression costed her her marriage, her children, and led her into affairs and drug use. But she was still rich enough to keep herself out of legal problems and not really feel too many consequences of her actions. I showed her how there was a child who grew up in my ward because she attempted to set her baby sister on fire in the cradle because God told her it needed to come home.

That broke her open and allowed her to become more active in her therapy and treatment. She still sends me and annual update on her as well as was kind enough to use some of her money to treat the kids in the ward to holiday treats.

So sometimes, showing how someone has had it worse is a very effective therapy technique.

edited 7th Dec '11 11:03:35 PM by Polarstern

"Oh wait. She doesn't have a... Forget what I said, don't catch the preggo. Just wear her hat." - Question Marc

Wow. I have mixed emotions.

I hope the baby sister was okay.

I've used the thread title line before, but only when I'm tying to be as overdramatically angsty as possible for the lulz. I didn't know real people actually said this.

I was wondering why frisbees got bigger as they got closer then it hit me.

My personal opinion is that anyone who uses the thread title in any serious conversation is unbelievably selfish.

Suicide is also selfish, but I do understand some people feel so much pain they can't take it anymore. But hey! Can you at least talk to a couple of people you trust before you go and off yourself? If they're totally cool with it, take that as a the go-ahead and just self-terminate.

Better to be alive and feeling something than not alive and feeling nothing, as far as I'm concerned. Unhappiness is better than being null. And since there's a difference between never having been born and being dead, death is not a general solution to wishing you'd never been born. So, as far as excuses for suicide, this is a bad one.

Also, your problems aren't the end of the world. And you shouldn't make them so.

I'm thread-hopping a bit here, but my (older) sister uses a variation of this. She was in a car accident about 5 1/2 years ago that messed her up pretty bad*

, and she's often opined that she wishes she died in that accident. It's gotten to the point where my family and I kinda expect her to say it whenever she gets in one of her moods and then promptly ignore it since she ignores us whenever we try to help her or say she needs help or etc. She was a bit of an egotist before her accident, and egotism, depression, and all that fun stuff that happens to a brain due to a traumatic head injury don't normally mix well.

edited 18th Dec '11 11:40:54 PM by 0dd1

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

Definitely don't agree.

That's kinda...horrible. If you happen to be around people who aren't good people you're pretty much screwed then.

edited 18th Dec '11 11:49:42 PM by mailedbypostman

"My personal opinion is that anyone who uses the thread title in any serious conversation is unbelievably selfish. "

I agree with this. I also have generally an "all life is sacred" outlook, and don't think suicide is ever an acceptable thing to do either.

To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

I tend to not view it as an acceptable way out due to the fact that there's so much more that it affects beyond you. I suppose that death may just be it and that you won't have to worry about that, but still there's more than you. There's family, friends, people who have to clean up your mess, paper work that needs to be filed. Everything you do causes action and reaction. Everything has a response of some sort and everyone is connected. And people have feelings. Keeping this "Everything is connected" thing in mind is important.

Not that I use this as a method of trying to prevent people from killing themselves. Guilting people out of suicide is a good way of failing at convincing them not to. It hurts, it tends to kick them down further. Also. Spite. An already emotional person might do something very stupid out of spite.

So while I find it highly selfish and silly and get angry about it (in part because I am angry at myself) I can't treat others who want to like that if I want to help them. I must be kind and merciful and find other avenues beyond cruel guilt.

edited 18th Dec '11 11:56:30 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah