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Suicide
why not just end it all?

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Suicide

Berkeley's Ghost
Moonlighting Idealist

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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 07/15/08 - 10:35 AM:	#11
I think we have all down this bitter road at some point in our lives. When the horrifying truth of death becomes clear to us and all life seems to pass away like myth one no longer believes in. All that is, from the mind of man to the expanse of the cosmos is simply passing from eternity to eternity, slipping through this temporal existence like a ghost; already dead but pantomiming life. There is no simply rational reason why one should not "end it all", just as there is no reason why one should "end it all." As for meaning, have faith in that which may be true and that which gives you hope. All too often people who raise high the banner of skepticism abandon their fervency for doubt when it comes to death and meaning. All is an unknown flux to them, but when the subject is death they treat is nature as a bitter certainty. But why!? Annihilation is victim to doubt as much as everything else. So have faith is that which gives you hope and that which your rationality may believe in, existence is only meaningless to the extent that you have faith in it being so. And if the truth is annihilation in the end "then let us live so that such annihilation would be an injustice." It is not easy to live, life is bitter and hard and at times there seems to be no reason to continue the suffering. We are doomed to toil on this road in the shadow of death, all I can tell you is that it has always appeared to me that our struggle is to find hope in belief, in faith. I hope that you can find such hope as well, but realize at all times that in your pain you are united to all those poor men around you who also suffer. It is your suffering that connects you to the community of man. I sometimes wish I could remember this fact more, Unamuno wrote that "one of the greatest sacraments of a temple is that it is a place where men come to weep together." I wish we could weep collectively more often in all the corners of the world. I wrote badly and excessively about this subject in another threat, I believe it was in the thread called "death"...hm... appropriate name.
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.-Miguel de Unamuno Ceiling Cat is watching you post.

Fiachna
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Posted 07/16/08 - 08:37 PM:	#12
How do you know there is no afterlife? Personally I see no proof for or against it. Otherwise, why would you not kill yourself? for the future, imagine had thomas krapper capped himself, we would still be taking a crap out the window! But I jest, what I mean to say is, how do you know what you do has no effect on the future, and aren't you curious to find out? Same question for the afterlife, aren't you just a tad curious or have you resigned to nihilism completely?

Philosophical
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Posted 07/17/08 - 11:18 PM:	#13
Adam P. Brunswick wrote: I am having trouble getting past this. If there is no life after death, then the 100 years we spend here means nothing; it doesn't matter if you live one year or one hundred years because in the end you will be annihilated and have no recollection of your life anyway! So the question is this: why not just end it all? The only answer I can think of is that it makes no difference whether you commit suicide or not--suicide doesn't follow necessarily from atheism; whether you let yourself live or not is entirely your choice, whatever you wish to do. The problem I'm having is that, even if you want to live and enjoy life, you will have no recollection of your life once you're annihilated. You won't be able to say, "Well at least I lived my life to the fullest!", because you'll be annihilated. Could anyone help me with this? I think your view of life is too narrow.. Life isn't a mere collection of memories we dwell on, life is here to be enjoyed and fulfilled. By the said '100 years' start dwindling and just before your mental faculties fail, you should either recollect thoughts as you described, such as 'Well, at least I lived my life to the fullest!', that or your will look back at your life like a pessimist and go 'Look how much I buggered this and that up!' Its a matter of your personal perspective - look around at the many perspectives just in this thread. Ultimately life is what you make it, its not here to simply be a continual process - though it would be nice if it never ended-, its a varied collection of stages combined into a very vast and interesting reality. Why not make the best of it before it ends?
“No one can give you any answers. There aren’t any. You have to discover for yourself—you must learn to navigate the mystery.” -Bill Hicks

Maloy
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Posted 07/20/08 - 06:49 PM:	#14
By nature, we are curious pleasure seekers. If you don't believe me, observe a newborn. No matter how bad it gets, I will never again contemplate suicide (unplugging a machine doesn't count as suicide) because I'm too curious to see what happens and I know there are still pleasurable experiences here even if there are also unpleasurable ones. I want to share an ancient Zen tale with you. I don't remember to whom it was ascribed but; A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
In the infinite library, there are no two identical books. -- The library of Babel. The only true nihilist is a dead nihilist.

Berkeley's Ghost
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Posted 07/21/08 - 09:41 AM:	#15
Of course I think this misses the heart of Adams question. We are not taking on the skin of Schopenhauer and trying to find some species of morality in suicide. Rather we are presenting to ourselves an imaginary situation, when a friend comes before us and asks "why should I not kill myself?" This is not so easy question to answer as to be silenced by a response like "there is so much pleasure in life." What our imaginary friend is asking for is not the taste of the fruit, but rather the blissful knowledge of teleology, he reaches not for the tree of pleasure but for the tree of knowledge. A very hard question indeed and I am still not sure if it is one that can be answered by another, there is subjectivity to it, it sometimes appears to be tried at its core to the individual.
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.-Miguel de Unamuno Ceiling Cat is watching you post.

Ishtar Dark
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Posted 07/23/08 - 02:52 AM:	#16
yffer wrote: There’s a middle ground. Existence or life is neither necessary nor not necessary, neither meaningful or meaningless…. Precisely. And it is this middle ground that most often throws people into the clutches of nihilism. Humans by nature best understand, and best agree with extremes, the blacks and whites - either it is, or isn't. In my opinion, it is when they realize that they are stuck inside a middle ground that they become nihilistic; since the "supreme purpose" or accomplishment eludes them, since they recognize "white" as not a real option, they opt for black rather than stay in a perpetual middle ground. To live, we must accept that we live in this middle ground; and though the superlative of being escapes us, we can always strive for an even higher comparative.
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in Night. God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

cckcckcc
Consciousness Incarnate

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Posted 07/23/08 - 02:03 PM:	#17
A zen Buddhist once told a story, "There were two waves rushing towards the shore. One wave exclaimed to the other in solemn despair, oh no, we are going to crash into the shore, cease existance, be no longer a wave. The other wave said, you are right, but fear not, even if we crash to the shore, we are still part of the ocean." Life is just a small leg of the trip existance embarks on. We fear death as the end of life, but life is part of humanity, humanity part of the universe, the universe part of existance. In the infiniteness of existance, all possibilities will happen. In the capacity of the human mind, all human possibilities can happen. Those possibilities include instances where they did not exist as well. In otherwords, we can dream about that beautiful car if we want, we can even work hard and go out and buy it, or we can choose to do neither. If we ultimately govern our own existance and can achieve every possibility, then one direction is to realize that no possibilities are necissary. Then from that point, we can realizes that reality bends to our own will. Existance only ends if we accept that it does. The mind can sum up eternity in only a moment. We are led to believe that death must happen, but just as mankind often believes that it is governed by the laws of the universe, it is really he who governs those laws.
"Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water." ~Zen Buddhist Proverb I have this sneaking suspicion that I am really God and have invented everyone and everything as a means of fooling myself into not being lonely. I'm not sure if it is working yet.

To
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Posted 07/24/08 - 12:33 AM:	#18
1. There might be life after death, in which case your argument is irellevant. 2. Your argument is "glass half empty": ' If there is no point in doing something,- then I should not do it' - Why not? Perhaps, iIf there is no life after death, my choice of whether to continue with should be based on whether on balance I enjoy this experience at the present moment, irrespective of the fact that there will not be a me to remember it in 100 years .

Philosophical
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Posted 07/24/08 - 03:47 AM:	#19
I think To had some posting issues.. And it it really a matter of if you're a pessimist or a optimist..
“No one can give you any answers. There aren’t any. You have to discover for yourself—you must learn to navigate the mystery.” -Bill Hicks

willallen
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Posted 07/25/08 - 05:44 PM:	#20
that is assuming that there IS no life after death. You can never be too sure... anyway.. its not about the destination, its all about the ride. Keep truckin.

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