When is suicide justified?

baywax

In the case of regular suicide... if that's possible... the person doing it thinks they are better off dead... so in both cases there is a similar illusion, assumption and abstraction about death... which could be very wrong for all we know.

f95toli

Not really.
The first organization to systematically use suicide bombings were the Tamil Tigers and they are communists, i.e. they are -at least officially- atheists.

There are plenty of other examples where people have willingly gone to their deaths for a "greater good" even though they did not believe in an afterlife.

jreelawg

I'd say that if you are backed up by an angry mob to the edge of a cliff, and they are wheeling out the torture devices, it would be reasonable to jump off the cliff, although fighting your way to death if possible may be a reasonable alternative.

Also, like the people jumping out of the twin towers on 911, jumping to their death rather than burning alive.

But people who commit suicide for dumb reasons like their stock went down, or because their girlfriend broke up with them, or because they lost their job, or have no friends, etc., they are just very confused and ought to be more reasonable how they talk to themselves.

It is better to find any reason what so ever to live than to wish to die. Some people who think that they have nothing to live for just need some kind of purpose. Go joint the peace chore, go on a search for big foot. No one is doomed to be worthless, don't be selfish, put yourself to some kind of use.

If you feel guilty for something horribly wrong that you did, then rather than being a coward and offing yourself, why not try to give back to the world and strive to break even by do things that are right. Try reach a point where you can at least leave the world with some dignity.

f95toli

Well, I sort of agree.
However, it could of course be argued that -unless you are religious- nothing the peace corps does is really "meaningful" either (neither is searching for big Foot).
At least not if you by "meaning" refer to some objective quality.
What we consider to be meaningful is very subjective, it is very difficult to come up with any purely rational for why ANY human activity is meaningful; this is one reason why purely intellectual arguments rarely work when treating depression.

jreelawg

Helping others has a psychological effect on the brain. For many helping others brings about purpose, motivation, a sense of accomplishment, friends, self respect etc. All of the things that can get you through mental turmoil or suicidal thoughts.

You don't need to be religious to get these perks. In my mind, an earthly world is just as meaningful as a religious one. What kind of meaningful place would a perfect world be compared to one where you can solved problems and help the suffering. On earth where there is imperfection, there is work to do and meaningful things to accomplish in the sense that what you do has an impact on reality.

Now I don't want to put down religions, religious worlds are meaningful too, but life is at least as meaningful. Just saying that even if there is no correct religion, the meaning is still here and the reasons still justified, in my opinion.

Pythagorean

you're kind of admitting your subjectivity though by choice of words.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but objective is to fact as subjective is to opinion.

WaveJumper

I hate to be the one who brings humour to this serious thread, but you could always find meaning to life by opting for the obvious evolutionary purpose of "life" - sex(replication). If you find replication/sex out of reach, then the Esc. button is always within reach. As uncle Einstein says - you can't kill a dead person, "death" shouldn't be that scary to a person who knows what modern physics says about reality.

jreelawg

My point is that earning friends, staying busy, having goals, et, are real objective things. Those things could help your depression. As to whether or not it has cosmological meaning, probably not, but what does?

Also, evolution isn't entirely sexual reproduction. One could change the coarse of history, and that would effect evolution. Say you prevented a biological attack on an entire continent, that would effect how the human race evolves more than having a few kids. This is why ants help build colonies etc.

If you are going to not count reality as meaningful, that is like saying nothing makes a difference. Maybe on the cosmological scale the difference is extremely small, but there is still cause and effect and to me that alone is meaning.

The meaning in religion is that you will either get to keep living, the only difference between no religion is how long and in what manner. So I think that all forms of living are equally meaningful, even if one form is limited in time. Now I respect people who are religious, but being atheist doesn't require not caring about anything as if we are just specs of sand.

f95toli

That was sort of the point. As far as we know there is no objective (lets use the word "scientific", although not quite accurate) reason for why ANYTHING is meaningful, or -as you put it- makes a difference. As far as we know our universe is "meaningless", there is no objective reason for why it -or we- exists.
I realize that you can't really get far with this kind of reasoning (which I guess you could call agnostic nihilism) but I think the basic idea is important: you can't really use intellectual arguments to persuade someone that life is "worth living".

Note that this is quite a new concept in human history; only a few hundred years ago there were no atheists (it is sometimes said that Spinoza in the western world was the first atheist, but even he went to temple occasionally) and people were not even religious in the modern sense (it was not something you chose to be as it is today, since you couldn't really be NOT religious), hence "meaning" was something objective in that whatever religion you belonged to had certain rules for how you were suppose to live and die: it was either live well or go to hell (literally) when you died.

baywax

You've touched on a point I was going to bring up re: this topic.

Humour may be the lifeline many depressed and suicidal people can use to crawl back out of the state of mind they've found themselves in.

If laughter is the best medicine, why not use it? Of the two or so states of mind there are, humour and serousness... why is it seriousness takes the lead among a modern population with rooves, sidewalks, drainage, free schooling etc..... Can no one point out the positives and the humourous side to life for those people wallowing in self-pity etc..?

I met a girl who was slated to have part of her brain removed because it was somehow determined that part of her brain was causing her "blackouts". I personally believed the blackouts were some sort of attention getting device or an unconscious defense measure.

In fact I was with her when she had one of the episodes. She sort of crumpled up on the ground. That's when I started talking to her in a Donald Duck voice. And she started to laugh!... right in the middle of her "episode". I saw a glimpse of a way out for her... and a way to avoid surgery. But, seriousness and white lab coats prevailed and she's missing part of her brain today.

Suicide and other self destructive behaviour is a symptom of "buying into" our own and other people's beliefs. When a person has had a diverse education and experience they are able to weigh their thoughts and other's against more prevalent and proven ways of thinking that nullify and combat negative and self-destructive attitudes.

WaveJumper

Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

-- A.Einstein

jreelawg

I think that the problem is people tend to use the word "meaning" in this context as supernatural. Life has meaning, just maybe not a higher meaning than ordinary. Perhaps you should use the word reason instead. But, that is kind of a childish question to ask. Always asking why leads to more whys. Not knowing why you exist doesn't mean you don't exist.

Another word misused I think is "worth", "ie. life is not worth living". Certainly there is meaning and there is worth. The meaning is what you do and what happens in the world, as simple as that. The worth is the experiences and so forth. Your argument is only that the meaning is not enough. Like a spoiled kid who wants everything, people want to be the masters of the universe, they want to live forever and hold the stars in there hands. People just always want more.

If you count experiences as something of value then life is worth living because nothing has no value at all. That is why you should try and make your life more valuable by living a positive and happy life, make the most out of it for what it is worth.

If you are to say life has no meaning, or that life is not worth living, then you must define the terms and then you have an argument. Simply, if I can't have everything then I don't want anything is a poor ideal.

As to the point about reasons, maybe you intend to ask why one should do good instead of bad if your afterlife doesn't depend on it. How many people lose sleep at night over helping others or accomplishing goals? A lot more people lose sleep over hurting others and or ruining their own lives. I think that the most value in life is to be found in perfecting the science of "being able to sleep better at night" being happy with yourself and so forth. Some think things like money are better, but we are social creatures, and our minds are designed to depend on people to work best. This is scientific, no higher meaning required, it is the mechanics of the mind. You can use your observation, and you can tell what kind of people are the happiest. Maybe you should use modern technology to make sure they aren't lying though.


Also, I want to make the distinction between things you like to do and things that make you happy. They are not necessarily the same. Satisfying primitive urges isn't necessarily happiness. Does shooting up make a person happy in the long run? Does smoking crack? Some things give short lived thrills, but do lots of harm to the general long term well being.

f95toli

But again, I think you are missing the point. I am not saying that life does not have a subjective meaning, what I am saying is simply that there is -as far as we know- no objective reason for why one should get out of bed in the morning, or do anything at all for that matter.
"The meaning of life" has the same problem as any other philosophical question (or any problem in science for that matter); we basically have to postulate some axioms (which in this case could be e.g. "things that make me feel good makes life worth living") before we can proceed; you can't create a reasonably consistent system otherwise.

But the problem with this is of course that one has to accept these axioms in the first place and you can't persuade someone to do that just by appealing to their intellect.
Now, to a large extent these "axioms" (or whatever you want to call them) are hardwired into our us (we e.g. WANT things, food, love etc and we have reward centres in our brain that makes us feel good when we get them), but the interesting thing with the human brain is that we are aware that these things are just "hardware" meaning we can choose to ignore them or for some reason consider them to be "not enough" (as is to some extent the case in clinical depressions where the "feel good mechanism" do not work properly because of problems with seratonin levels etc).
If you are religious you can also postulate that some of the things we experience as "good" are not merely biochemistry but has some objective value.

No, but it does mean that I can't be SURE that I exist; which bring us back to what I wrote above about the problem with purely intellectual arguments in this case.
It would e.g. be very difficult (I would assume impossible) to persuade a computer (to be more precise a Turing machine) that life is worth living. I suspect that if we some day manage to create a true AI "life is worth living" is one of the things that will need to be postulated in its basic algorithms (and yes, I do realize that this is just Asimov's third law)

baywax

"The shortest distance between two people is a smile."

Victor Borg

tchitt

Nothing against Albert, but that's a load of crap. There's no such thing as a life "lived for others"... everything has its roots in selfishness, and there isn't anything wrong with that. But that's another topic.

As for the original post; the meaning of life comes from within. It's the type of thing that you need to make for yourself. We all feel a little hopeless, lost, and inconsequential once in a while... I'd be willing to bet even the more religious among us have their moments. It's never really justified, in my opinion. There aren't many things that can happen to you that time and a positive outlook won't fix.

Our "purpose" may be no more important than that of the grass in our yards. It grows to please our sense of aesthetics only to be cut down for the same reason. If the blade of grass had a consciousness how could it possibly fathom this endless cycle of death by mutilation? (Okay, maybe the grass doesn't actually DIE every time you mow the yard but you get my meaning.) Then again our purpose could be any number of things, and we'll probably never know what it is... or maybe we will. That's the problem isn't it?

My point is, basically, that to feel so overwhelmed and depressed about your life that you'd want to end it is ridiculous. I say stiffen that upper lip... we're all in the same boat.

jreelawg

I get your point, but I don't understand what is indented to be "meaning". I guess you mean, super natural purpose, or reason for living. To say their is no intellectual reason to get up I don't agree with. I get up because if I don't I would be laying there all day. Why do you eat? You eat because if you don't you die. Is eating meaningless? I think it means something, it means that our body will digest the food and give us fuel and keep us healthy. That means something to me. It is not subjective that if you don't breath you die.

You also say that if their was a heaven then there would be a reason, or reward, but what would that reward be other than continued self awareness and "rewards of the mind". Therefore, if life itself has no meaning, then no supernatural existence would have any meaning either.

The very fact that a quantum vacuum can organize into particles, atoms, and so forth until life and self awareness is enough of a mysterious and amazing wonder that I don't need a religion to satisfy my desire for something supernatural. If there is a supernatural meaning to life, then all the better, but other wise, so what. I'm not sure I would want to live forever anyways.

WaveJumper

Homo sapiens are no longer pure dumb animals. If you think we are, you are wrong. We are animals but of a different sort. I've yet to hear of an animal that possesses altruism, beside some dogs that are willing to die for their owners. We feel compassion, we fall in love, we can't live without our children, that's what "life lived for others" means. Sure, there are pathetic idiots who never felt anything remotely similar to compassion or love toward anyone in their lives and that's why we sometimes call them "animals" or "apes"(at least in my own native language).

BTW, "others" does not signify "society" but "friends/loved ones".