Bartholomew said:
The emotional side can be mostly tossed away in the face of near-immortality. As to the philosophical side, you would have to be very, very sure of yourself. Mere tendencies would not be sufficient.
Have you ever been suicidal? Personally, I believe it is an emotional decision. When failed businessmen commit suicide they are not acting on philosophical grounds; they are acting out of despair from loss of status and what they have built up. If they had potentially unending lives, it would be no big deal; they'd just spend another eyeblink of a 20 year stretch and regain what they had lost, with eternity still stretched out before them.
I agree, emotions could be tossed away easily because you had an unending life. And indeed, many reasons for hating failure would be forgotten simply because we had tons of time to make up for it. However, there is still the notion that everyone must yield to: life involves joy/success AND suffering/defeat. I admit, I have thought of and thought about suicide - but how do I know that my thoughts are the same as anyone else? From that experience, I definitely wouldn't conclude that everyone who was suicidal must be thinking only of the fact that they have no time to make up for failures. Suicidal tendencies are not only there because there's no time to make up for it. I found that experiencing or knowing the inevitability of defeat or suffering itself can be the problem.
However, I am commending you for embracing the idea that suffering is simply a part of life, not something to be hated, feared and avoided - but others may not share the same belief. Why? Because they have nihilistic or idealistic tendencies (I'll agree that such tendencies cannot be weak, since they must at least have some effect on someone). If suffering exists in this limited life, suffering will continue to exist in an unending life. Those with such tendencies believe that suffering is either a "bad" thing, or simply something that they don't want to experience any longer. I agree, older people are more likely to suicide, and do have more reasons for suicide - no time to make up for their suffering, weaknesses or defeats, less freedoms, etc. But if suicides were only a matter of having no time to make up for defeats, teens and younger adults (ones who have time to rebuild their lives) would rarely ever be committing suicide - however, many young people still do.
http://www.mentalhealthscreening.org/infofaq/suicide.htm
Suicide is a complete inversion of our instinctive value for life and experience, but sometimes the severe hatred for suffering is enough to bring some people to suicide. They do not need to be complete philosophical nihilists to do that, they just need to BELIEVE strongly enough about certain reasons and the accompanying emotions that foster suicide. Remember that not all people are so 'rational' about their suicide that they would always consider all the pros and cons. Even if they have an unending life, these suicides would still happen (albeit, to a lesser extent).
Think about it like this, of all the religious people in the world, most are not very strong believers. Some have stronger beliefs, but the majority do not even have close to what they have, but they still act according to religion. Suicide is the same deal. They do not need to have an encompassing, and truly nihilistic/idealistic thinking before they will kill themselves. They only need to convince themselves that their reasons (could be embarassment, fear of pain/consequence, weariness of struggle) and the accompanying emotions are stronger than the will to live.
In fact, a true nihilist would not even bother to try and suicide. He does not value death more life, suffering is the same as pleasure. To him, both are the same, worthless, valueless, meaningless action or event.
