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Originally Posted by Parthon  Most of my beliefs around suicide are actually reflected in this great article: The Spiritual Consequences of Suicide
The main problem for me is that I think about who chooses suicide, and why. A healthy, wise person who is living their desires and dreams certainly wouldn't want to cut their experience short. So if someone does want to, then they either aren't healthy, aren't wise or aren't living the life they want to live. Now, most of the time, health, wisdom and quality of life can be improved. If it can't though, then that's another matter. |
I think you are setting up what life 'should' be and if it isn't that, then people can kill themselves. I actually think that this kind of expectation on life is what leads people to suicide. Life should be X, but it is really Y. People resist that. And suicide is the final choice in that resistance.
The thought of killing oneself has spiritual implications. And I'm not talking about burning in hell. I mean that it is a point of spiritual death/re-birth. So I would say that people who have contemplated suicide and lived through it are really alive as opposed to pacified zombies.
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It all comes down to accepting the consequences of actions. That person's unique presence in the world will be lost, thei path will never be travelled and their expression to the world will never be experienced. There will be a gap. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's something that will happen.
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Perhaps if I believed that people's value could be measured by their carbon footprint or that they were just bio-chemical robots, then it wouldn't particularly matter if they self-destruct. But I know too much. I know people's value is immeasurable. I know that they are more than their body and mind or their past or what any particular belief system says they are.
And I would say that anyone who understands those things from beyond an intellectual point of view would not consider killing themselves as a viable option.
If anything, suicide is a result of our society's contempt for itself. Making it more acceptable is just a recognition of that contempt and that we can't find a good reason to be alive. Why would you revel in that?