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Is suicide an act of cowardice and selfishness?

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F#A#Oo

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I just found out that someone I use to work with has commited suicide...

Basically he got behind on mortgage repayments and got into massive debt. He was recently told he would also be made redundant at work as they were removing his position. He has a little 3 year old girl too...which is really sad and my heart goes out to her. The thing is though it wasn't all this debt and work that was too much for him...his wife just found out he was having sex with other men and she confronted him about it. A few days later he hanged himself.

At the minute I don't really feel very sad for him...I feel really bad for his wife and daughter...I cannot even begin to imagine how this will effect them for the rest of their life.

My initial reaction and thoughts to be honest when I was told...was that he has acted selfishly and cowardly in that he wasn't thinking about his wife and kid and that his death will only bring more untold pain to them...rather than him just facing up to the issues he had going on in his life...

Am I justified in holding such a view?
 
You are not justified in generalizing it to all suicides. Perhaps you are justified to say it about his suicide, I dont know.
 
It can be shortsighted and cowardish in certain instances.
But it certainly always isn't cowardish. Some people have true chemical imbalances in their brain which distorts ones ability to rationally cope with life's challenges.
 
When you have kids, kinda. And it sucks and it is, at that point, selfish.

Otherwise, no. It's being so fucking sad that every day is struggle. And unless you are depressed or were you will never understand the feeling. And if you're medically depressed it is really hard to ever not know the feeling.
 
Some gaffer made a great post about this, unfortunately I forgot who it was.

It's selfish if you're lucid and fully aware of yourself and your surroundings. People who kill themselves often aren't.

They call depression a "chemical imbalance" because that's what it is. It isn't something you make up for yourself or something you can control. Your brain is physically fucked up. You think the wrong things. You perceive everything differently than every normal person. Are people with brain damage and mental retardation selfish for not being able to control their deficiencies?

Think about it this way. Have you ever felt scared in bed at night, like there's a shadow that's moving that's scaring you, or you think something totally silly like your nightmare you just woke up from is real? Now imagine what an outside observer thinks. "lol look at this idiot, he's fucking afraid of dark shadows on his wall. Dude, it's just a reflection of a tree!" But you're fucking terrified. You're hearing sounds and you think it might be an intruder or even something as ridiculous as thinking there's a ghost, even if just for a few seconds. A person with depression lives like this all the fucking time. It's common to read about people who think there are people or things behind corners waiting to kill them. That's why they don't get out of bed all day. When they say life is a living nightmare all day every day, they're not being hyperbolic or dramatic. Their brain is fucking up their perception of the real world, and they see and feel things that we don't. They can't help it. They need help. They are not selfish.
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It's impossible to know what really is happening in the head of someone who commits suicide. I don't see it as a coward act, I see it s a desperate act of someone who didn't find a way out of his problems. Of course the family will suffer the most from it, but God knows how much suffering the guy was enduring.
 
I've never accepted this tendency, as opposed to logic, in labelling it selfish.
 
That is generally an unpopular opinion to hold on gaf, the usual argument is that suicidal people aren't thinking rationally. You've picked a good case to argue for it with though, I must admit.
 
Raistlin said:
I think it matters the circumstances. In this case, I can't really disagree with you.
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Yeah, I kinda feel the same about this particular case of suicide, though it doesn't apply to every suicide of course.

This thread may end up going really bad, and the title you chose for it will not help matters.
 
This dude bitched out. He was a father and a husband and at that point, it doesn't matter how you feel, you man up to your responsibilities.

Same goes for any parent and ideally any spouse.
 
F#A#Oo said:
I just found out that someone I use to work with has commited suicide...

Basically he got behind on mortgage repayments and got into massive debt. He was recently told he would also be made redundant at work as they were removing his position. He has a little 3 year old girl too...which is really sad and my heart goes out to her. The thing is though it wasn't all this debt and work that was too much for him...his wife just found out he was having sex with other men and she confronted him about it. A few days later he hanged himself.

At the minute I don't really feel very sad for him...I feel really bad for his wife and daughter...I cannot even begin to imagine how this will effect them for the rest of their life.

My initial reaction and thoughts to be honest when I was told...was that he has acted selfishly and cowardly in that he wasn't thinking about his wife and kid and that his death will only bring more untold pain to them...rather than him just facing up to the issues he had going on in his life...

Am I justified in holding such a view?
Click to expand...

Well the fact that he was (presumably) gay and forced to live a lie, coupled with the debt, and being laid off...

Let's just say I don't think we're in any place to judge him for what he was going through, especially over the internet.

Also, I don't think suicide is something most of us living people can truly understand. For the people that do it, it's the end of the line and the only possible choice in their mind.
 
No, but in most cases I would say it is irrational and outside of people with terminal illnesses I will never buy the "respect their decision" line. I've known too many suicide survivors who went on to overcome their depression.
 
The only time I would say suicide is both cowardice and selfish is in murder suicide situations. Other than that there are probably other cases where you could argue cowardice ans selfishness but suicide is something that can't really be generalized though suicide threads on GAF usually go around with over half the people thinking any form of suicide shows both cowardice and selfishness.
 
You shouldnt be calling a dead person selfish.
Death is a terrifying thing, and when someone is messed up enough to embrace it, they have well deserved the right to be remembered for their good points and not because of their troubles.
 
I agree with the OP that this particular suicide was the result of cowardise and in my opinion most suicides are. I disagree with the posters saying that it is a case by case thing, I do agree that most people that kill themselves are probably depressed but that is no escuse, since people just don't kill themselves in a wimp. they plan it, then act on it
 
Suicide is the end result of debilitating mental health issues. The same way death can be the the end result of terminal cancer.
If someone is traumatically depressed they don't experience "rational thought" like you or I. We don't call those who are anorexic crazy or assign them a label like stupid yet the judgement of the fatally depressed flows freely.
 
hate these threads.. one of those topics that everyone is really opinionated on the subject regardless of what experience they have with depression
 
Actually, the type of people that call it cowardly are probably the type that shrug off depression and make life harder for these types of people.
In short, you make me sick.
 
I think it's more selfish to expect someone to live in misery so you don't have to miss them.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
 
All around a great convo about suicide http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3348671

There's a quote by David Foster Wallace that states it better:

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flame yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
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Kinyou said:
Some gaffer made a great post about this, unfortunately I forgot who it was.
Click to expand...
That's a nice explanation, but I'd expand it to include other circumstances. For example, choosing to go out on your own terms because of illness, etc ... those are valid (lucid) reasons that aren't selfish or cowardly imo.
 
There's nothing I want to say that hasn't already been said so I'll just leave one of my favorite quotes.

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.”
 
MiDNiGHTS said:
There's nothing I want to say that hasn't already been said so I'll just leave one of my favorite quotes.

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.”
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While it sounds nice, in practice we all draw the line at where to judge people in different places. And we all do draw it.
 
Not sure but at my job 2 people commited suicide in my 5 years and they were both pretty young. One kid was taking some quit smoking pills or whatever and got depressed I guess. The other one was this cute girl I was going to ask out which really weirded me the hell out when I heard how she died.
 
It's definitely inconsiderate and literally the easy way out. I mean, if you're literally being tortured or if you live through apocalypse or something... but to just kill yourself because your sad is lazy and cowardice. Depending on the circumstances it can also be selfish. BUT

I feel bad for people that do it, it takes a deep level of depression to go through with it. Depression is a mental disability, it's medical, an imbalance in the brain - it triggers sometimes when someone experiences too much traumatic stress. Almost like dying of a stroke... so it's not as simple as them being big pussies. I really hope people who think they're experiencing mild levels of depression look for help before it gets too bad.
 
Back in May I seriously considered suicide (thankfully got help). I saw it as a means of escaping my problems. It was one of the very few ways that I saw to get out of the hole that I was in. I don't think it's a cowardly thing (most of the time). People might just be in the state of mind that they don't think of how it will effect everyone else. I don't think they mean to hurt the people around them, it's just at that moment, they're thinking about themselves. So yeah, it is a bit selfish to commit suicide.
 
I see people are mentioning depression and mental illness but the thing is his wife says he showed no such signs...and she went through post-natal depression.

At the minute it just looks like he felt ashamed/embarassed and terrified of the prospect of living his life openly gay...atleast that's my take on the "why" and so in my mind he put his shame/embarassment before thinking about his wife and kid.

I agree with people though if he had a mental illness than it can explain alot...but I certainly don't believe that to commit suicide you have to be mentally ill though...
 
Milhouse31 said:
All around a great convo about suicide http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3348671
Click to expand...

My friend had aspergers and psychosis which effectively disconnected him from ever having a place in the world. He took his own life recently and nobody called him selfish because he "seemed ok".
Really, the suicide rate in my country is the highest out there, and im beginning to think that its due to lack of awareness on the subject of mental illness. This shit needs to be taught alongside sex ed at schools.

F#A#Oo said:
I see people are mentioning depression and mental illness but the thing is his wife says he showed no such signs...and she went through post-natal depression..
Click to expand...

She was quite clearly living a lie, and apparently so was he.
 
Selfish? No. What does he gain? He has lost absolutely everything. EVERYTHING.


Coward? I don't think so. You can say he was afraid of having to deal with all the ramifications of his behavior. But on the other hand, it takes a lot of bravery to take your own life. Perhaps he did what he did because he felt it was the best thing he could do.


You are certainly right to have sympathy for the wife and daughter. They are in a very difficult situation.

But I may feel bad for him as well. How did he get into this situation? Perhaps family/society has pressured him so much to fill the 'family man' roll . . . have wife & kid. But his reality is that he is a gay man and thus he got pushed into an terrible situation. He tried to do the family man thing according to family/society pressure but cracked because he was a gay man and he just couldn't do it. If that is situation, I have sympathy for him too.
 
The act of suicide is inherently selfish imo, unless there's absolutely no one to mourn your passing.
 
I agree that if someone is mentally or terminally ill that they shouldn't be judged for committing suicide, no one should be feel forced to live in pain. Still though, I'm not going to feel sympathy for him when much of the situation that pushed him to suicide was brought upon by himself. ( or at least, that's how it seems from the way the op told it ). Rather, I feel bad for the wife who was cheated on with little closure on the situation, and is now stuck with all their debt now.
 
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