S
Siagos
Member
- Mar 30, 2019
- 20
If all suicides are "tragic mistakes", then how can it be claimed that a person who commits suicide acted selfishly? Clearly, if it's a mistake, then it's a mistake whose primary victim is the one whose supposedly "precious" life has been sacrificed, not the grieving loved ones - unless they decide to take their own life in turn, in which case they can hardly complain. So really, whenever someone condemns suicide as selfish, what they really mean to say is that suicide is an extraordinarily unselfish act carried out on the misguided assumption that it is "for the best". In other words, the person was trying to be selfish but failed spectacularly.
And so what if suicide is done for one's own sake? If we're being honest, most of what we do we do for ourselves. How is deciding to end one's suffering at the price of another's (probably less intense) suffering any different than, say, deciding to go to a movie instead of donating that money to some starving child in Africa? Yes, most people who kill themselves do so in order to alleviate their own suffering and don't expect anyone else to be better off as a result, and are thus "selfish", but that's fine, because if they were alive they'd still be acting "selfishly" just like the rest of people in society, but in a different way.
So yes, suicide is selfish, but if the only reason you can give someone to stick around is that you'll miss them, you are too. That's okay, but don't expect them to take it too seriously.
And so what if suicide is done for one's own sake? If we're being honest, most of what we do we do for ourselves. How is deciding to end one's suffering at the price of another's (probably less intense) suffering any different than, say, deciding to go to a movie instead of donating that money to some starving child in Africa? Yes, most people who kill themselves do so in order to alleviate their own suffering and don't expect anyone else to be better off as a result, and are thus "selfish", but that's fine, because if they were alive they'd still be acting "selfishly" just like the rest of people in society, but in a different way.
So yes, suicide is selfish, but if the only reason you can give someone to stick around is that you'll miss them, you are too. That's okay, but don't expect them to take it too seriously.