What's Up Now?

I need to say at the outset that I am NOT depressed and I am NOT suicidal.  I don't want somebody reading this to rush to a telephone and call the cops to haul me away to a mental facility for "my own good."  Seriously. I have philosophical questions about life and death.  The answers I have found suggest life is not so special, so precious after all that every human being ought to be very, very interested in extending his/her life as long as possible.  I don't understand why living forever is a worthwhile goal.

I'm pretty sure nobody actually expects to live forever.  I don't think anybody reading this expects to be alive in 100 years.  But taking a 100 (or 200) year lifespan, what does that mean in terms of the life of the planet Earth, the Solar System, the galaxy, the universe?  Human life is insignificant.  It lasts no longer than the blink of an eye.  Any life.  Einstein, Jesus, you name it.

Let's say you want to raise a family and watch while they do the same.  Great.  Lots of kids and grandkids.  None of their lives matter.  You want to achieve goals in business or in your relationship with God.  So what?

I recognize that murder is a bad act.  You are depriving that person of the right to choose whether or not to live and how.  While I think the person's life is meaningless, I nonetheless consider ending it rude.  Society (in many countries) considers this the worst crime of all.  And then they get into wars with other countries or religions and do it on an enormous scale.  Somehow to prohibit personal murder and pursue mass murder can be explained by the same holy books.  No matter what book.  No matter where in the world.  This makes no sense to me.

Society says, the taking of someone else's meaningless life is a horrible crime.  OK, what about the taking of one's own life?  I can't see the rudeness.  You are ending something that's yours to end, right?  It's like a flame on a candle, subject to being ended at the whim of the universe.  You can be hit by a car, or exposed to a germ that kills you, or fall victim to any number of other life-ending problems.  Your life is entirely temporarily and fragile.  Under the circumstances, putting somebody under a psychiatric hold only make sense if you buy into society's view of the value of human life.  A view I do not share.

Look at it This Way

It isn't that life has to be pretty terrible to commit suicide, it's that life has to be pretty wonderful NOT to.

Which is the Best Model?

It would be a good thing if people thought differently about life and death.

Today, the idea is "Live as long as possible.  If necessary, use all the extraordinary medical technology available to extend life."  What's the latest news?  See http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/surgery-at-the-end-of-life/

People see Death as the enemy.  Consider the Dylan Thomas poem.  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377
and its rudimentary analysis here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night

Suicide today, if considered at all, is the answer to the question, "Is your life so horrible that you cannot stand to live?"

I think it might be otherwise.  "Having achieved the things you wanted in your life, is life so wonderful that you should continue to live?"

People fear death because living is all they know how to do.

People stay alive because it is difficult and/or painful to end their lives.  If there were an On/Off switch one could throw, I think a lot more people would choose to leave.

It is important to say again that I write all of this not because I am depressed but because I have a philosophical position on the subject.  Many would identify my position as an outgrowth of "existential nihilism."  I don't disagree.

The Subject -- First Thoughts

I'm going to ask you to keep an open mind when you read the subject of this book.  Society may have shaped your beliefs to the point you cannot imagine what I have to say having any value.  I understand.  The messages delivered by authority figures in your life and the beliefs of all your peers are powerful.  Perhaps the best way I can suggest you approach the subject is to DARE you to see the subject then KEEP reading a chapter or two before tossing the book in the garbage.  If you have a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter and feel compelled to stop reading, I'm sorry for you.  I would suggest you've been brainwashed.  Even if you are certain of the correctness of what you believe, read the book anyway. Mere words cannot hurt you, can they?  And if you are open to the possibility there may be something you haven't considered or if you're genuinely interested in a subject rarely discussed in our society, read on.

"Time For You To Leave" refers to deciding when you should depart this Earth.

Still with me?  Congratulations on your courage.

We've been taught the wrong things for countless generations.  Those who throw this book away or set it back on the shelf are so conditioned to believe these things that they couldn't even listen to another point of view.

We've been taught that it's our right, our obligation, to live as long as possible.  Consider the messages you've heard.  If you were to kill yourself, it would be a sin.  If you sought assistance from another person to end your life, even if you were at the end of life and in extreme pain, that person helping you would be committing a crime nearly everywhere in the USA.  If you say to someone, "It's a matter of life and death," nearly anyone who hears it will rush to help, because a human life is the most valuable thing in the world.

We've been taught that if we live according to a code of behavior (laws or commandments) given by some God to some prophet, our soul will live on after our physical body dies.  We will go to an afterlife, whether it be heaven, paradise, a reincarnation or some other equivalent.

In every religion, killing another human being is condemned and forbidden.  Killing and eating animals is OK.  Murder of non-believers (heathens, heretics, infidels, etc.) is acceptable, however, because they don't worship the same God we do.  They are unclean.  They are devils.  They aren't quite as human as we are.  (Just a little dark humor here.  The religions and nation states that go to war say our enemies are animals.  I wonder we aren't instructed to eat them once we've killed them on the field of battle.  Oh, that's right.  We're just as forbidden to eat them as we are to kill them in the first place.  I think the major problem is that our soldiers don't carry sauces with them.)

To be or not to be.  That is no question at all.

Unless science has made amazing advances, within no more than 200 years you will cease to be.  In time, every living thing, certainly every living human, dies.

To say you will "be dead" doesn't really communicate the state of affairs.  It isn't as though "you" will exist in some state of being dead.  Your consciousness will not have continued from life into death,  Unless you believe some religion's notion of your "soul" graduating into an "afterlife," such as Heaven, Paradise or Reincarnation, you won't "be" anything at all.

Society and religion say you must live forever. or die trying.  Look for that quote by Yossarian in "Catch-22."  Medical practitioners do everything possible to keep you alive, but they fail every time.

 "Assisted suicide" is illegal nearly everywhere in the United States.  Think how we demonized "Doctor Death," Jack Kevorkian.  To put it bluntly, we show kindness to suffering pets that we deny our fellow humans.  I think something is backwards there.

But I shouldn't climb on that euthanasia soapbox right now.

I have a very different point of view than society's "live as long as you can" mandate.  I think society should encourage you to die as soon as you accomplish your mission in life.  Rather than have society encourage people to live forever, it should encourage people to do what they need to do, then leave.

o o o

If you have another reason to live, fine.  Do so.  Without that good reason, the right thing to do, the just and moral thing to do, the thing to do for the planet and your fellow man, is die.    Many of you should be dead already.

But who and why?

What do you need to do?  What's your mission in life?  Let's see.

o o o

OK.  What's your mission in life?  It's the same as any living thing.  Reproduce.  Leaving religion and its mandates out of it, it is Nature's imperative that you pass on your genetic uniqueness to future generations.  Until we can scientifically design the genome for a baby, the only way to guarantee diversity in the gene pool is to have children, who have their own children, and so on and so on.

Once you have produced offspring, Nature is done with you.  Or, once you have decided not to have children, your unique genetic contribution will be lost to future generations anyway, so (again) Nature is done with you.

Society and religion today say you must stay alive.  Why do they say that?  Do you agree with them or is there a better decision you can make?


Why Live or Die?
--------------------------
Our lives are accidental and brief.  In a very short time we die.  And we stay dead forever.  If, perchance, the atoms that were a part of our bodies drift together again in what may well be millions of years or longer, they will not contain our consciousness.  That ends when we die.  (Unless, of course you've been inculcated with some religious belief that says your soul goes on after death.  I won't speak to that concept herein, except to say, "Give me a fucking break.  What are you, stupid?")

There's an expression "Life is too short."  It is usually used in the context of "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's ALL small stuff."  I see it from one side of what some call "glass half empty/glass half full."  I've heard people say, "Life is too short, so why hasten to end it?"  My take on it is different.  I say, "Life is too short, so why bother?"  By that I don't mean, "Why bother with any particular thing or task?"  I mean, "Why bother to live at all?"

I start from the proposition that death, being inevitable, might as well be desirable.  In fact, it should be the standard behavior for everybody.  To delay it is possible, but not necessarily a good thing.  I'll discuss below what I see are the reasons to continue to live.

Beyond Nature's imperative that people reproduce, so that their unique genetic makeup is carried into the future, there may be present in one's life factors that make it attractive to continue living.

-------
Faith

I may be citing the Judeo/Christian bible a bit here.  Not because I have any particular knowledge of it, but because it's ubiquitous in this culture.  I'm assuming, admittedly without justification, that other religions have similar concepts.  I'm not going to invest the time and energy required to take a course in comparative religions.  The way I see it, one person's lies are as good as the next person's.

I wasn't taught any religion.  There's good news and bad news about that fact.  The bad news is that I cannot fall back on my faith in times of adversity or confusion.  "People of faith" always have (simplistic) answers to explain things they cannot comprehend ("The Lord works in mysterious ways." "It's God's will." etc.).  One of the songs I think best captures that notion was sung by Dale Evans (of the "Roy Rogers and Dales Evans" TV show in the 1950s).  Its refrain was, "How do I know?  The Bible tells me so."  Can you say "tautology"?   You really should track it down & listen to it.  Amazing.

Another tautological song is called "I Believe."  I haven't sought the company of atheists, but I imagine "I Believe" makes them cringe (as it does me).

OK.  The Christians talk about being "Shepherds of Men."  They refer to their followers as their "flock."  I nod my head wholeheartedly and say, "If you lack the intelligence or the desire to form an opinion of your own -- if you really ARE a sheep -- and you're happy with it, fine.  Just don't try to proselytize me."  Then there are the people who have magnets on the back of their cars with a fish.  This represents, I suppose, the miracle where Jesus made many fishes out of one.  I say, "If you are as smart as a fish, (insert sheep comment here)."

They say, "Ignorance is bliss."  I'm neither ignorant nor blissful.  If I were religious, I might be.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that I'm not forced to believe what my religious leaders (a local rabbi, pastor or priest -- or some patriarch, like the pope) say.  I can think about things what my reason concludes.

The good news is that I can choose to be intelligent, curious, and informed.  I don't have to "grow up," which I interpret to mean "stop growing."  I know I don't have all the answers, or any of them.  I will never kill anybody for having a different religious belief.

An author, having finished the opus, runs into a world of entrenched opposition to even considering the propositions.  The internet, a blog, might be the only way.

I've always recognized I'm too lazy to write a book-length treatment of the subject.  If all I can manage is a long essay, I hope to release it on Halloween, calling it my "Trick or Treatise."  I crack myself up sometimes.

Sometime later, I might insert my thoughts about expository prose.  It will be worth reading, so keep at it.

We've been taught the wrong things for countless generations.

We've been taught that it's our right, our duty, to live as long as possible.  If you were to kill yourself, it would be a sin.  If you sought assistance from another person to end your life, even if you were at the end of life and in extreme pain, it would be considered murder nearly everywhere in the USA.  "It's a matter of life and death" causes anyone who hears it to help, because human life is the most valuable thing there is.

We've been taught that if we live according to a code of behavior, laws or commandments, given by God to a prophet, our soul will live on after our physical body dies.  We will go to some afterlife, whether it be heaven, paradise, a reincarnation or some other equivalent.

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way."  Thomas Paine

Nihilism vs. "The Bible Tells Me So"

Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

The term nihilism is sometimes used in association with >> anomie << to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws.


Kierkegaard
Friedrich Nietzsche
Martin Heidegger

------------------------------------------

My time here is nearly done and I'm smiling at the thought.

My reason for staying from moment to moment, in the greater scheme of things, is absolutely meaningless.  I stay to meet obligations to people (and my dog) who will be just as much dispersed atoms soon as I.  My notions of "duty" and "honor" can in no way be relevant to the universe and yet it feels "right" to fulfill my commitments.

I recognize such thinking is merely the result of values infused into my being by this society.  It's all crap.  And yet it satisfies me.

The results of my leaving may be pain for those I leave behind.  200 years thereafter, however, it won't matter to them.

The question is whether I *want* to take the next step.  I see its inevitability, but do I seek it?

----------------------------------------

At this moment and in this place, I am a 61-year old man.  As a child, I was physically and (more importantly) emotionally abused by an embittered, sadistic father and a narcissistic, misandrist mother.  My childhood was a little bit of Dickens and "Mommy Dearest" plus a lot of Alice Miller. (I would have preferred Alice Waters, but that was not an option available to me.)

I have been suicidally depressed before, but I'm not any more.  If you want, I'll tell you the long story.  What matters is that there is no extant exigency (I like the letters "ex").  Unless some accident gets me first, I probably *will* kill myself.  That, however, is not cause for alarm.  It is cause for celebration.

A celebration, that is, unless one has been inculcated with lies told to children by their parents and other authority figures.  If I talk about the ignorance and stupidity of the masses, will you accuse me of narcissism, megalomania with messianic delusions and grandiosity? Knock yourself out.

I don't care if it sounds pompous to say one million people in the U.S. have IQ's as high or higher as mine.  That also means over 299 million of them don't.  My fellow Mensa members needed only to have IQs in the top 2% (>130).  I'm in the top 1/3 of 1%, but none the happier for it.

----------------------------------------

What is the meaning of life?  What is God's plan for me on Earth?  Will I go to Heaven?

People believe there are no answers to those questions, but we can answer them easily.  Here is the fundamental problem.  The underlying assumptions we have about life are wrong.

There is no meaning to human life.
===========================================
There is, however, a purpose.  Actually, it's twofold and the same as for any living thing:  Reproduce and live forever.  Why?  Reproduce to pass along to future generations your genetic uniqueness.  Once we have done that, Nature has no further use for us.  Live forever (or die trying) so predators can kill and eat you to stay alive themselves.  The problem is that humans lack predators.  Instead of having the decency to become a meal for another animal we simply continue to live for a very long time, consuming the Earth's few precious resources.  Man truly is a parasite on the planet.

God's plan for you?  Seriously?
===========================================
If you believe in God, any God, you were probably inculcated with a set of lies by authority figures before you could make up your own mind.  Your parents, other relatives, teachers, community members, preachers pushed onto you the same things they believe.  Understand this: they were repeating words written by a man in a book.  If everybody around you believed the book Moby Dick were real, you'd be worshiping a white whale.  One person's lies are as good as the next.  Kill infidels (heretics, non-believers)?  You must be joking.  The accident of where somebody is born does not make them any more or less close to "God."  Instead of being indoctrinated in your youth, it could be that you were "Born Again."  That means you needed the comfort of easy answers in your life and so you sought to find them in religion.  Religion allows you to fall back on platitudes to explain every calamity. "It's God's will" covers many situations.

Heaven, Paradise, Reincarnation, any afterlife at all.
===========================================
This is the height of conceit.  Only humans, of all "God's creatures," don't die when their bodies do.  Their "immortal souls" go on to the next level.  What's the deal here?  People have either massive egos or massive fear or both.  They can't believe that this one life is all they get.  As far back as we have recorded history, some have survived NDEs (Near Death Experiences), in which they saw a white light, a stairway to heaven, angels, their dead relatives, or (recently) a view of themselves looking downward from the ceiling of the hospital emergency room in which they nearly died.  What they saw was a simple result of lack of oxygen to the brain.  You want to see heaven?  Here, let me strangle you.

----------------------------------------

"So, why do you live?"  'Inertia.'  "I don't want some philosophical answer.  Why do you live?"  'Ohh.  My wife.  My dogs.'  "Ahh, family.  OK."

This was at the end of a roughly 30-minute evaluation for being admitted to a psych hospital on a "fifty-one fifty," California's version of a 72-hour involuntary suicide watch.  I didn't want to be there.  I shouldn't have been there at all.  An inexperienced doctor whom I had met for the first time at another clinic had completely misinterpreted the situation.  I knew I was no imminent threat to myself or others.  Everybody (except, I suppose, the rookie doctor) agreed.  I was discharged immediately following the evaluation.  The problem was that the "intake, evaluate, prepare for discharge, discharge" process took 3 hours I'll never get back.

Now, while I wasn't a legitimate threat to myself at the time, I do have a strong opinion we continue to live because it's all we know how to do.  Ending a life typically requires doing violence of some kind to the body, either by somebody else or one's own hand.  One cannot merely snap one's fingers and disappear from this life in a cloud of smoke, like a magician's trick.

----------------------------------------

1955

The Bible Tells Me So
Words and music by Dale Evans Rogers

2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

                        Have faith, hope and charity,
                        That's the way to live successfully.
                        How do I know, the Bible tells me so.

                        Do good to your enemies,
                        And the Blessed Lord you'll surely please,
                        How do I know, the Bible tells me so.

                        Don't worry 'bout tomorrow,
                        Just be real good today.
                        The Lord is right beside you,
                        He'll guide you all the way

                        Have faith, hope and charity,
                        That's the way to live successfully.
                        How do I know, the Bible tells me so!

repeat 2 times

----------------------------

(How does he know)
Oh, how do I know
(How does he know)
Oh, how do I know
(This is how he knows)

Have faith, hope and charity
That's the way to live successfully
How do I know, the Bible tells me so
(The Bible tells him)

Do good to your enemies
And the Blessed Lord you'll surely please
How do I know, the Bible tells me so
(The Bible tells him)

Don't worry 'bout tomorrow
Just be real good today
The Lord is right beside you
He'll guide you all the way

Have faith, hope and charity
That's the way to live successfully
How do I know, the bible tells me so
(The Bible tells him)

So, have faith, hope and charity
That's the way to live successfully
How do I know, the bible tells me so
(That's how he knows it)

Do good to your enemies
And the Blessed Lord you'll surely please
How do I know, the Bible tells me so
(That's how he knows it)

Don't worry 'bout tomorrow
Just be real good today
The Lord is right beside you
He'll guide you all the way

Oh, the Bible says have faith, hope and charity
That's the way to live successfully
How do I know, (oh, how does he know)
How do I know, (oh, how does he know)
The Bible tells me so

Suicide Quotes

On Suicide
================
Suicide is our way of saying to God, 'You can't fire me, I quit!'
Bill Maher

Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries. Good luck. [suicide note]
George Sanders

We have to fight off the demons that have been hanging around suicide for centuries.
Judy Collins

Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.
Joseph Heller

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Phil Donahue

I couldn't commit suicide if my life depended on it.
George Carlin

She was what we used to call a suicide blond - dyed by her own hand.
Saul Bellow

If I had no sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide.
Mahatma Gandhi

Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
Gore Vidal

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
Cesare Pavese

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/suicide/
=================================
      “You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.”
 Chuck Palahniuk


      “Life is like a movie, if you've sat through more than half of it and its sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early.”
 Jon_Ace
 Doug Stanhope quotes

.     “Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live”
 Charles Caleb Colton

      “Not many artists commit suicide by leaping off the pinnacle of success.”
 eathian

      “I just couldn’t live with myself knowing I had just killed myself.”
 eathian
.
      “Why kill yourself? Life will do it for you.”

      “Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers”
 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes (American Writer, b.1922)

      “Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere”

 Thomas S. Szasz quotes (Hungarian psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, b.1920)

      “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night”
 Friedrich Nietzsche quotes (German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture, 1844-1900.)

      “The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over”
 Ernest Hemingway

      “Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.”
 Terry Pratchett quotes (English Writer, b.1948)

.
      “No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”
 Cesare Pavese

      “All healthy men have thought of their own suicide”
 Albert Camus


      “He would say, 'How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away someday, far away...' And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.”
 Arthur Rimbaud quotes (French Poet and Writer, 1854-1891)

      “It’s illogical, but I guess you could take a vitamin in the morning, and commit suicide in the afternoon.”
 eathian
.
      “If you throw someone a life preserver, and they turn around and swim away from it; what can you do but let them drown themselves.”
 eathian

      “To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.”
 Aristotle quotes (Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scientist and Physician, 384 BC-322 BC)

      “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”
 Albert Camus quotes (French Novelist, Essayist and Playwright, 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1913-1960)


      “When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas. , "Answered Prayers" (Unspoiled Monsters).”
 Truman Capote quotes (American short-story Writer, Novelist and Playwright, 1924-1984)

      “Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives”
 Henry Louis Mencken


      “Here in the bathroom with me are razor blades. Here is iodine to drink. Here are sleeping pills to swallow. You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don’t throw yourself down the stairs, that’s a choice. Every time you don’t crash your car, you reenlist.”
 Chuck Palahniuk quotes (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)

==============================
Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.
Karl A. Menninger

I don't persuade to suicide.
Jack Kevorkian

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!
Oriana Fallaci

I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.
Eric Burdon

I think about death a lot, like I think we all do. I don't think of suicide as an option, but as fun. It's an interesting idea that you can control how you go. It's this thing that's looming, and you can control it.
Ryan Gosling

I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
Damien Hirst

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
Sonny Rollins

If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
Ursula K. Le Guin

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
Friedrich Nietzsche

My husband and I didn't sign a pre-nuptial agreement. We signed a mutual suicide pact.
Roseanne Barr

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.
Octavia Butler

That's the thing about suicide. Try as you might to remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.
Anderson Cooper

The great thing about suicide is that it's not one of those things you have to do now or you lose your chance. I mean, you can always do it later.
Harvey Fierstein

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
Ernest Hemingway

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Arthur Schopenhauer

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
Aristotle

We can consciously end our life almost anytime we choose. This ability is an endowment, like laughing and blushing, given to no other animal... in any given moment, by not exercising the option of suicide, we are choosing to live.
Peter McWilliams

Why Do You Live?

Why Live?

Just to get you thinking.


A radical environmentalist rant is not the reason I'm writing this.  I wanted to get your attention, though.  I want to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions you have about your life.  I *do* want you to think.

What I will say is that the paradigm we're using is all wrong.

Just like the environmental rant above, this isn't the heart of the matter, but it *is* worth reading.

I'm not going to apologize for this.  I'm going to speak to residents of the United States, in general. and those who follow Judeo-Christian faiths, in particular.  That's my society and religious background .  It's all I know.  If you live elsewhere or worship differently, the messages will still apply but the examples may be unfamiliar.

You might not like this book's subject and its point of view.  In fact, I will propose ideas contrary to anything you've ever heard.  I wouldn't be surprised if you slam the book shut and/or throw it away.  I would ask you, however, *not* to toss it out.  Instead, pick it up every once in a while and read just a little bit more.  Eventually you might be able to read more.  Perhaps you will get through the arguments and to the conclusion.  That might be a good thing, but I'll let you decide.

o o o

The problem with looking for a cogent argument to read in favor of suicide is that a prospective author might have chosen to depart this Earth before completing it.  I mean, Why bother?

I have a bit of time to write my thoughts.  I feel constrained by ethical considerations I will explain later to stick around for some number of days.  Perhaps there will be time enough to publish my ideas, receive feedback and see counterarguments.  I cannot imagine being talked out of my position but maybe it will turn my philosophy into something viral that takes over the world.  While unlikely, that would be a good thing for the planet.

The problem with even beginning to discuss the subject of suicide is that there are so many assumptions about human life ingrained in society.

Many people think human life is "sacred."  As well, many think the human soul is immortal.  After the physical body dies, the soul goes to an afterlife elsewhere (heaven, hell, purgatory, perdition, paradise, reincarnation).

I'll talk about religion more, much more, later.

Even if not sacred, many think human life is superior to, and more valuable than, the lives of other living things.

obligation to stay

Why do you live?
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Inertia.
Nature demands it.
My religion demands it.
Society demands it.


Why am I here?
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I don't know, but there are some ideas many people believe with which I don't agree.

"God put you here.  Every human life is sacred."  I'm going to talk about religion at length later.

If society had different norms, if the decision to live or die were freely available all the time without stigma or restriction, people could *choose* to live or die, day-by-day or minute-by-minute.  There would be unique reasons people chose for living, but I made a list of ones I think would be popular.

What other ones do you think belong on the list?

affirmative reasons to live (i.e. not "inertia" or "it's difficult to kill yourself")
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love of a person or other living thing
love of things or activities
career
hobbies/interests
addiction (alcohol, drugs, sex & love)
anticipation of something good
celebration of one's own physicality -- dance or martial arts or some other activity where people may delight in their kinesthetic sense
family (children primarily, but also siblings & parents)
loyalties (friends or love of country or God)
religion says you must
society says you must
Should You Be Alive Now?

"I'm allergic to selfish"

Congratulations on having the curiosity to keep reading instead of moving to your next task in life while simply saying, "Yes, of course!  How can you even ask?"

What are my credentials to talk about Life and Death?  It's not like I've been dead yet, right?

All I can say is that I used to be really smart and I've been giving the matter a lot of thought.  Why "used to be"?  The Jeopardy TV quiz show had an "answer" a while back.  Something like "If you had a score of 140 on THIS test, you'd be scary-smart."  The question was "An IQ test."  At age 14, I had that beat.  To put this into perspective, Mensa (the high IQ society) only accepts people in the top 2% of the intelligence curve, scores 131 and higher.  Once you climb to my score of 141, we're talking about the top 1/3 of 1%.  In a US population of 300 million people, 6 million could join Mensa.  I'm in a group of only 1 million.  If there are one million others as smart or smarter than I am, what's the big deal?  The big deal is that 299 million *aren't* as smart.

That sounds all "elitist," I know.  But it isn't as though being "IQ smart" means I'm "socially smart" or "emotionally smart" or successful, or many other things people talk about.

Rising Plague p.168
As Dr. Arnold Epstein, chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, recently said, "The U. S. is the one country in the world where [people] think death is optional."
C. D Baker et al., "Health of the Nation--Coverage for all Americans," NE Jour Med 359(2008) 777-80