ALL HAIL wrote:The Moose wrote:ALL HAIL wrote:If people love you, it's selfish. Period.
Why hurt those who love you? Death and mourning is hard.
And you wouldn't consider it selfish to ask someone to keep living when their own existence is crushingly painful, just for your sake?
You're assuming that suicidal people communicate their plans. My experience tells me that most times they don't.
But to continue in your analogy, if someone I loved communicated with me the fact that they're in pain and want it to end, yes, it would be selfish on my part, after trying to get them help, to deny them an opportunity to be free from their pain.
But, like I said, most people, through my experience, usually commit suicide quietly, without uttering a word to loved ones, which only makes it harder on those that love them because they are strapped with the guilt of "I should've done more."
That could be construed as selfish, but life isn't that simple. It's not "selfish if you do, selfish if I ask you not to" - there's a host of factors at play here.
On a human level, if someone came up to you and told you they were contemplating suicide, why would you advise them not to do it? Not for your benefit. Suicide is an extreme overreaction to how our thought processes work - have you ever been running late for something important?
Have a little after-action meeting with yourself afterward - it's interesting to delve into your own mind and see how it works. From a young age, we have extreme overreactions to what we perceive to be negative experiences: "I can't do that, my parents would KILL me"; "If I'm late for work, my boss will KILL me"; "If I don't make that sale, I'm DEAD".
Being late for something REALLY important is where it gets interesting - say, a big meeting at work - you speed like crazy to try to make it on time. Afterward if you analyze your thoughts, you realize that you essentially added risk to your well being for fear of something that, in relation to your life, is worthless. Another way to think about it is you're betting your life savings to win $100.
People that kill themselves take this kind of thought (that exists in all of us) to an extreme. I do agree that it's selfish, and I don't think asking someone to not kill themselves could ever be construed as selfish - because what you're trying to do is show them that their life is worth more than being late for work.
People serving a life sentence in prison is a little different - we weren't in his head so we don't know. He could have thought this a selfless act (daughter won't be ridiculed so much at school; tax payers; daughter having to visit prison to see him) - or he could have been thinking that it really sucked in prison and he didn't want to do it anymore. Either way, asking someone to stay alive is not selfish because people exaggerate their circumstances.