Yarr, so I’ve been thinking ‘bout this for a few days and I still don’t really know what to say.
As a few of you note, some animals appear to commit a sort of suicide, but yes, we seem to be able to take a much more direct route, if we so choose. So, in a sense, it sorta’ seems to point to an ability in humans which allows us to transcend the most basic drive of life, which is to be alive. However, it was only the other day someone was relating to me how often, when a person is dying (right on death’s door), the body still struggles to take the last breath, gasping and shuddering all the way. I don’t think that any living thing, in the end, is able to let go without that last moment of struggle, but I don’t know this from experience.
On the other hand, like some of you also say (more and less), it seems less that there is something wrong with the human being per se that allows us to commit suicide, but more that something is wrong with the way we interact with one and other: especially through the edifices of our socio-political-economic structures. It seems that it is these structures and the way they impose upon us, both individually and in shaping our relations to others, that drives the hand that cuts the vein (so to speak).
So, are we better off to be able to off ourselves? Is there something wrong with us that we can off ourselves or something wrong with us because we allow the structures that provoke us to squeeze the trigger to continue? All I can do is
<shrug>
and wish that we didn’t have the need to confront such a hideous issue as that of the ability to kill ourselves; in other words, I’d be much happier if ‘suicide’ wasn’t a word in our vocabulary (and no other word for an equivalent either; i.e. there was no such act which needed a word).
Mike [bro] when you say:
quote:If you believe in reincarnation for instance, then you should be okay, you can just move forward to the next life.
I get my back up (but only a little) because, even if there is reincarnation (of which I’m highly suspect), I can’t think of one theory or belief involving reincarnation which says, “hey, it’s cool to merely off yourself if you got a bad deal in this life because you’ll simply move on into another life.” Ideas about reincarnation (that I know about anyway) are typically tethered to some sort of “merit system” (so to speak) that generally include beliefs about obligations in the present life that stem from previous incarnations; in other words, I can’t think of any ideas about reincarnation which would say, “…you should be okay…” to kill yourself. But maybe that is not quite what you meant or I’m unfamiliar with the beliefs about reincarnation to which you are referring or etc.
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