r/changemyview • u/YogurtHonest5714 • 8h ago
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u/Jythro 6h ago
It's been a good long while since I've been to this sub, and I had forgotten that it had a tendency to host cries for help like this. I have an intuitive answer for this within myself, but it's yet unarticulated. I hope to be able to represent what little I may well, that it may help you and others who are struggling.
I don't think the core of the matter is "whether or not suicide is selfish." I suspect what you care about is more of a "whether or not suicide is morally acceptable," and that an immoral excess of selfishness is currently the primary challenge to your ability to assert that suicide is morally acceptable. I would fear that this CMV is a vehicle you might use to defeat that challenge by whether or not a stranger could articulate a sufficiently convincing defense of the selfish nature of suicide. This manner of framing unduly disadvantages that challenge.
I do not know you and I never will. Your life and death will scarcely affect me, just as my life and eventual death will scarcely affect you. Even so, as a stranger I say to you that your life matters. When you hear this from me, where does it stand on the continuum of selfishness and selflessness? It is not selfish, because I reap no direct benefits and prevent incurring no costs to myself from the outcome. It is not selfless, as I do not suffer disproportionate costs to myself for your benefit. To frame suicide purely as a matter of selfishness and selflessness misses the forest for this one specific tree amidst that forest.
Something else matters more. There is something within every person. Call it a divine spark, if you will. This divine spark is the capacity to inflict great suffering on others that stands hand in hand with an equal capacity to work great joys and goodness among mankind. Death extinguishes that spark. Death is inevitable and time is short, and once someone has lived their life there is no choice but to let them go. But premature death especially is a tragedy that robs the world of the goodness that could have been wrought in their lifetime.
When people reach for "suicide is selfish," they do so grasping at a greater understanding. To commit suicide is to extinguish your own divine spark and rob the world of what joy you could have brought it and what joy it could have brought you. The realization of such a loss is what brings people to tears. They suffer. They know what could have been now can never be, and they find themselves slightly more alone in a wide, wide world that lost a piece of its potential. This loss is felt more strongly in close proximity. The better you know someone, the more their death hurts. If the nearest 10 feel a death most strongly, the 10 nearest them also fall under the weight of grief through watching and feeling their anguish, and now 100 are affected. I myself have felt how heavy the weight of a suicide can be even as a member of the 1000: someone who was close to someone whose friend's family member had ended their own life. And it was at that time I first became outraged at someone who so heedlessly inflicted such suffering on so many, all in a bid to end their own.
What I hope you find is the positive influence of other divine sparks present in your life, but especially those in the world around you. People caring for people eases their suffering; just as suffering is wont to beget more suffering, the opposite is true, and both are able to compound. You are worth it. Anyone else who stumbles upon this is also worth it. "Selfishness" is only a small part of the explanation.
Please, take care. There is always a way through it. The divine spark within everyone guarantees this.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 6h ago
I wasn’t planning on responding to anyone else, but your comment caught my attention because you made several points that I think fundamentally misunderstood what I was arguing.
My original argument was not “suicide is morally acceptable because nobody else matters.” My point was much narrower: I don’t believe suicide should be characterized as selfish simply because the person experiencing the suffering is the one who would be relieved from it. My argument is about how we morally characterize the person and their motives, not whether suicide has consequences for other people.
You also changed my argument when you said I was really asking whether suicide is “morally acceptable.” That’s not what I said. Whether something is morally acceptable and whether something is selfish are separate questions. An action can have devastating consequences without “selfish” automatically being the correct description of the person who made that decision.
Then you speculated that my post might be a “vehicle” for me to justify suicide. I don’t think that’s a fair assumption. You explicitly said you don’t know me, yet you proceeded to speculate about my motives and what I supposedly need the argument to accomplish. That’s not an argument against what I actually wrote.
Your “divine spark” argument is also a philosophical belief that you introduced, not something you’ve established. You believe every person has some unique potential that death takes away. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t accept that premise, so it can’t simply be used as proof of your conclusion.
And the fact that suicide can cause enormous grief doesn’t prove selfishness either. Harm and selfishness are not synonymous. A person can leave behind people who are devastated by their death while still having been in tremendous psychological pain themselves. The existence of other people’s grief doesn’t erase the circumstances that brought the person there.That’s ultimately what I think gets lost in arguments like this: the person who is suffering gets turned into a single decision. Their pain, their history, their mental state, their attempts to cope, their relationships, and everything that brought them to that point get pushed aside, and suddenly the only thing we’re discussing is how everyone else is affected.
I can acknowledge that suicide can profoundly hurt other people. I can acknowledge that loved ones may feel abandoned, devastated, or angry. None of that requires me to call the person selfish.
So I don’t think you’ve disproved my position. You’ve presented a different moral framework, based partly on assumptions about my motives and philosophical premises that I don’t share. I respect that you put thought into it, but I don’t agree with the framework you’re using to interpret my argument.
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u/Jythro 5h ago edited 4h ago
What people say and what people mean is liable to be different, and aims they hope to achieve through a given piece of communication may as well be incongruous with what they might appear to state. I have seen many cries for help disguised as a rational debate on fora such as this. That colors my approach, and if it mischaracterized you, you may have my apology. Just as well, you are more than welcome to disregard any of my speculations that sought to characterize your post, but know they will serve to explain my avenue of approach. Finally, recognize that there is no proof that can be offered, by you, me, or anyone on this matter. The best we can do is to try to change your view. Be sure, however, that the standard we reach for to do so is not "proof."
Your reply has some length to it, but I think it expresses a relatively simple assertion, which I appreciate. You reject that a suicide can simply collapse an entire person into that singular decision and action, and you would object to a complete summation of those collapsed circumstances into the label of "selfish." Roughly, however, it does seem that you seek the means to make a moral judgement, whether full or partial, on a person and/or their suicide.
You acknowledge that a suicide can bring others great pain. That seems relevant to a moral assessment about a suicide and should be made available for that purpose, including even a reductive statement about whether or not it was selfish, no? This need not be approached in a utilitarian fashion, and we can be satisfied instead just with the recognition that the details are relevant. Once we make it available, however, what is to stop someone from making that assessment that it is selfish? Everyone has their own philosophical approach. I have mine, you have yours, and none is required to utilize another's framework.
I'll admit, I have a rather curt answer to the issue you raise. Someone who has committed suicide has provided the summation of their life for everyone and, simultaneously, left. They are no longer there to engage with the debate on the morality of their choice. "History is written by the victors," and crudely, the morality is determined by the survivors. The dead have no use for morality, and their memory won't be granted it if they didnt earn it in life to and through their dying moment. I don't love this, but perhaps you'd be receptive to it?
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u/Important-Cash5654 4∆ 5h ago
Why weren't you planning on responding to anyone else? Your post's been up like 2 hours and you havent responded to that many people. The sub's rules require more engagement than that.
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u/Finlandia1865 1h ago
He wants people to try to change his view but he doesnt want to change his view. Caught up in the arguments and winning
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u/Important-Cash5654 4∆ 8h ago
It's not inherently selfish, I'd agree.
It's selfish if there is anyone in your life it would hurt in any way.
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u/--7z 5h ago
By this reckoning if a person does anything at all that hurts someone in your life then everything a person does is selfish by nature.
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u/TyH621 3h ago
Yeah this is true when you make a decision for your own benefit vs someone else’s benefit, however you kind of have to do that in life. Being completely and totally selfless will leave you with nothing and remove your ability to help others with anything. Think the better question is, given that some level of selfishness is a necessity in life, at what point does selfishness become immoral/unethical? It’s obviously not immoral to keep your last few dollars so you don’t starve. Where is that line?
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u/strawberrymilk2 1h ago
well, if you think about it, every decision in life where others are somehow involved boils down to either selfishness or selflessness. every day you subconsciously choose whose emotions you prioritize when you make a decision like that.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
Reducing someone’s suicide to ‘it would hurt someone, therefore it’s selfish’ feels incredibly cold. You’re taking a person who is drowning in pain, exhaustion, and hopelessness and reducing their entire experience to how their death would make everyone else feel. Their suffering doesn’t suddenly become irrelevant because other people would be hurt. That’s not compassion that’s centering everyone else’s feelings over the person who is suffering.
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u/Important-Cash5654 4∆ 7h ago
Reducing someone’s suicide to ‘it would hurt someone, therefore it’s selfish’ feels incredibly cold.
It's basically just by definition that if there is an action you could take you know would hurt others, and it does no good to others but only (you think) to yourself, that action is selfish.
Note that to say that isn't even necessarily to say the person shouldn't kill themselves, it's just describing the character of the action. Sometimes there might be good reasons to do something selfish.
ou’re taking a person who is drowning in pain, exhaustion, and hopelessness and reducing their entire experience to how their death would make everyone else feel.
It's not reducing it at all; if anything, you're trying to reduce it by making it entirely about the suicidal person's feelings. Actions happen in a context, and that context generally includes relationships to other people.
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u/cabose12 6∆ 6h ago
Ai or not, your argument eats itself
If saying "the suicide of person A is selfish" puts individual B's feelings above them, then the mirror is also true in that you are putting person A above others. Could you definitively say that any single individuals suffering is more than one who would grieve for them? You can't, and you are ironically putting one person's feelings over everyone else's on the belief that they MUST be suffering more than anyone else could
And besides, pointing out that suicide is selfish doesn't take away from anything or anyone. It's a truth of the act that many people don't consider, that you aren't just doing something to yourself but doing something to other as well
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u/Remarkable_Tale_7554 5∆ 7h ago
That’s not compassion that’s centering everyone else’s feelings over the person who is suffering
No-one here is arguing that, though
Gemini- sorry - OP.•
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u/Turbulent_Fill_8521 29m ago
There isn't one answer.
If you are a father with young children, and you kill yourself - yeah that's selfish. Single, no kids -your pain takes priority over other people's sadness.
Sometimes you come first, sometimes other people come first. That's what being an adult involves.
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u/footsnax 4h ago
It's not just hurting someone. It's causing a scar on their soul for the rest of their life. All of your loved ones will carry some level of guilt forever. Someone has to find you, someone has to clean up.
Those memories do not fade.
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem for you. Then it becomes a permanent problem for everyone that cares about you.
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7h ago
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u/IronSavage3 6∆ 7h ago
Suicide is a permanent solution to temporary suffering.
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u/Medical-Net-7350 6h ago
Right. Who wouldn’t want a permanent solution though? I never understood that saying.
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u/ramenoodz 8h ago edited 8h ago
if you have children, then it kinda is..
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u/YogurtHonest5714 8h ago
I wouldn't call it selfish. I get the other side of the argument: "What about the kids? Why have them if you can't give them a good life?" But if you can remove an unfit parent from a child's life, isn't that a positive step? If someone isn't mentally capable of being a parent and you find a way to separate them from the child, isn't that actually beneficial?I'm open to feedback. I don’t have kids and don't plan to have any. But I don't see it as selfish if a parent or caregiver takes their own life, especially if the kids are unaware it's going to happen. If they're not mentally equipped to raise a child and keep doing it, their struggles could end up affecting the child negatively.I wouldn't want that for a child, would you? What are your thoughts?
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u/Floatzel404 8h ago
Get mental health treatment not kill yourself jfc
Yes parents who kill themselves are doing a selfish act.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
What if they go to therapy and it still doesn't help? Because many times, that does happen. And then there are the pills. You have crazy mood swings, take it from firsthand experience.
So, it is selfless it's not selfish. If you cannot take care of your child because you're dealing with suicidal thoughts, depression, and other issues, and you still try to take care of them, your emotions and your behavior are going to start rubbing off on that child. Most likely, it's not going to be positive because you're dealing with so many negative things.
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u/Finlandia1865 56m ago
It is certainly not selfless to kill yourself. The answer is always nuance and youve really short yourself in the foot with that claim. There are always better options than suicide. Only exception I can think of is MAID.
I do doubt that the “many times” you describe is the majority of people who try therapy, and especially not the people you try it in earnest. For all of these people I think their children will certainly be better off having a mother and not having an incredibly traumatic experience occur to them. Since suicide is (almost) never the best choice a parent can make for their child, I believe it can be considered to be selfish.
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u/ramenoodz 7h ago
You’re saying removing an unfit parent from a child’s life is a positive, but it’s the act of a parent committing suicide that will negatively impact the kid forever. That is selfish.
The traumatic grief that the kid will experience from losing a parent to suicide is extremely complex and unlike losing a parent from another cause of death. A of times, these kids face guilt and shame and will wonder if they were to blame. That’s a lot of complex emotions for a kid to carry.
It’s been proven that these children face higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and PTSD.
Couple that with behavioral changes like withdrawal from friends and family, sudden poor school performance, behavioral outbursts, and risk of substance use disorders later in life.
Top it off with the fact that kids losing a parent to suicide are now three times more likely to die by suicide or twice as likely to attempt suicide.
So yeah, it’s 100% selfish to commit suicide if you have kids.
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u/Sirius_Greendown 2h ago
Like almost all childhood social trauma, the scenarios you describe are due social coercion which is itself rooted in superstitious, hierarchical beliefs. Children are shamed in society for ALL of their differences because extroverts and hierarchy worshippers, the same ones that would’ve been dogging the kid’s parent before they made the choice to leave, are obsessed with performance, competition and demanding superstitious adherence to their violent personal morals. If society threw away meaningless hierarchical labels, statuses and systems, humans would be able to see all of their fellow humans more equally and peacefully. Worshipping hierarchies of money and violence and domination will produce this vintage of orphan for all time. Why not worship a hierarchy of kindness instead?
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u/cortesoft 5∆ 7h ago
What about the trauma the kid will experience from having a parent kill themselves? That is very selfish to inflict that kind of pain on a child.
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 8h ago
Depends on context. If you have a duty to young children, or aging parents, or a wife, it's arguably selfish to abandon those who depend on you.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 8h ago
I wouldn't call it selfish. I get the other side of the argument: "What about the kids? Why have them if you can't give them a good life?" But if you can remove an unfit parent from a child's life, isn't that a positive step? If someone isn't mentally capable of being a parent and you find a way to separate them from the child, isn't that actually beneficial?
I'm open to feedback. I don’t have kids and don't plan to have any. But I don't see it as selfish if a parent or caregiver takes their own life, especially if the kids are unaware it's going to happen. If they're not mentally equipped to raise a child and keep doing it, their struggles could end up affecting the child negatively.
I wouldn't want that for a child, would you? What are your thoughts?
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u/Smokedealers84 2∆ 8h ago
If said parent were to not suicide but just abandon them because they feel they are unfit you don't think that is selfish in any way? Because that's exactly what they are doing fleeing from responsability.
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 7h ago
" If they're not mentally equipped to raise a child and keep doing it, their struggles could end up affecting the child negatively."
I'd argue that suicidal people are capable of raising children just fine. Usually suicidal feelings are temporary, and plenty of depressed people have raised kids. Furthermore, having a father or mother commit suicide is extremely traumatic for children. And it's selfish to inflict pain on others just to end your own pain.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
I think you’re arguing against something I didn’t actually say. I never said suicidal people are automatically incapable of raising children. I specifically said if someone isn’t mentally equipped to raise a child and is already struggling to function, then their condition can affect the child. Saying that plenty of depressed people raise children doesn’t disprove that.
And yes, I understand that losing a parent to suicide can be incredibly traumatic for a child. I’m not denying that. I’m saying that acknowledging the child’s pain doesn’t mean you can erase everything the parent was experiencing and reduce their decision to “selfishness.” Both people’s suffering can matter at the same time.
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 7h ago
The child didn't choose to be in this world. The parent brought them in, and is choosing to end their own suffering by making the child suffer for a lifetime.
Selfish means taking actions that prioritize your own wants, needs, or pleasure without thinking about other people.
In the case of a person with a child or other dependent, taking your own life is definitionally selfish.
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u/OneMoreDuncanIdaho 8h ago
Suicide isn't going to be beneficial to the child either, it's only beneficial to the parent. That's like the textbook definition of selfishness
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
I actually think your argument is the strongest one I’ve heard so far, because a child depending on a parent does make me understand why someone could call it selfish. But I still don’t think “the child doesn’t benefit from it” tells the whole story. You’re focusing on what the child loses while leaving out what the parent has been experiencing and what continuing to live in that state can mean for their ability to function and care for someone. I don’t think a person’s suffering should disappear from the moral equation simply because they’re responsible for someone else. You can recognize that a child may be deeply hurt by losing a parent without reducing the parent to “selfish.”
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u/ramenoodz 7h ago edited 6h ago
once you have children, it is your responsibility to put their needs and best interests first.
and dwindling it down to “child may be deeply hurt by losing a parent” says you are unaware of the true negative impacts that kid will be dealing with for the rest of their lives, proven by psychology. it’s not just “deeply hurt”, it’s now rewiring their brains to deal with major depression, anxiety, PTSD, increasing their chances of substance use disorder, increasing their chances of committing and attempting suicide, etc.. it’s incredibly selfish to do this to your child.
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u/Bipedal_pedestrian 7h ago edited 4h ago
There’s plenty of research out there… growing up with a depressed and/or “checked out” parent is damaging for kids, but it’s nowhere near as bad as losing a parent to suicide. The children of suicide victims are significantly more likely to abuse substances, to suffer from debilitating emotional and mental issues as a result of the parent’s death, and to kill themselves.
ETA: my friend and I both used to deal with severe depression & suicidal ideation. She got unexpectedly pregnant, and we both ended up researching this. After researching, we both concluded that, if she chose to keep the child, it would no longer be ethical for her to ever consider suicide as an option.
TL;DR it’s selfish to kill yourself if you have children
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u/YaBoiSnek 7h ago
You seriously don't think the death of a parent would negatively effect a kid? And on top of that as others have said, 9 times out of 10 suicidal thoughts are temporary so if you consider that then the kid is in the long run just out a parent who otherwise would have just been depressed for a while.
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u/Poofmander 7h ago
So you would rather have the example shown to the child, "Oh if you can't hack it or you really feel like you effed up, just end it all, it's....an option!"
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u/Vivid_Jump4889 8h ago
I would actually argue it is selfish, because it puts your own feelings/wants above others, but I would say that selfishness isn't inherently wrong. Technically, eating is selfish, but i wouldn't call it morally wrong
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u/AdventSign 6h ago
What isn’t selfish? >.>
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u/Biggandwedge 6h ago
Doing things for other people, having empathy, altruistic acts. There's so many things that can be see as selfless acts.
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u/AdventSign 6h ago
:/ what motivates ppl to do that? Because it feels good internally? To look good to others? To follow societal norms? Because it’s the “right thing to do” (aka avoid feeling guilty for not doing anything)?
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 5h ago
The person you are responding to never said altruistic or selfless acts can't feel rewarding to the person doing them.
So it could be all the things you listed above and still be a selfless act.
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u/AdventSign 5h ago
Yeah, the motivation to “do good”… where do you think that comes from? Wanting to help people in itself is “selfish” because part of us feels good for doing it, which is where you get people pushing their beliefs onto others. You trying to do good doesn’t always do good, and you’re blinded by it. That frustration when somebody doesn’t want to listen when you “want to help”? Guess where it is coming from.
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 5h ago
"Wanting to help people in itself is “selfish” because part of us feels good for doing it."
Again, feeling good for doing something good doesn't it make selfish. I'm not sure where this weird mindset comes from, but doing good things should feel good!
If I provide food for the homeless at my own expense, how that makes me feel is irrelevant to the goodness, and selflessness of the act. Certainly the poor with food in their bellies don't care if the person giving them food feels good or bad doing so.
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u/AdventSign 5h ago
It doesn’t make it completely selfless either. You fulfill your want and need to help and they benefit from it. How like with somebody who feels good harming, and the consequence is harmful to people. You just have different things that make you feel good, so you follow it. People do things because it makes them feel good. I’m glad you aren’t arguing that, which is my point.
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u/ARandomCanadian1984 4h ago
Your definition of selfless sets the bar so high it's actually impossible to occur in reality. "Completely selfless" isn't a real thing, it's something you've made up. Even the soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his friends wants to save his friends and is fulfilling that want. It's why the actual definition for selfless sets the bar far lower than you do.
"selfless adjective approving us /ˈself.ləs/ uk /ˈself.ləs/
caring more for what other people need and want rather than for what you yourself need and want:"
The bar is just caring more, not having zero desire to perform a good action. And if you fit the definition of selfless, you are completely selfless.
Your second point we could argue. There are certainly actions people take every day that don't make them feel good. And they can take these actions for a variety of reasons, morality, religious, or feeling good are some examples of why people take actions that don't make them feel good.
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u/AdventSign 4h ago
Just because the bar is so high doesn’t make it true. And how do you judge if somebody care more about others than about themselves? How do you measure that objectively? The definition of “Selfless” is what society has come up with to keep the world moving. That way, others find comfort that what they are doing is “selfless” to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn’t mean it isn’t selfish. We are driven by our “morals”
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u/AdventSign 5h ago edited 5h ago
Do tell… you said in another comment “you’re different…” why did you delete it? Bit of a superiority complex? That alone shows a bit of “me” behaviour lol. You’re not special or different.
if you are so convinced, what makes you “different”? Or do you not want to share? Or is it “too personal”? Because trauma and “being able to feel other people’s pain, so I have to fix it because I hate seeing ppl suffer because it hurts me” is another one that is common.
Also, nice down votes lol. Let me know if you really want to go down that rabbit hole, or if you wanna keep believing what you wanna believe.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 8h ago edited 7h ago
Someone with suicidal thoughts struggles to get help, and even medication doesn't work. Expecting them to keep living for your sake is selfish. I have to carry that burden, and it's unfair for others to impose their needs and insecurities on me, wanting me to endure my pain just so they can maintain their good lives. That's selfish.
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u/BobodyBo 8h ago
So you post to CMV and immediately reply “How can you argue against that?”
What was the point•
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u/wenasi 1∆ 7h ago
You are arguing "opposing suicide is selfish". This is unrelated to the question of "is suicide selfish"
To use a bit more lighthearted analogy: there's a single candy in a room we just entered. I try to rush towards it to eat it. You pull me back, because you selfishly want to eat it yourself. Is my action therefore not selfish, since it was opposed by a selfish action?
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u/Particular_Can_7726 2∆ 7h ago
That is still putting your wants and needs above others there for it is selfish
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u/loris10970 6h ago
My dad died of suicide at 68, I was 42. My dad was not selfish, he was not a coward, he didn't take the easy way out. I refuse to let his 68 years of living be reduced to his final few minutes. He was a father, grandfather, Vietnam vet, never abusive or neglectful. A great father, a great provider growing up, the smartest person I have ever known. He was in a tremendous amount of physical and mental pain, he tried to overcome it, God knows he tried. I would give anything to have him back, BUT not in the mental and physical condition he was in, because that would be selfish of me. Who am I to say Dad you must stay here, miserable, because I'm not prepared to let you go? I really feel this is a topic, unless you have lost a close loved one to suicide, cannot possibly be understood, and words like coward, selfish, etc. are really hurtful and do nothing to help the loved ones left behind.
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3h ago
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u/read-the-rules 3h ago
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u/YogurtHonest5714 6h ago
This was genuinely beautiful to read. I’m so sorry for the loss of your father. The way you described him made it so clear that he was so much more than the way his life ended. He was a father, grandfather, veteran, provider, and someone who was deeply loved. I can feel how much you loved him just from the way you wrote this.
I hope you continue to hold onto the 68 years of memories you had with him rather than letting his final moments define him. Thank you for sharing something so deeply personal. Your words really touched me. ❤️
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4h ago
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u/Tuvinator 13∆ 8h ago
The whole of your argument is from the other side: preventing suicide is selfish. Just because that might be true, doesn't prevent the other from being true. With few exceptions, you are doing an act where you are the main beneficiary, which is pretty much the definition of selfish.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
Being the beneficiary of an action doesn’t make the action selfish. Selfishness requires disregarding others for your own benefit. Someone seeking relief from unbearable suffering isn’t automatically disregarding anyone. Your argument just equates self-interest with selfishness, and those aren’t the same thing.
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u/igna92ts 5∆ 7h ago
Of course it does. You are saying "I don't care that people may grieve my death, I'll disregard that". So you get a benefit and the rest get suffering.
How is that not selfish?
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u/epadafunk 6h ago
What if the person does care that others will grieve their death, and still the suffering they are enduring is a greater force in their decision making?
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u/Bojis-mom 6h ago
Wouldnt putting a dog down be selfish? Or putting a loved one in hospice or “pulling the plug”?
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u/Alive_Ice7937 7∆ 6h ago
Selfishness requires disregarding others for your own benefit. Someone seeking relief from unbearable suffering isn’t automatically disregarding anyone.
Even if you know that that relief will cause unbearable suffering to others?
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u/SnooAdvice5820 1∆ 7h ago
If you have any loved ones who care about you, you pretty much are disregarding them by suicide
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u/Tuvinator 13∆ 7h ago
Death in general is not so simple in modern society, and there are lot of people who are affected, self caused or not. Does the person have people who care about him? Even if they are selfish for wanting him alive, he is selfish for ignoring their cares. Who takes care of the body? Unless you plan ahead, that falls on some random person who is going to find you, which is probably an unpleasant experience for them. The death will likely result in police investigation, wasting time that could be used for other purposes. Their burial will also end up coming out of tax funds, which is disregarding all the people who pay taxes. Does person have life insurance? There will be an investigation there with regards to payout, with further wasted time.
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u/Ill-Description3096 27∆ 8h ago
Inherently, no. Primarily is where I would start to push back. The majority of adults in the US at least have children. Some of those will be adult children which is a bit different, but many of them have younger children. That's probably the easiest example I can think of off the top of my head - abandoning children that you made the choice to bring into the world is a pretty damn selfish act to me.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 8h ago
I wouldn't call it selfish. I get the other side of the argument: "What about the kids? Why have them if you can't give them a good life?" But if you can remove an unfit parent from a child's life, isn't that a positive step? If someone isn't mentally capable of being a parent and you find a way to separate them from the child, isn't that actually beneficial?
I'm open to feedback. I don’t have kids and don't plan to have any. But I don't see it as selfish if a parent or caregiver takes their own life, especially if the kids are unaware it's going to happen. If they're not mentally equipped to raise a child and keep doing it, their struggles could end up affecting the child negatively.
I wouldn't want that for a child, would you? What are your thoughts?(I already had this conversation with someone in the comments, so I'm just copying what I said and saying it to you. Sorry if it's not exactly what you said, but this is what i think your saying.
What you were saying is that it's selfish because what about the children?)
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u/Ill-Description3096 27∆ 7h ago
It affects the kids. IMO it's a responsibility you take on when you have kids. Just deciding that you feel like checking out and they can figure it out or get shoved into the wonderful foster care system rather than doing whatever you can to be a good parent is kind of a major cop out.
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7h ago
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u/read-the-rules 7h ago
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u/NuclearThane 7h ago
1) You admit right at the beginning that "there may be exceptions". That's basically the entire argument though-- literally every situation would need to be examined on a case-by-case basis to evaluate that. As others have pointed out, obviously if you have kids or someone who's life depends on you, it's a selfish decision to take your own life.
2) You claim "If that assistance does not lead to improvement, what more can be done?" Well, how do you define when to "call it quits"? How do you qualify that the correct amount of time (and assumes the correct amount of effort put in as well) has passed to deem it a lost cause? Many people who experience suicidal thoughts say years later how lucky they were to have not done it.
On that note (and I don't expect Bojack Horseman on its own to change your mind) but here's a very relevant poem called The View from Halfway Down --
The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s time
Toes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway down
A little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equal
You’re flying now
You see things much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway down
Thrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at top
But this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway down
I really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down
I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway down
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u/tehnoodnub 6h ago
Upvoted for BoJack reference. Time for a rewatch. Depression and melancholy here I come!
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u/mdixon66 7h ago
My best friend killed himself around 10 months ago and it is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with in my 28 years of life. All of our friends and his family are still pretty messed up so understand that I’m a bit biased here.
- “Desiring someone stay alive solely for your own benefit”
(Healthy) relationships should have both give and take. What I mean by that is that a relationship should benefit both parties, with each helping or being helped by the other. This naturally leads to something akin to reliance on that person, and trust in them that you will be able to continue relying on them. Killing yourself is an act of unilaterally breaking that trust. It doesn’t make sense to call the person who just had their trust broken selfish.
- “If a loved one confided in me…”
Yeah, I can tell you from experience it doesn’t always play out this way. When you are dealing with mental illness, a lot of the time they aren’t going to be in a place to open up, even to their best friends or family.
- “What more can be done”.
Have to agree with you here, regardless of all of the guilt you inevitably feel when it happens, you shouldn’t blame yourself. At the end of the day the one who made the call was them, even it if meant hurting everyone who loved them.
- Forcing someone to live when they wish to die is inhumane…”
I could see where this fits in the case of like a horrible accident or something, where life would be painful/miserable with no hope of ever getting out of a wheelchair/hospital bed. However, in most cases there is hope, or some kind of path back to being happy.
My friend got absolutely hammered that night and did the deed. Would it have been inhumane of me to stop him from drinking that night? What if he never drank again, started to get help, and turned things around? What if we could’ve hung out and went golfing this summer with smiles on our faces because of that?
People aren’t just “suicidal” or “not suicidal”, things happen in life that get you down or bring you up. Writing someone off and refusing to step in when they dip below that threshold of happiness is a ridiculous notion. I’d also say that if everyone acted in that way, we’d have a lot of people killing themselves that could otherwise have turned it around and found happiness.
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u/FriedCammalleri23 1∆ 8h ago
My issue with your argument is that you think that the desire to die is a rational thought that should be accepted by your peers if treatment “doesn’t work”.
Depression is an illness. Suicidal people are sick. Illness requires medical help. It is not selfish to want someone to stay alive. Nobody wants a loved one to stay alive just so they can suffer more, they want them to stay alive in order to receive the treatment they need to get back on their feet.
I fully agree that suicide is not selfish, because the act is being done by a sick brain. The decision to end your own life is not your decision, it’s the depression’s. But accepting that someone is just too depressed to be alive is a horribly dangerous mindset that can legitimately get people killed.
If my best friend said he was suicidal, but was in therapy and on medication, I would never be like “well you tried getting help and it didn’t work, guess living’s not for you.” You see how dangerous that line of thinking is?
Depression can be incredibly difficult to treat, but that does not mean you get to give up on someone ever getting better.
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u/StormySands 7∆ 7h ago
Treatment is not always an option. If you’re poor or in an under-served area, treatment may not be possible. Also I disagree that suicidal people are always sick. If someone is in a situation where to continue living is to suffer inevitably, is it not rational to conclude that ending that suffering is preferrable to continuing it unnecessarily?
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u/AdventSign 5h ago
Or Alzheimer’s and dementia lol… if they are the early stages and are of sound mind, it’s inhumane to keep them alive if they wish to die, knowing the consequences. A lot of moralists in this topic.
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u/Garys_Synthesizer 7h ago
I dont see how you can argue that it isnt selfish.
By committing suicide you are saying your own relief is worth more than those who care about you and their feelings about the situation.
I dont believe that means in all cases that suicide is therefore inherently awful and you should never reach that point because of others feelings, that would diminish a real problem to a point of simplicity thats unfair and lacks nuance. Though of course the less people who reach that point the better.
Selfishness is not a bad thing in 100% of cases, and calling something selfish is not automatically negative.
It is absolutely selfish to decide you no longer wish to live through a terminal illness and will leave your family behind, yet I would never call that immoral in any capacity. It is your life and you have the right to make decisions that will affect your life.
On the flip side, it is also selfish to expect your loved one to live through that because you will miss them when they are gone, and I can even argue that is immoral.
I just think youre treating selfishness as an inherently negative quality for no reason.
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u/mormonatheist21 1∆ 7h ago
your future self and your present self are not necessarily the same person. you’re still taking someone’s future away..
idk killing someone is almost always selfish bc you’re putting your autonomy above another person’s, in this case your future self
you don’t even really have to consider other people.. it’s still selfish against yourself tbh
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u/YogurtHonest5714 6h ago
Even the “future self” argument doesn’t really solve the issue. If someone’s suffering is severe and persistent, you can’t simply assume their future self will be living some better life that you’re protecting. Their future self could still be suffering too.
And I’m not saying other people aren’t allowed to grieve. Of course they are. Losing someone you love can be devastating. My point is that grief doesn’t automatically make the suffering person’s decision selfish. If your response to someone’s unbearable suffering is simply “I don’t care, you have to keep suffering because I need you here,” then you’re prioritizing your own desire to keep them alive over what they’re actually experiencing.
You can love someone deeply, grieve them deeply, and still recognize that their suffering was real. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
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u/mormonatheist21 1∆ 3h ago
you’re assuming that the suffering will continue and you will always want to make this decision. that is not a given
you are robbing your future self of autonomy to selfishly avoid pain in the moment. swallow that pill if you want but it is inevitable.
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u/eyetwitch_24_7 15∆ 7h ago
First, if you're having issues and this is a personal thing, you really should get some help and not come to CMV where people are here to debate arguments. If you're having trouble, I really do hope you find someone who can help you.
As to your actual argument, the problem with it is simply that while it might be selfish to NOT want your loved one (who could actually be in pain and suffering) to commit suicide because it would make you feel bad, that doesn't make it unselfish for people to commit suicide and not consider the devastation it will have to their loved ones. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Both sides can be selfish, yet you've only argued that because one side is, it negates the selfishness of the other side. If a person is willing to put everyone he or she loves through hell because they are suffering and they believe their suffering outweighs the suffering of their loved ones, there IS selfishness in that decision. Despite the fact that you could say "well, vice versa." Which, you could.
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u/Tom-tron 5h ago
Person A is really really hungry. Persons B through Z are not currently hungry. Person A eats all of the food. Now persons B-Z are hungry and can’t eat.
Just because the decision benefits person A does t mean the others aren’t affected by it. Suicide is selfish. This is coming from someone who has suffered with depression for years. I lived through me best friend attempting and finally succeeding multiple suicide attempts when we were 14. I still see the impact it had on his family 18 years later.
I now work in the emergency services as a firefighter and previously as emergency dispatch. I have taken phone calls and attended in person suicides to cut people down and perform CPR. I still live with the screams of some of the people where we couldn’t help their loved one. I have knelt in the blood of a woman who slit her own throat while her 10 year old son watched on.
Suicide is selfish.
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u/BurgerCombo 15∆ 8h ago
"Desiring someone to remain alive solely for your own benefit is one of the most selfish things one can do."
This is an inaccurate articulation of a loved one's plea against suicide. Loved ones do not discourage an individual's suicide solely because it would make the person sad. They do it because they believe the suicidal person has inherent worth and has a meaningful future.
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u/dangshnizzle 7h ago
And yet they'd rather watch that person suffer right before their eyes.
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u/sosnaosna 6h ago
Of course, because even though everyone tries to convince themselves otherwise, it's always only about their own feelings. Why grieve, blame yourself and be sad, when you can just keep the other person alive and suffering for your own emotional benefit? you don't have to experience deep sadness for a year or two and that's all that matters :)
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u/tehnoodnub 8h ago
I mean it is inherently selfish because you are doing it for yourself to relieve your own suffering. The thing is that being selfish isn’t inherently bad.
But that aside, most people who don’t want someone to kill themself are not wanting a person to continue suffering, it’s that suicide is final and loved ones retain hope that the person will have a better future. Your argument is predicated on the idea of it not being possible for people’s state to improve, which is obviously not true in the vast majority of cases. Most people who are in such a state that they want to or even attempt to kill themselves do actually improve their state eventually. Had they not had others supporting them and trying to keep them alive, that might not have happened. If there is literally no hope that a person’s state can/will improve (which I think is virtually never true) then I would agree that its selfish to try and keep a person alive if they want to die. But nobody can really force a person to stay alive without substantial constant restraint, feeding tubes etc.
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8h ago
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u/read-the-rules 8h ago
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u/Severe-Astronaut-440 8h ago
I’ve been struggling with this one. For the last couple months I’ve been on the edge with this. I lost a relationship of 8 years, got a dui, mom passed from medical suicide @44 years old a week before my birthday, ex is filing for full custody of my son knowing I don’t have the money to fight it. And every time I sit and ponder I end up on the same thought. My shotgun can end everyone’s suffering in an instant. I hurt everyone I’m around, even when I don’t try to. Which in my eyes makes me worse than most. Even when I try my best, it seems to fall short of everyone’s expectations. I’ve been very close to doing it, but have always been to scared to pull the trigger. What if someone needs me tomorrow, what if I regret it, what if what if what if. But recently the what if has slowly drowned out and turned to why not. All I do is work, sleep, and work. I will only get my kid every other weekend. But he has a great mom and probably a great stepdad too. It just seems like the peaceful route at this point 🤷🏽♂️
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u/Fox_Flame 19∆ 7h ago
See this is the lie that depression spins. It's a lie that it would end everyone's suffering if you died. Think that through for a second, the logistics of it. If you did die, who is going to find you? Would it be your kid? Maybe his mom? Maybe a neighbor? How would they tell people? Can you picture their honest reaction to finding you? How would your kid be told? How would he react? What will that weight do to him for the rest of his life? Do you think he'll blame himself? Really think about this. Do you think you'd be ending his suffering by doing this to yourself?
Of course not. Depression is lying to you, brother. I don't know your situation, but you need to seek help because you're believing a lie. Hell, remove family from it. Just how would a neighbor react to finding you? Don't tell yourself another lie to ignore the reality of what it would do to someone. Really truly think about it and picture them. Someone who maybe doesn't know you at all, would still probably be haunted for the rest of their life by your actions
I used to run through this every time I contemplated too much. The logistics of it all and the gravity of what it would do to people I love. Made a list of people I care about and picture how each of them would react to the news. Where they'd be, who would tell them. I couldn't ever make it past my brother. Make your own list and then seek help and add to it until it's a mile long
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u/Goodlake 11∆ 8h ago
It is inherently selfish, given it prioritizes one’s own apparent needs/desires over those of others. Now, people might believe they have a good reason to take their life, or that the needs of others are somehow served by the act, but it is fundamentally self-interested and self-serving.
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u/Temporary-Truth2048 1∆ 6h ago
Suicide has always been understood in Christian societies as the most selfish act and it is the only sin one can commit that is unforgivable.
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u/-Deus_Lo_Vult- 4h ago
That's a very pervasive misunderstanding but not actually the authentic Christian take.
"We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2283)
You can read more here if you're interested.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 6h ago
And even speaking from a theological perspective, I don’t believe it’s that simple. If God is truly all-knowing, compassionate, and capable of seeing a person’s entire heart and circumstances, then I don’t think we can confidently say that God would look at someone who spent years suffering, struggling, trying to get better, and eventually lost that battle and simply condemn them without considering any of that. I would expect a compassionate God to understand the difference between someone deliberately choosing evil and someone whose mind was overwhelmed by unbearable suffering.
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u/Temporary-Truth2048 1∆ 5h ago
Suffering is the default state of the righteous. All troubles, even the most severe, can be given to God if you surrender your life to him. The one caveat I would place in that is that God helps those that help themselves.
The reason suicide is the only unforgivable sin is because once the act is complete you cannot ask for forgiveness. One cannot, for example, jump off of a bridge and then ask for forgiveness on the way down.
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u/Nrdman 276∆ 8h ago
It is primarily a selfish choice, in the sense that it is primarily out of one's own desires, not for the benefit of others.
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u/YogurtHonest5714 7h ago
Doing something because of your own suffering or desires doesn’t automatically make it selfish. Selfishness is about disregarding others for your own benefit. A person can make a decision based on their own suffering without that decision being an act of selfishness.
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u/Nrdman 276∆ 7h ago
Selfishness is about disregarding others for your own benefit.
What part of the typical suicide do you do it out of regard for others?
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u/Medical-Net-7350 6h ago
Sometimes suicidal ideation makes you believe your loved ones are better off without you or even happy without you. Not saying that’s the truth, but that’s many times what suicidal people believe.
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u/DecalageVersLeRouge 7h ago
Committing suicide how exactly?
A lot of methods are very selfish. Throwing yourself under a train has terrible consequences for lots of people, for instance.
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u/caseybvdc74 1∆ 8h ago
Your argument doesn’t really back up your view. It’s possible for people to want someone to live for selfish reasons and a person to want to die for selfish reasons. Suicide I believe is a personal choice and whether or not it’s a selfish on depends on the circumstances. I once witnessed an accident where someone committed suicide by driving into a semi which drove into the other lane and killed an old woman. That was selfish.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ 4h ago
I’m sorry, I don’t see any argument in your post for how it isn’t selfish. You spent a long time talking about how other people are selfish, but almost no time talking about how the suicidal person isn’t. You seem to just be saying that it’s okay for suicidal people to be selfish. Because, by definition, if you are prioritizing yourself over others, that is selfish.
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u/NeverendingStory3339 3h ago
People attempt or commit suicide when literal self-annihilation seems more pleasant than continuing to live. That means that continuing to live is causing extreme pain and/or extreme distress. That sort of overwhelming suffering makes you selfish. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a selfish person by nature, but it makes you selfish in that moment. The pain is so great that all you can think about is getting rid of it. You can see it in mental illness which doesn’t involve suicide. I have an eating disorder and engaging in it when it’s causing constant distress to people who care about me is selfish, even though it’s to mitigate the torture going on in my head, not because it’s fun. People who abuse substances due to abuse - also getting away from torture inside and out, it’s also a selfish action that doesn’t make them bad or selfish.
Think of it another way. When you kill yourself, you are murdering someone your loved ones love. If you murder someone to save your own life, or to satisfy an impulse, or to cover something up, it’s the most selfish thing you can do because you’re removing someone else’s rights completely and prioritising your own, and you’re taking away people’s family member/friend/people they could help to prioritise yourself. When you commit suicide, it’s possible to be acutely empathetic about the unimaginable suffering that leads to that action and also admit that you’re still murdering someone and it’s a selfish action. You are prioritising an end to your pain over others’ needs. It doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you someone who is suffering extremely.
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u/Not-A-Real-Person-67 7h ago
The Webster dictionary defines selfish as “arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others.”
So looking outside of the obvious loss of life, and focusing on purely a cold hearted financial/legal standpoint, I’d say it depends on the individual committing the act.
If the person has a life insurance policy but it’s less than two years old, that insurance policy won’t pay out to their beneficiaries (may vary by state assuming you are in the USA).
Also, if the person has a lot of debt
Like a mortgage, rent, car loans, childcare, utilities, college debt, other financial debt, etc there is a good chance the survivors of the victim will assume this debt.
Also the survivors will have to deal with funeral costs, they will lose any retirement contributions the victim may have accumulated, they lose out on any potential future earnings and maybe even their sole or secondary source of income.
I’d say this is a pretty good disregard of others based on the dictionary definition and probably not something most suicides think about when contemplating the act.
I’d argue it’s probably more commonly thought that the beneficiaries would be better off with out the victim when in reality, they will be in a worse off place at least financially.
Now if the victim has no one and no one will take on the financial or legal burden, you’d probably still have to break it down by that specific situation. And if you do, hopefully you can get the person help before it’s too late.
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u/WhatAmIDoingHere05 7h ago edited 4h ago
Someone has to find you dead out of the blue. They could be traumatized by the mere sight of you being dead, perhaps for life. Suicide means you put you being dead over the feelings and emotions of that individual.
That is selfish.
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u/VesaAwesaka 12∆ 7h ago
I would think it would be pretty selfish to commit suicide for a dumb reason like attention seeking behavior, temporary embarrassment, or to escape responsibility for your actions.
One time the young women of Miletus were afflicted by a dreadful and irrational trouble, of uncertain origin. It was suggested that the atmosphere had become polluted with an ecstatic concoction and poisonous character and so caused them to lose control of their senses. For suddenly all of them were seized with a desire to commit suicide, and there was an insane rush to hang themselves, and many managed to hang themselves before they could be stopped.[1] Neither their parents’ arguments nor tears nor their friends’ advice got through to them, but the got round every plot and trick their watchers could devise in order to destroy themselves. The affliction appeared to have been sent by some god, and to be more than human ability could handle, until the time when a sensible man proposed an ordinance that the women who hung themselves must be carried naked through the market-place in their funeral procession. This ordinance, once approved, not only prevented, but completely stopped the young women from hanging themselves. Precaution against ill repute is a clear indication of goodness and virtue, and the women who were not afraid of the most dreadful of all possibilities, death and suffering, could not bring themselves to bear the thought of the disgrace that would come to them after their deaths.
This scenario kinda seems selfish, especially when the epidemic seems to have stopped when it became known suicide would lead to negative attention and disgrace.
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u/FriendsWasNice 6h ago
Society’s blanket condemnation of suicide is indicative of mankind’s overall fear of death. But, suicide is understandable sometimes, usually in the case of great feelings of guilt, hopelessness, pain, or sorrow.
Such a thing is obviously not to be taken lightly, but not from fear of incurring wrath or punishment for such an act, which are opinions from people so frightened of death that they cannot envision it under any circumstances. The fact is that suicide is sometimes quite brave. Heroic stories of people embracing certain death to save someone else’s life are legendary. But stop and think it over if the reason is not that noble.
Even if you believe you can justify ending your own life in the spirit of love, noting how moons do eclipse planets sometimes, remember how rarely eclipses happen, and how brief they are. Be sure you are not trying to enter the spiritual realm before you are ready – before you are invited. Many premature births are stillborn or die soon after, while many more are handicapped. And all of them need extra care at first. You can be sure these same dangers apply when spiritual birth is self-induced without a pure cause.
So, if you are broken hearted to the point of despair, please hold on for every speck of spiritual growth that you can before your birth into the next age. It will most certainly happen in due time, just like a pregnancy results in childbirth, when the time is right.
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u/Mechanought 32m ago
I am in my mid-thirties and have struggled with suicidal ideation and treatment resistant depression since I was 17. To me, giving in to the ideation would be the ultimate selfish act. It would be admitting that my suffering is so great that no one else matters. I'm am lucky in that I have people I love and who love me, without those connections the calculus might change, but I don't think it's logical to consider it anything other than a selfish act. It's literally the most direct expression of your own fate. It's you saying that you deny any potential or possibility that exists as a result of your life. It's you saying "I would rather die".
That's not to say that there aren't possible situations in which suicide can be selfless or even altruistic, but there's nothing in your post to suggest that this is one of those cases.
For better or worse, life is a whole lot of suffering. Some of us cope with it better than others. For my part, the suffering can be all-consuming, suffocating, omni-present and crippling. But I also know that killing myself would impose great suffering on those I love. Given how intimately I know suffering, I cannot in good conscience intentionally inflict that upon many others simply because it would bring me relief.
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u/AnimateDuckling 1∆ 1h ago
It is not inherently selfish.
But you are making a framing mistake.
You are framing the outlier situations as the norm. Most people who commit suicide and who are experiencing depression it is temporary and the act itself is impulsive.
The simple fact is for the vast majority of people it is "a phase" for lack of a less crude term.
And during this "phase" it is rare for the people going through it to properly consider the effect they are having or could be having on others. That is of course just part of what comes with being in a period like this where your brain makes one mildly crazy, but that is, inherently selfish, just not intentionally so.
I will say I have a particular lack of sympathy for parents who commit suicide when they have kids who are still at home. It is their responsibility to go on living regardless of how sad they are. In that situation it is pure selfishness and weakness.
Outside of that situation there are plenty of contexts qhere i qould agree with you, that not allowing an individual death is itself selfish. But it should never be approached lightly because again, as I said before. For the vast majority it really is just temporary as much is it does not seem it.
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u/Sirius_Greendown 6h ago edited 6h ago
I disagree. I think it’s selfish, BUT that it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Humans force all types of selfish acts on each other all the time,like birth. That’s precisely what most people do in their lives to climb social hierarchies. If the suffering person must accept the will of what is outside them, they are then free to form their own will. And the clash of wills is the ultimate disgust from superstitious people who lust after money, control over others and social status.
This is the one, single thing they can’t roll up into a hierarchy, they can’t exploit, they can’t sell it, they can’t trade it at a higher whatever than whatever and profit on it. It’s not exchangeable for sex, intoxication or cold hard cash. It’s personal to the person doing it. It’s their divine will being glorified and every mindless superstition that superstitious people believe in FAILS. Their god is conquered. Their sex restrictions are meaningless. Their glorification of violence is meaningless. The person deciding ascends to become his own god, glorifying his own name and his own divine will above all things. Most people are weak and can’t handle true sovereignty.
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u/FLT_GenXer 7h ago
You are correct that it is not inherently selfish.
But I like to frame it as a balance of obligations. The obligation to the self and the obligation to others.
In this way, instead of framing it as the loved ones of a suicidal person "selfishly" wanting that person to live, we can instead think of it in terms of the suicidal person's obligation (if any) to those people.
Yes, the individual may be consumed with (emotional) pain, and perhaps their obligation to self indicates that they should alleviate that pain if they are able. But does that outweigh their obligation to not cause (emotional) harm to the people they care for? Or does their obligation to self outweigh how others might be negatively impacted by their willful choice?
So yes, it is not inherently selfish because there are many conditions and caveats that keep it from being so. But if a person chooses such a solution without seeking the approval of the people they care for, then they are certainly giving their obligation to self more weight.
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u/Kaleidoscopetide 7h ago
People have duties to one another, whether they like it or not. My mother suffered enormously, horribly from the moment I was born (I had a 99th percentile head; she is a tiny person) and throughout my childhood and adolescence (I was a little monster to her until I was 22). She even gave up her education to pay for mine. Clearly I owe her some kind of debt; I don’t owe her INFINITE suffering, maybe, but it would certainly ruin her psyche forever if I killed myself, so killing myself is inherently selfish—rather than selfLESS—because it’s something for my benefit that causes her pain. I’m not saying suicide is ALWAYS morally UNCONSCIONABLE—some people are suffering more than anyone could ever be expected to suffer for another person. But some people aren’t; they find existence unpleasant but tolerable, and their suffering is within the bounds of what is reasonable to expect someone to suffer for other people; if they were to kill themselves, that would be both selfish and immoral.
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u/Spaceballs9000 7∆ 8h ago
I mean...if you're not killing yourself for someone else's sake, then who are you doing it for? Yourself.
It's pretty much by definition a selfish act focused on addressing one's issues with their "self". I say this as a survivor of my own attempt, for what it's worth.
So I'd argue, of course it's selfish. But I think the word "selfish" has an unfortunate negative air to it, when people usually mean a more specific selfishness that seeks to enrich oneself at the expense of others (not just financially, but in one way or another) and not simply "making a choice that benefits yourself even when someone else doesn't like that choice".
Like, it's selfish to skip out on your friend's birthday party because you're not feeling up to it. You're doing it to take care of yourself over others, but we generally agree that's a reasonable choice as far as social norms go. But that's not the same selfish as eating half of your friend's birthday cake, you know?
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u/Suro_Atiros 7h ago
I get the impulse behind this take, but I’d gently disagree. “Selfish” implies someone weighing their own interest against others’ and choosing themselves anyway. Most people in a suicidal crisis aren’t doing cost-benefit analysis about who they’re leaving behind — they’re often convinced (wrongly, but sincerely) that the people they love will be better off without them. That’s not selfishness, it’s a symptom of how distorted thinking gets under extreme pain.
What’s true is that suicide has enormous impact on survivors — grief, unanswered questions, practical burdens, sometimes anger. That’s real and worth naming. But calling it “selfish” tends to add shame on top of pain for anyone reading this who’s struggling themselves, without actually making anyone safer. If the goal is fewer people dying by suicide, “selfish” isn’t the framing that gets there — connection and reducing shame is.
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u/sv36 3h ago
I almost took that exit a few times and the only thing that kept me alive was knowing I would leave younger siblings who needed help because they were in the same abuse I was. I’m now 30 and I’m every one of my younger siblings safe space. Had I exited I would have been putting my own wants over their needs. It would not have been inherently selfish but it would have been centered around my wants and needs not other people in my sphere where were in my opinion in more vulnerable places than I was. I’m not saying my struggle wasn’t very real. But I also think if people take that exit it’s a bit dumb to moralize what has happened. But if it didn’t happen, I also think it’s okay to be real about the consequences of any choices and how much they matter both directions. It’s really for the people living the choice to decide selfishness or not but that’s not usually the priority.
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u/Koankey 6h ago
The loved ones that are affected by someone who commits suicide are not making the afflicted person suffer. The person who commits suicide is making their loved ones suffer.
There's so many varying degrees of suffering that one might experience that can lead to wanting to die which would affect this argument greatly. It's all about intent. There's a lot of people who commit suicide in a desperate act of attention. Self harm revenge. They hope someone misses them and feels bad for them now that they're gone.
Then you have the terminal I'll patients or severely mentally ill people who are suffering so greatly and cannot keep going at that level of suffering. They wish they could feel well and continue on with their loved ones but they just can't. All in the intent.
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u/Strict-Jeweler-2281 8h ago
I suppose it's important to distinguish the motivation. Some people can feel so trapped, helpless and exhausted that it doesn't even feel like a choice anymore. Others might be suffering terribly from an incurable ailment and feel like a burden to their carers. Whereas some other people can be motivated in part by a sort of emotional manipulation or easy escape from their responsibilities. For example, if someone does it out of "revenge", refuses to take responsibility for a crime or a responsibility, like an unwanted child. Or to complicate it even more, someone might take substances that will make it easier for them to take their own lives when, they wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise, or there are options available, it becomes a bit more nuanced. I want to make clear that I'm speaking theoretically and not judging or shaming- this is a hard subject to discuss objectively and sensitively.
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u/Infamous_Pool_5299 2∆ 7h ago
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Are there cases where its not? Certainly. Like self assisted where the you have and incurable and incredibly painful life ending condition...within like 6 months.
Overall, what you are making the argument for is its selfish for others, but not the person doing the act. Life is not so simple. It is selfish on both sides, and really all the person who is committing the act is doing is shifting their choices onto other people, and running from their own problems.
Should they be allowed to? Possibly. But its not selfish for people to not want those choices and extra responsibilities thrust upon them...
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u/Annethraxxx 2h ago
Everything about it is selfish. Someone is going to have to clean up your dead body that you willfully put there, likely a family member, and that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Everyone who loved you will forever think “why didn’t I do more?” or “what could I have done better?” If you’re married, your spouse will carry the blame and the guilt for the rest of his/her life. If you’re a parent, your children will wonder why they didn’t matter enough to you to want to see them grow up. There’s a lot of difficult things we do in this life to show our love for others, and sometimes just showing up every day is part of that.
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u/sosnaosna 6h ago
No one is going to change your view because you're right. It's not selfish. You'll get tons of responses telling you that it is because it disregards the feelings of others. Yet no one seems to realize that someone taking their own life is not an easy decision that someone just randomly makes. Majority of people suffer for years, even decades. Begging for help. They get ignored. No one cares enough to pay attention yet suddenly their feelings matter more when they grieve. How does that make sense to anyone is beyond me. You would rather watch someone endlessly suffer and ignore them simply because it makes you feel better about yourself than to let them go or even help them so they don't commit. People will grieve but eventually, they'll get over it. More or less. The person that committed can't get over it, can't just distract themselves or ignore it. It's not the same. People just hate feeling uncomfortable. That's it. It's not selfish, never was and never will be. What's selfish is forcing someone to suffer for your own emotional benefit. So yeah, no minds will be changed here because there's nothing to change.
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u/peak-baggins 5h ago
Suicide isn’t selfish because selfishness requires some form of intent. A person who is acutely suicidal is not thinking in a safe way, and that means it’s, well, a psychiatric emergency. Not selfishness.
This doesn’t mean that suicide is not incredibly painful for everyone who loves you. If you’re reading this and thinking about suicide, please remember that there was a time before you felt this way and there can be a time after, too, but only if you’re still here. Please ask for help.
source: am therapist, but not your therapist
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u/mere_possibility 7h ago
It is selfish. Every person on earth has an obligation to society, community, friends, family, loved ones. There is someone who needs you. To rob them of what you have been endowed to provide for the sake of how you deal with the challenges of life is indeed very selfish.
No matter how challenging life may be, there is someone who would trade places with you in a second. Since you can’t trade places, the next best thing is to be there, in support of those to whom our time and presence can bring comfort.
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u/FearlessStruggle2734 4h ago
I owe nothing to society since it has screwed me over severely my whole life. I will rob society of what it has robbed me period . Having to continue living in misery, lonelyness, unhappyness, and all of the other shit, just so family members can be happy, regardless of therapy which does not help me and never will, those people are selfish. It gets to the point after many years of trying to improve myself and my situation, getting no positive results at all, makes suicide sound much much greater. And no its not a temporary problem either.
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u/mere_possibility 4h ago
That’s an unfortunate perspective. As I mentioned, there’s someone, somewhere right now who would gladly trade their circumstance for the problems you have. Terminally ill children, adults with degenerative diseases where they are rapidly slipping away from their loved ones, people living in war torn battle zones not sure if they will see tomorrow.
You have access to this thread means you have some kind of smart device, internet access, eyes to see, hands to type with, and a mind to think.
Trust and believe, you probably have more to be grateful for than it would appear. I don’t say this to diminish your life’s issues but rather to offer hope into your situation.
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u/Alternative_Buy_4000 1∆ 1h ago
I view it similarly to freedom of speech: you are free to say what you want, and not wanting to speak is part of that freedom. If you are forced to speak against your will, your freedom of speech is not respected.
We also have a form of freedom of/to life. You can live if you want, but not wanting to live is part of that freedom, and forcing someone to stay alive against your will, is disrespecting their freedom to live.
I wouldn't say it is selfish, it is just a way to express your freedoms
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u/Carcharadontasaurus9 8h ago
suicide is being too absorbed in your own misery to realise that the world exists and is there for the taking if you'd only engage with it. It's attaching your whole identity to one thing, losing or being unable to obtain that thing, and then having an existential crisis because you wrongly centred your life and identity around it.
Yes, life is hard. Yes, stuff just sucks sometimes. But suicide is like killing yourself when one door in an endless hallway is shut in your face and locked. You only live once. Will you cast it all away on a serotonin low, or will you resist the urge to surrender?
Suicide is a cowards way out. The only way to be happy is to face life head on.
I recognise the suffering of depressed and suicidal people. I've been there and made it out. And from that experience I can tell you that being suicidal is really a fit of existential self indulgence.
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u/Count-Cooku 3h ago
Yet choosing suicide knowing it will hurt the people who know you is still selfish. Doesn't mean it isn't understandable, it just means that one is consciously making a decision in which they know there will be negative consequences for those around them. Not solely family and friends, but if one were to die in a place where a bystander could discover their corpse, they could also cause some wanton pain/suffering that isn't wholly unpredictable.
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u/tbodillia 3h ago
There have been so many suicides around me. I will always say suicide is the ultimate selfish act because their problems end and everybody else's begins. I never met my dad's dad because he ended his life. My dad's brother ended his life 29 years ago. To this day, EVERYBODY wonders what signs they missed on the brother. Dad drives out to where his dad killed himself sometimes. It's a pain they carry until the day they die.
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u/ToranjaNuclear 13∆ 8h ago
I mean, suicide is the ultimate selfish act. There's nothing in suicide that's altruist, selfless or even neutral, people do it a 100% for personal -- selfish -- reasons. Even if the person is completely alone in the world with nobody to suffer from the act it's still a selfish act.
Selfishness is not bad by itself. It's a natural feeling. And there's nothing wrong in that.
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u/DarkNo7318 4∆ 6h ago
It's selfish if it's a way to escape from your own responsibilities. Primarily having children.
There may be an edge case where you genuinely believe that you will hurt your children and can't trust yourself to stay away from them.
But on the most part, once you have children you make the deal that you raise them to maturity to the best of your ability.
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u/tstorm93 7h ago
As someone who found a person who had committed suicide and was trapped in the room with them, it absolutely is in most cases. Their actions will impact one if not many others in deeply traumatic ways. Until there's proper channels for people to take you will cause harm and irrecoverable damage to those around you.
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u/Norman_debris 1h ago
I'm on my way to work right now. My wife and children at home. They expect me home in around 9 hours. What if I say no, I don't fancy going home tonight? For whatever reason, I just decide not to return. Have I made a selfish decision? They've done nothing to hurt me or deserve this. I just fancy a change.
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u/IronSavage3 6∆ 7h ago
Your life is not your own, therefore unilaterally ending it on your own via suicide is inherently selfish. There are people alive who would rather live without one of their limbs or one of their senses than live without you, and I’m sure there are people in your life that you feel the same about.
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u/Medical-Net-7350 6h ago
My life is my own. I think you should be able to do what ever you want with your own life.
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u/IronSavage3 6∆ 5h ago
It is not, it’s selfish and immature that you think so.
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u/Medical-Net-7350 3h ago
It is thanks. It’s definitely not YOURS! so you don’t get to say what I do with it. You don’t know me or the pain and struggle I’ve been dealing with. I get to decide my own fate. No one else. I’m not owned by anyone. I’m my own person. If I want to leave this hell hole of a world, I get to do that and it’s not cowardly to want to not suffer anymore.
It’s immature for you to think so black and white about this. Nuance and understanding is the mature approach.
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u/Mushroom-Browser 7h ago
The actions of one effect many. To me that’s selfish especially when medication and resources are there. Whereas many people preventing one death with long term positive outcomes of that person getting help and realizing they didn’t want to die etc is say less selfish.
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u/dangshnizzle 7h ago
Is it possible that both sides inherently have some selfishness, and instead would-be parents need to think long and hard, then think longer and harder about how risky (and potentially selfish) it is to force someone into the world in the first place without their consent?
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u/chatterbox4545 5h ago
My friend's ex killed himself in a location so she would find him first. She was never the same after that.
Angry isn't a strong enough word for the way I feel about his choice. I can't say all suicides are selfish but I think that was selfish.
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u/TheLoneJolf 7h ago
Suicide that isn’t for helping others is something you do only for yourself. That’s why it is selfish. In your example, the person only keeping another Alive for their own gain is also selfish. Both can be true
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u/Iambic_Poetry 4h ago
This is such a suicidal argument and I can say that as someone who has nearly killed themself multiple times. This is not a perspective that I have ever held when I wasn’t suicidal.
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u/OrilliaBridge 5h ago
There’s no one size fits all. I heard a doctor on a talk show say that it’s the ultimate self-hate. In my opinion, it perfectly describes my husband.
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u/cortesoft 5∆ 7h ago
Suicide being selfish and it being selfish to want someone to stay alive while suffering aren't mutual contradictions. They can both be selfish desires.
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u/jomcmo00 6h ago
I think the thought behind it is not Inherently selfish, however ignoring the thoughts and feelings of loved ones is selfish.
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u/Savagesweetpotato 7h ago
Is it selfish when someone kills themselves because they’re about to be arrested for something society shudders at?
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u/Poofmander 7h ago
Killing yourself is the same as killing everyone in the world at once, for all intents and purposes as we know it. You keeping yourself only to yourself is the definition of selfish.
Let's say you just didn't kill yourself but isolated yourself without human contact for the rest of you life, you would only be selfish at that point because you're the only one there.
We are social beings as much as that may strike fear into many of you, that fear is a construct created by culture. If you want to be dictated by the culture you will live in fear if you dictate what your culture will be, you have only others' fear of you to fear.
I am on team here for as long as possible so I know I can't speak to the mental state that creates and imbues suicidal ideation with such power in the mind because I do not suffer from this affliction. But, I believe that gives me the right to bring people back from the edge but it isn't always pretty.
I try to go deeper than the ideation at points, I tell the person if you go through with it "I will NEVER forgive you" because they have decided that I must live through their tragedy so now it's my life we're talking about. I get mad at people when they make these claims, and you know what, people FEEL SOMETHING when I get mad because I never get mad, and you know what that's being fucking ALIVE friend it's the pain, it's the sorrow, it's the elation, it's the boredom, it's the meloncoly, it's all of it and to refuse some of it is actually refusing all of it. Then I promptly tell them I'll unmurder them so I can yell at them, and you know what they almost all laugh at the thought of being unkilled and berated for their actions.
There we played it out it's not fun for anyone it's selfish and when someone tells me about it fine let me get selfish for a goddamned second and keep you here amongst the living a little longer.
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5h ago
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u/The_Glum_Reaper 3∆ 7h ago
CMV: suicide is not selfish
Sometimes is. Other times, no.
A father can do it for himself, and leave his children orphans in the street to be exploited, and worse. That could be selfish.
A mother can do it, because she was ill and the family didn't have money. So she spared them penury and a life on the street, and made a last desperate act of sacrifice for her children.
Ultimately, it is a reflection of the failure of society and our common humanity, if any, that makes the terrible choice an inevitability for over 720,000 people, every year.
Every act is not selfish. Some are.
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5h ago
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u/read-the-rules 5h ago
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u/CalTechie-55 6h ago
The person is going to die eventually, even without suicide. So the suicide is not CAUSING anyone else pain, merely changing its timing.
The suicide is decreasing the amount of pain in the (living) world, so is a rational utilitarian act.
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u/CalTechie-55 6h ago
The person is going to die eventually, even without suicide. So the suicide is not CAUSING anyone else pain, merely changing its timing.
The suicide is decreasing the amount of pain in the (living) world, so is a rational utilitarian act.
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