Suicide, Tragic or Selfish?

[So Boerd]

Kestrel said
Buying a hamburger instead of donating the extra money to those who need it more than you is selfish also. A lot of things people do is selfish. I'd go as far as claiming selfishness is a pillar of both survival and happiness. Maybe not the one burger, though.So I'm not really sure what you're trying to convey.

Good, now that you dropped the idea suicide is not selfish I can go on to break this Loki fallacy of incomparable pain.

Suppose a bigot is depressed at how the world is going. Can he do "whatever he wants with his own body" and use his mouth to yell racial slurs against black people and will you "respect that"?

[Kestrel]

Yeah... I don't see how I'll gain anything from continuing this discussion. Goodbye.

[Gwazi Magnum]

So Boerd said
Good, now that you dropped the idea suicide is not selfish I can go on to break this Loki fallacy of incomparable pain.Suppose a bigot is depressed at how the world is going. Can he do "whatever he wants with his own body" and use his mouth to yell racial slurs against black people and will you "respect that"?

There's a huge difference between hate speech and right over ones own body.
It's a rather obvious difference... :/

[So Boerd]

Magic Magnum said
There's a huge difference between hate speech and right over ones own body.It's a rather obvious difference... :/

Tell me which is a worse pain. Random stranger calls you naughty words, or you find your mother hanging in the living room. Go ahead, TELL me the stranger is worse.

Both cases involve exercising bodily autonomy in a way to make themselves feel better and others worse. Only one is soul-crushing, and it ain't the old coot yelling at you from his pick up window.

[Turtlicious]

So Boerd said
Tell me which is a worse pain. Random stranger calls you naughty words, or you find your mother hanging in the living room. Go ahead, TELL me the stranger is worse.Both cases involve exercising bodily autonomy in a way to make themselves feel better and others worse. Only one is soul-crushing, and it ain't the old coot yelling at you from his pick up window.

LMAO, what is this post even?

[The Nexerus]

Magic Magnum said
There's a huge difference between hate speech and right over ones own body.It's a rather obvious difference... :/

Neither trespasses upon the letter of the rights of another.

[Gwazi Magnum]

So Boerd said
Tell me which is a worse pain. Random stranger calls you naughty words, or you find your mother hanging in the living room. Go ahead, TELL me the stranger is worse.Both cases involve exercising bodily autonomy in a way to make themselves feel better and others worse. Only one is soul-crushing, and it ain't the old coot yelling at you from his pick up window.

I'm not arguing the latter is more painful.
But if the mother wanted to end her life that's her right, it's her life to do with as she wants.

The Nexerus said
Neither trespasses upon the letter of the rights of another.

That's a similarity, but can you spot the difference?

One is unnecessary hateful actions to another for the sole purpose of hurting them.
The other although harmful to others who care, is an individual making their own choice that they're happier dead than alive and doing what they feel is best for them.

[So Boerd]

Both cases involve knowingly causing pain. Whether pain is the intention does not matter. Both cases, the person knows what kind of pain they will cause and they still do it. The suicidal person just inflicts infinetely more pain.

[Brovo]

So Boerd said
Both cases involve knowingly causing pain. Whether pain is the intention does not matter. Both cases, the person knows what kind of pain they will cause and they still do it. The suicidal person just inflicts infinetely more pain.

Your pain is not my concern if I want to die, get a divorce, or say no more. Do you think wars are won, or legal battles satiated, by appealing to pathos? No. Not at all. Your being offended or upset is in no way, shape, or form, a credible claim to censoring or invalidating my right to control my own body and person as I see fit. If a person is allowed to inhale chemicals that will slowly give them cancer and destroy their lungs, or drink a substance that is literally poison for the sole purpose of becoming intoxicated, or allowed to voluntarily perform extremely dangerous stunts like...
--Driving a motor vehicle beyond twenty kilometres per hour.
--Diving out of a plane.
--Being on a plane.
--Being on a boat.
--Swimming in the ocean knowing there are sharks around.
--Keeping pets that can kill you, which of course includes astro the dog and phoenix the cat. (Points to whoever can get those references.)
--Owning a gun, firing a gun, or anything related to firearms or explosives in general, including but not limited to: Construction, the military, police forces, recreational use, and so on.

...Then maybe, just maybe, a person should be allowed to choose when they no longer wish to live after being checked over by a therapist for signs of a mental disorder. We have seven billion people on this planet. Speaking from a coldly logical point of view, there is no point or purpose served in preventing someone who wants to die from simply doing it. Because those who really do actually want to die, will simply die. They will find a gun, or hang themselves, or stab themselves, or overdose on medication, or hundreds of other methods of ending ones own existence which vary in levels of pain.

Otherwise, if you don't want someone to die, and believe it to be so selfish an act as to say they shouldn't be allowed to do that, then you should cease any and all activities that increase the chances of your own demise, especially if said activities (ex: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, working with cleaning chemicals, etc) directly can and will increase your own cause for death by slow suicide.

Your love for them is as selfish as their wish to die. That's the cold, hard truth.

[So Boerd]

So I ask you the same question. Do you hold racist bigots in the same regard?

[Brovo]

So Boerd said
So I ask you the same question. Do you hold racist bigots in the same regard?

As suicide? No.

Racism is an action against a fellow human being, or a belief held about a particular group of people, based solely on their ethnicity.

Racism is more akin to murder: It's an act which violates the sanctity of another human being, with the intent of violating the individual rights of that other human being. Suicide is an act with the motive to end one's own life, not the life of another.

Still. Racism is an entirely different topic with layers of complexity involved. For instance, holding a racist belief, while perhaps immoral, isn't necessarily worthy of being called an illegality because it's a belief, not an act. Racially-motivated crimes or discrimination, on the other hand, is an act, and should be dealt with accordingly based on the situation at hand.

...Versus suicide, where barring mental instability, if a perfectly sane person wishes to end their own life, the only person they act upon directly is themselves, right in the same vein as choosing to drink alcohol, do drugs, smoke cigarettes, drive a motor vehicle at highway speeds, jump out of a plane, or owning a pet that could kill you in seconds if it went berserk.

[So Boerd]

How does an old coot yelling naughty words at you violate your sanctity as a human being, but losing your mother does not?

Do you have some right to not be insulted but no right to a mother? Let's get our priorities straight. Pick any 100 people off the street and ask them which they prefer.

Aren't you being selfish for telling the bigot he cannot walk around yelling his foulness? It is his mouth, why can't he say anything he wants that causes no physical harm?

[Brovo]

So Boerd said How does an old coot yelling naughty words at you violate your sanctity as a human being, but losing your mother does not?Do you have some right to not be insulted but no right to a mother? Let's get our priorities straight. Pick any 100 people off the street and ask them which they prefer.Aren't you being selfish for telling the bigot he cannot walk around yelling his foulness? It is his mouth, why can't he say anything he wants that causes no physical harm?

Racism =/= Naughty words. Using words like "fuck" or "shit" is non-derogatory in nature; it's an exclamation of pain or surprise.

Racism is done with the intent to dehumanize and disassociate, to treat someone else as a lesser individual, or indeed, as simply being a tool, for an element that is entirely uncontrollable and irrelevant to who they are as a person: Their ethnicity.

Someone dehumanizing you via racism is an act against your person done for the purpose of devaluing you as a human being. It is aggressive, an attack.

Losing one's mother to suicide is not an act against your person. Your feelings are irrelevant ultimately in that it is her body, and thus, her decision. It is not aggressive, it is not an attack.

Get your priorities straight: You cannot tell someone what it is they should or shouldn't do with their own body. In an idealistic world, there would be no suicide, and no racism, but this isn't an idealistic world, and blaming the person committing suicide for how you feel about it is beyond disrespectful.

Pick any one hundred people off the street and ask them which they prefer on topics like homosexuality back in the 50's and you'd get a pretty much universal answer on that: It's wrong. Argument ad popularim is not a valid method by which to construct a logical argument, it is only valid for gathering consensus, which is often flawed.

As I said before: If a person wishes to believe that [insert ethnicity here] is inferior to [insert ethnicity here] for [whatever stupidity here], that's their decision. That's not illegal, and even if it was, how the fuck does one prosecute thought crime? It's when someone acts on that and goes on the offensive, to attack, to dehumanize, to commit racially-motivated crimes, that's when it's wrong, because it's an act against another person. I wouldn't call it as bad as, say, murder, but racism itself is a serious problem.

Suicide is a decision. If you don't want to live--and I mean really don't want to live--you will find a way. Just like a person who does hardcore drugs finds them no matter how hard the drug war tries to stop it, and a person who craves violence will find it wherever he goes. Shaming a person who wishes to kill themselves is the reaction of someone who cannot understand the emotional state and history of other people.

Basically speaking: If someone wants to kill themselves, that's a decision about their own person, for themselves, and their own future. If others are hurt by that decision, that's unfortunate, but in the same vein as being hurt by someone drinking alcohol and doing drugs.

I also advocated for seeing a therapist before offing oneself. Because if the wish to kill oneself is coming from a disorder like depression, then that's a tragedy in the making, not a conscious decision made with sound mind.

Seriously. Victim blaming though. Man, c'mon. A person who is killing themselves is already about to go through a literally life ending decision. Being emotionally mature enough to still care about who they were when they pass on, and respect their decision, and making absolutely sure it's what they want to do before going through with it--that's what true family does, what a real friend would do. Caring enough about someone to accept them even when they end up making a decision that hurts you so they no longer have to deal with whatever it is that's killing them every day is a sign of emotional maturity.

You will live on. It'll hurt, but if they make that decision of their own sound mind, well... Stopping them is torturing them. It's telling them that your own emotional state is more important than theirs is, and sets the value of their individual rights and feelings and beliefs beneath that of yours.

Selfish. Tsk.

Still. Tired. Me thinks I will sleep and we'll see if this goes anywhere when I wake again.

[Frizan]

Brovo! But....but...but...BIGOTS!!!!!!!!!

[So Boerd]

Let me cut through the BS to get to the salient BS, the very specious statement you base this ridiculous text wall on.

"Someone dehumanizing you via racism is an act against your person done for the purpose of devaluing you as a human being. It is aggressive, an attack."

No, an attack on my person is getting punched. I don't care what stupid people say. Call me chink, I don't care. None of my human rights are violated.

With your nonsense "attack" argument out of the way (And what about all the people who write notes? Isn't that an attack?) The rest of the text wall is simply contradictory. Saying the Nbomb is something the bigot does with his own body and as you claim, feelings do not matter when it comes to how an individual uses his own body. Try being ideologically consistent.

[Gat]

You could try to stop comparing apples and hand grenades too, but we all know you wont.

To clarify, I believe you'll find Brovo is including more than just someone calling people nigga or chink or nip or darky or any number of other racist remarks when he mentioned racially-motivated crimes. Consider the KKK, or the Nazi extermination camps for more extreme examples. People being physically assaulted based on their race alone is not as uncommon as one could hope unfortunately as a less extreme and more common example. All that said Verbal Assault is legally considered a crime, sure with less ramifications than physical assault, and it tends to be harder to actually take through a court but that doesn't make it any less of an attack for lacking physical violence. Yes most people can shrug off a few words thrown at them by dicks as they drive past in their pickup. Most people can take a punch or two as well with little to no ill effects, should that also not be considered an attack?

I notice you tend to 'disprove' peoples arguments and consider them 'out of the way' without actually constructing a logical counter point, you disregard entirely valid comparisons simply by nitpicking one or two elements rather than taking it in context as a whole, not sure where you learned to debate mate but I gotta tell you, you're not very good at it.

[So Boerd]

But so what? Accepting the premise that being an "attack" somehow alters the situation, what does it matter? The hypothetical mother is still knowingly inflicting more pain. I do not give a damn what your intentions are, I care about the consequences. There is simply no comparison in the level of damage suicidal mother causes vs dumb bigot.

[Dervish]

I really don't want to know how a topic discussing the ethics of suicide turned into arguing about hate crimes.

[Gwazi Magnum]

So Boerd said
But so what? Accepting the premise that being an "attack" somehow alters the situation, what does it matter? The hypothetical mother is still knowingly inflicting more pain. I do not give a damn what your intentions are, I care about the consequences. There is simply no comparison in the level of damage suicidal mother causes vs dumb bigot.

I'll bring back an example I used rather recently.

You're in a relationship and the person you're with wants to end it. You love and care for the person, and you don't want to see them go. That's a completely understandable and normal human emotion/reaction to have. However, to then use that as a reason to go "Please don't go!" and keep them somewhere they don't want to be would be selfish. The leaving you is painful to you, and it will no doubt hurt you when they leave. But it's their choice be in the relationship and you are in turn hurting them by keeping them where they don't want to be (and note I say this having once been the selfish prick who did this in a relationship).

Just change the wording here to be on suicide, yes it will hurt to see the person kill themselves. But it's their choice to their own body and life, and you are in turn hurting them by telling them that they can't.

[So Boerd]

That does not explain the inconsistency in your philosopy. Here, use my take on the examples as an example of ideological consistency.

Suicidal mother: Is bad because the mother is causing enormous life shattering pain.
Bigot: Is bad as the bigot inflicts pain to make himself feel better.
Relationship: Unlike the family, all parties are entered by choice and as such may leave by choice. You cannot simply decide one day you are not my biological parent. The incredibly strong bond between parent and child is so much stronger. I can get another girlfriend, but I only get one mother.