The universal suicide taboo--a religious conspiracy?

If you weren't talking about the OP what advice are you referring to?

Thank you for your inquiry. Please refresh your recollection of my entire statement following the last quote block in my first post. That block was copied from your OP. It read:

Could the ultimate freedom be found through the ultimate renouncement of this world, suicide?
Why not?

If someone asserted "the ultimate freedom can be found through suicide," then that would fairly be called advice. The speaker would be telling the listener how to find something described in alluring terms, which is a species of advice.

You asked each of your readers, and therefore asked me, whether I agreed with the assertion. I do not. Your second question correctly anticpated my answer, and went on to ask me why not. So, I explained.

At no time did I say that you answered your own question. At no time did I say that you offered advice on this matter.

No problem with other opinions, but you seemed to argue that religion didn't care, really, if people suicide because they will always have customers, like a fast food joint. I was merely pointing out that the collection plate wasn't the point, at least not MY point, so my point stands.

Different people have different views about religion. Mine are different than yours. I don't expect you to agree with my opinions, but I do expect to be able to post them here, subject to T&C.

As OP, you get to choose the topic. If you want to police what people say about the topic you've chosen, then you may wish to get a blog.



[edit on 20-7-2010 by eight bits]

It's not a way out, suicide will cost you, so don't do it.
You hurt others by doing it also.

The OP seems to be a Philip K. Dick fan. I always found the following passage from Dick's book Now Wait for Last Year to be thought-provoking and intense. The context is a private conversation between a global leader and a doctor.

'Listen, doctor. Here's what I want to ask you. Suppose you began to perform an org-trans operation on me, taking out my old stomach and putting in a new one, and something went wrong. It wouldn't hurt, would it? Because I'd be out. Could you do that?' He watched Eric's face. 'You understand me, don't you? I see you do.'

Behind them, at the closed door, the bodyguard stood impassively, keeping everyone else out, preventing them from hearing. This was for Eric alone. In utmost confidence.

'Why?' Eric said, after a time. Why not simply use Johannson's loger-magnum pistol? If this is what you want...'

'I don't know why, actually,' the Mole said. 'No one particular reason. The death of my wife, perhaps. Call it the responsibility I have to bear.. . and which I'm not managing to discharge properly, at least according to many people. I don't agree; I think I'm succeeding. But they don't understand all the factors in the situation.' He admitted, then, 'And I'm tired.'

'It - could be done,' Eric said truthfully.

'And you could do it?' The man's eyes blazed, keen and fixed on him. Sizing him up as each second ticked away.

'Yes, I could do it.' He held, personally, an odd view regarding suicide. Despite his code, the ethical under-structure of medicine, he believed - and it was based on certain very real experiences in his own life - that if a man wanted to die he had the right to die. He did not possess an elaborated rationalization to justify this belief; he had not even tried to construct one. The proposition, to him, seemed self-evident. There was no body of evidence which proved that life in the first place was a boon. Perhaps it was for some persons; obviously it was not for others. For Gino Molinari it was a nightmare. The man was sick, guilt-ridden, saddled with an enormous, really hopeless task: he did not have the confidence of his own people, the Terran population, and he did not enjoy the respect or trust or admiration of the people of Lilistar. And then, above and beyond all that, lay the personal consideration, the events in his own private life, starting with the sudden, unexpected death of his wife and ending up with the pains in his belly. And then, too, Eric realized with acute comprehension, there was probably more. Factors known only to the Mole. Deciding factors which he did not intend to tell.

'Would you do such a thing?' Molinari asked.

After a long, long pause Eric said, 'Yes I would. It would be an agreement between the two of us. You'd ask for it and I'd give it to you and it would end there. It would be no one's business but our own.'

'Yes.' The Mole nodded and on his face relief showed; he seemed now to relax a little, to experience some peace. 'I can see why Virgil recommended you.'

reply to post by joechip

Who hates his life more than a suicide?

People who have lost the ability to enjoy life. They don't hate living, they hate what they have done with it. They admit they are huge failures and but they don't take the steps to fix the problem. Suicide starts in you mind and grows. The verse you quoted is talking about ("He who loves his life shall lose it. And he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal." John 12:25) refers to selfishness.
Suppose a person has done something they feel guilty about, they refuse to give it to God, refuse to learn from the mistake, refuse to use their life to help others through the same problem. They focus in themselves and come to the wrong answer. They decide to fix the problem w/o God, their own way.
Do suicides go to Hell? NO! People who never accept Jesus as their Saviour do. And saved doesn't mean you will face things from the right perspective, it just provides the opportunity.

reply to post by zachi

Please explain further how you feel that biblical quote means anything other than what it says. I really don't see the "selfishness" aspect of it. He seems to be rather direct about "loving" your life in this world being a bad thing and hating your life being a virtue. It seems to me this fits right in line with the difficultly ascribed a rich man in entering the kingdom of heaven. If you do well in life, you're very, very likely to appreciate what the world has to offer. And therefore, your focus is on this place and not the spiritual. Just like Jesus hung out with criminals and the poor. They were bummed out enough with life to hear his message. I don't see how the quote means anything other than what it seems to.



edit for grammar

[edit on 20-7-2010 by joechip]

reply to post by silent thunder


Nice. I love that book. Very cool that you quoted that piece. How many of PKD's viewpoints (both paranoid and insightful) have made it into my subconscious gestalt, I wonder.

reply to post by zachi


The irony is that the way you tell people who don't love life that they are "huge failures" is that in your own worldview, that should drive more people to suicide than not. Way to shoot yourself in the foot. I'm sure you have the greatest intentions at heart. And if not, I'm sure it's all in the name of Jesus...

Glad to see that we've worked out that "advice" thing.

I don't see how the quote means anything other than what it seems to.

It was ordinary and usual for the comparative degree to be expressed by hyperbolic positive degree forms.

Thus, "value more... value less" becomes "love... hate."

This device is reported to have been used elsewhere by Jesus. For example, the supposed "New Fourth Commandment" to "hate" one's parents, Luke 14: 26. It's figurative, and obviously so.

The particular instance you cite is especially complicated. What is translated in English as life is actually the Greek word psyche.

Psyche may have been the actual word spoken, and not a translation of some other word from a different language. That's because Jesus is speaking to Gentiles when he says this. Greek was, of course, the lingua franca of that time and place.

The basis of the usual English translation is, I am told, parallelism with the preceding verse (where a seed is said to die in order to bear fruit, which of course is itself figurative, since germination isn't death), and the supposed unsuitability of a word like soul. The speaker is a First Century Jew, who would not be expected to believe in a soul separate from the body.

I find that unpersuasive, since Jesus would plausibly know what his listeners would understand by psyche. Had he wanted to say bodily life, then that would have been easy enough to do in Greek. Indeed, it would have been equally simple to carry through the seed metaphor, choosing to say husk or something, had Jesus meant that.

So. We have a figurative comparison, applied to something that could easily not be own's own natural life, in a text which certainly does not literally say that it is about anybody's natural life.

That offers some ways in which the verse you quoted might mean something other than what it seems to mean to you.







[edit on 21-7-2010 by eight bits]

I'm glad to see this topic being discussed. Often the topics that we are told are taboo are the ones that ultimately lead to the most truth when discussed openly.
Personally I feel that choosing to end ones life is a right no different than the right to eat or breathe. I see the elderly (75+) and the health and mental issues that reduce them to a shell of their former selves and think 'is that really what i want? would i really want the last years of my life to be spent looking at the faces of my children and grandchildren without having any idea who they were?' I look at people who have issues in their lives that cannot be remedied or made less hurtful by 'talking about it'. How is it anything but selfish to insist they continue a life they are miserable in so that the people around them can avoid what?.... missing the person? realizing that many of the good things in our lives amount to luck? Regardless, I feel that shaming someone considering suicide by saying 'it's selfish of you to want to do that to *other people*' is distasteful.
There was a period in my life where I did become suicidal. Not dangerously so, but seriously considering to the point I began looking into where I could find enough sedatives to OD, or where I could buy a handgun. How to end myself in a way that would be the least disturbing to whoever found my body. Oddly, it empowered me. I realized it was my right to take my life, and that I would be able to at any point when I decided the time was right. So what was the rush? And if there was no rush, wouldn't I be better waiting it out? perhaps a time would come when sacrificing my own life could help save the life of someone else (egotistical, i know, but ego isn't always a bad thing).
As to why there is a taboo, and whether or not it's a conspiracy... I have no idea, but to me, TPTB are power hungry, and denying them the power over when and how your life ends is denying them that they ever had any real power over your life. And that's got to be a slap in the face to those goons.

People don't choose to live, and unfortunately some people were born in very harsh conditions and some go through unimaginable things in their lives that damage their bodies and minds.

Why wouldn't they be able to end their own life whenever they want? Out of all the things that can happen that you have absolutely no control over, how can having the right to end your own life be wrong?

reply to post by eight bits


You've offered some translation possibilities, like "value less" in exchange for "hate" and "soul" for "life"...the first part doesn't change the basic meaning of the text, and the second doesn't make a lot of sense. Or if the phrase is taken to mean one ought to value one's soul less...seems to argue even more strongly for suicide.
I think its all largely bad translations of myths in the first place. But I contend it still says what it says.

I was stopped from suicide for a reason - and the reason was to spread love and peace, and to help others.

So I was not allowed to go.

reply to post by catwhoknows


A bit off topic, but you've aroused my curiosity. Not allowed by whom? You have some circumstances to relate? Also who do you help? How do you spread peace and love...etc.

Are you glad you "weren't allowed"? Really you seem to imply you were stopped by God, right? That could be interesting to discuss.

reply to post by joechip


It is not off topic - it is about suicide.

I was stopped by....who knows?

And I definitely know why I was stopped.

reply to post by catwhoknows


Actually the topic is not "suicide" per se, or "Tell me your personal experiences with suicide, but nothing interesting, mind you" but rather the discussion (which I gather you didn't bother to read) is dealing with the suicide taboo, and its near universality in religion.

Pretty much a dead thread anyway, so I indulged your provocative, but nearly information-less response. But, yeah, definitely off-topic.

www.amazon.com...=sr_1

This book "The History of Suicide: Voluntary Death In Western Culture", came out in 1995, looks good.

Minois's book follows the religious, philosophical, literary, and judicial debate for and against self-murder from antiquity to the end of the Enlightenment, demonstrating the close connection between political power, religious authority, social status, and the freedom to die. Minois, an independent scholar and author of 14 books, begins with the change in public attitudes toward suicide in Rome, in the face of military exigencies and a barbarian onslaught. The Epicurean ideal of the ``perfect exit'' was rejected by a state desperate to increase the number of taxpayers and soldiers at its disposal. Suicide was punished by confiscation of the deceased's estate and destruction of the corpse. After the rise of Christendom, church leaders incorporated prohibitions on suicide into religious doctrine, in part through the philosophical translation of Thomas Aquinas. Medieval law followed suit, prescribing torture, hanging, public display, and ignominious disposal of the corpses of suicides.

From Kirkus

Maybe you were on to something OP! I think it is everyone's right to choose the manner of their death, if they wish. I like so many things about living I would probably not do it, unless circumstances became intolerable, or I was just not interested anymore.

Great discussion BTW.