Dangerous Philosophy: Contemplating Suicide

There are several philosophical pillars upon which Western society is built on, pillars which I believe are not all too stable. Western thought has progressed off of unstable pillars and weak foundations, and I have made it my undertaking to identify some of these pillars. Read on, and risk having the foundation of your views taken out from underneath you. Choose to stop reading, and be forever enshrouded in curiosity.

Part 1: Something can come from Nothing
Part 2: The Illusion of Free Will
Part 3: The Curse of Comfort

“I am thinking about committing suicide.”

If you have ever heard someone utter those words to you, you know the heavy weight those words carry. Those words pierce your heart, darken your mood, and cause time to stand still. Your mind races as it tries to think of the right words, as your choice of words at that moment has life or death implications. In this day and age where suicides are quietly and steadily increasing in the civilized world, much more so than in third-world countries, let us take a moment to examine the suicidal thoughts that many of us consider to be only those of the irrational and the insane.

Let us begin our discussion of suicide by emphasizing its importance. 20th century French philosopher Albert Camus once said “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine of twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer this.” Here is my answer.

Let us consider life to be like a poker game. You are dealt a set of cards, and you play them against other players as best you can. You win some, you lose some, and your value to society increases or decreases accordingly. Most people live their lives reactively, reacting to the cards they are dealt, and accepting the value society places on them. However, a few people realize the absurdity of a game where in the end everyone will end up losing what they have won. A select few people rise above this reactive lifestyle by deflecting outside influences and proactively taking control of their lives. One of the ways in which people take control of their lives is through suicide.

On occasion people that are overwhelmed with life will have a brief moment of clarity and realize the absurdity of this game of life. This clarity stems from the contemplation of suicide. Why continue to struggle through a life where your value is low and regardless of the cards you are dealt you still seem to lose? Why continue to even play your cards, if in the end the outcome will be the same for everyone anyways?

Once again I will borrow a quote from Camus to better articulate these questions: “You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”

It seems to me life is inherently absurd, and any thought to end one’s own life is inherently rational. I imagine that most people would not consider suicide a rational thought. But then again, most people live reactively, continuing to live purely out of habit, and any idea that threatens to break this habit is viewed as false. In the Western world, we were born into a society heavily influenced by Christian ideas, ideas that claim anyone who commits suicide will die a sinner for rejecting God’s gift of life. St. Thomas Aquinas preached that suicide was the most evil of all sins, because it was the only sin one could not repent of before going on to the afterlife.

Suicide, I believe, is a method to take control of your life by ending it. It is a rebellion against the authority of God, against fate, against whatever force it is that determines our beginning and our end. It is your first true act of free will in your life, for you did not choose to be born, but you have the power to choose when you die. It is a liberating thought to know that you do have some form of control of your life. It is from this single liberating thought, of suicide, that you may embark on your journey of liberation towards Enlightenment, whether it is in death, or in life.

Once someone truly contemplates committing suicide, there are two options. One is to commit suicide, and attain a state of Nothingness through death. The other is to leave the poker game, and embark on a journey towards Enlightenment in life.

Once you seriously consider suicide, whether you follow through or not, you become much more powerful. You realize you can drop your cards and leave the poker game, and face a world of uncertainty where you discover a freedom of will within yourself. You can end your own life at any time by your own will, but if you can do that, imagine everything else you can accomplish that takes less willpower! You can quit the job you hate, you can finally talk to that pretty girl you’ve been afraid to talk to, you can run across America barefoot, you can do anything you set your mind to because you have looked death square in the face and said “wait one minute, I’m going to do this one last thing before I die.” And in this way you begin to exert your will over your life, and you begin to finally feel like you are actually living! And then you can say to death, “you know, maybe I’m not quite ready yet.”

This option, while it does not involve physical suicide, does involve an aspect of mental/spiritual suicide. It involves killing a part of your old self. Once you kill the part of yourself that was subduing your consciousness and causing you to live reactively, you become master of your soul. As Inazo Nitobe, 19th/20th century Japanese scholar noted about the samurai, “Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametomo can pierce.”

What is the way forward for Western society? We need to remove the negative stigma from contemplating suicide and emphasize that it is natural for rational humans to contemplate suicide. It is a topic that we do not discuss in schools, and parents are afraid to discuss it with their kids because of its sensitive nature. In many cases, churches lead the discussion on suicide, and while their efforts to prevent suicide are commendable, their underlying view that suicide is bad is problematic. We need to establish that suicide is a normal, rational thought so people are not immediately alienated as “troubled” or “insane” when they come forward with the words “I am thinking about committing suicide.”

Brilliant. Agree 100%.
S&F from someone who did contemplate suicide.

a reply to: Wang Tang

I hear what you're saying, but suicidal ideation is a fragile subject in this day and age.

Suicidal ideation isnt necessarily "bad" or indicative of a person being "insane" but if the ideation becomes obsessive/frequent and/or the intensity of ideation becomes high, it is a problem that needs to be addressed. That is why there are systems and support nets to save people's lives, and rightfully so.

This speaks to me because i actually just had this conversation with a very depressed close and old friend last night. Sometimes just showing you care about another is enough to help others find the drive to push on and live the fullest and healthiest life they can. Afterall, there is a lot to live for...and this is coming from a guy that has been put through some very serious #.

If you have to, let out a good cry. If you need to, pound your chest and realize you are loved and stength resides within. And no doubt, we have a choice to prosper.

a reply to: Wang Tang

While in many ways i understand, i think this is dangerous.

While yes, life is in a way completely pointless, especially If you do not ascribe to the belief in any sort of afterworld, i think you are forgetting the anguish of those close to those who commit suicide.

Even devout atheists develop deep emotional connections and suffer greatly when those they love die. Suicide may end your pain, but it selfishly inflicts great pain on those who care about you.

originally posted by: Wang Tang

...for you did not choose to be born,

That's your mistake right there. What if you DID choose to be born? What if you thought about it a whole lot, yearned for it constantly, chose your own parents and your own circumstances promising that THIS time you would learn all you could from a life? Then you decide you can't hack it and quit, thus nullifying your own reason for existence.

If that's the case, it's not such a hot decision. Just because you don;t remember it doesn't mean it didn't happen, and if it did, all you will say is,

"Oops!"

a reply to: Wang Tang

I think the issue is the choice of metaphor.

Suicide is not the only way of conceiving of enlightenment, and frankly, it seems like a poor candidate for affirming the specialness of the magic of living.

If you could peer inside your cells and see the magic of its self-creation, the thought of 'killing yourself' would seem obscene - indeed, a function of a confused and disturbed consciousness.

Equating the 'death' of a self to the death of the body is dangerous. Indeed, its insane and its perverse. While 'killing your self" does have truth as a phenomenological experience - death of body and death of self are fundamentally different: in the latter case, the body is still there existing as a magical platform for the magical expression of our being. Nothingness is how the world seems following death; but here, in this world, there is a whole lot of somethingness to celebrate: unity, love, joy, awe.

Losing sight of the above is what leads to the simplistic equation "death of body = death of self", as if society were somehow dysfunctional for feeling leery about speaking about suicide as if it didn't entail some fundamental breakdown at the socioemotional level - an internalization of dysharmony in a soul - and so it would be absurd and obscene to the extreme to conduct a conversation about suicide as if social and economic issues inherent in capitalism weren't what created the conditions that led to a state of alienation, and so, a desire for suicide.

Suicide, in other words, emerges out of suffering. Suffering, contrary the buddha, is a function of social-dysfynction, which long predates the Buddhas coming. However, to affirm the Buddha, ignorance is truly the source of suffering, but the knowledge that matters is of a systemic and organizational kind: its the knowledge of what affects you and not how you work. To know that you are in your very heart a social phenomena - a mirror of the Others you live around, is so put you into a situation where you health and wellbeing as an organism depends upon your relations with others. The Other is the heart - asian culture expresses this very deeply, for instance, in contributing to the cost of funerals. The whole community supports death just as they support life. The whole point is: life is heavy alone, but magical and profound together.

We do not even realize how obnoxious talk or consideration of "killing self" is. To even have such a desire is to be existing in an unstable state - as if this world or the next world were mere "replicas; as if this world weren't a wonderful garden of possibilities in which to actuate - and make real - the thoughts we have.

Very interesting. I too have contemplated it, and for me it is a matter of logic. I suffer from severe intractable pain after being shot, in car accidents, and 23 major surgeries later have to wake up every day to suffer. So I say it is a matter of time before I die. It could be today, tomorrow, two years or twenty, but the end will come regardless. So, why live suffering every day of your life? For what? The only reason I am still here is I can't put my family through it. I have zero problem doing it after the life I lived.

But, as you said I have noticed that a whole lot of worry about the things in life people always complain about or worry about went away and I have never felt more free. I also died twice and was later revived. I know what is on the other side and believe me or not it is much better than living in this physical body. It is perfect comfort and love for one. I won't get into all that though.

I never heard anyone talk about it the way you have laid out here, but you are absolutely right imho. I can't talk to anyone about how I feel because people get all freaked out and want to lock you up? Who are they trying to protect? Themselves mostly. Now there are people that will contemplate suicide when they are going through a crises and the reasoning is a temporary construct in their lives and these people need help to get past it. However, there is another kind of person like me, like you have described who simply has thought about it logically, even over many years.

I don't fear death at all any longer after having died. Someone trying to threaten me with death has no clue that I don't have any fear at all of them or their threats. It also puts a whole different perspective of government and society trying to enforce its standards on your life. For example, I had my pain well managed for 25 years. All of a sudden government bureaucracy has decided I am no longer allowed to get enough medication to control my pain. I had a doctor intern at the trauma hospital inject 10 grams of morphine straight in my IV that was meant for 24 hours of pain management. The chief surgeon was there and freaked out because he said he could have killed me, but it didn't phase me. Mainly because I have been on 630 MME (morphine milligram equivalent) doses of pain medicine for over ten years when he did it. I have a hell of a high tolerance. It probably would kill someone else.

However to the point, who the hell do they think they are to determine that I must now suffer extreme pain 24/7 because people that are idiots have been overdosing and abusing their drugs or selling them. People are already committing suicide as a result of this new policy handed down by the CDC (opiate prescribing guidelines) and enforced by the DEA and other agencies. I am used to being in pain, so I am dealing with it, but I said this to point back to a logical decision of ending the suffering. I could easily make that decision if I were so inclined. Others that don't experience this nightmare may not understand how one may think that death will come eventually to everyone. It is just a matter of time. So, if someone wants to make that time shorter, why is that a problem?

I also don't agree it is a sin. The church added that as a sin because so many people were committing suicide to get to paradise. The do not kill is meant as lying in wait to murder someone. Not about self-defense, not about war, etc. I know that many will vehemently argue I am wrong, but that is their issue. Anyway, again I like how you laid it out and agree with you conclusions.

a reply to: Wang Tang

its pretty simple.

Live or die.

choose to live or, choose to die.

There is a bit of grey but, not enough to determine the end.

originally posted by: Wang Tang
There are several philosophical pillars upon which Western society is built on, pillars which I believe are not all too stable. Western thought has progressed off of unstable pillars and weak foundations, and I have made it my undertaking to identify some of these pillars. Read on, and risk having the foundation of your views taken out from underneath you. Choose to stop reading, and be forever enshrouded in curiosity.

Part 1: Something can come from Nothing
Part 2: The Illusion of Free Will
Part 3: The Curse of Comfort

“I am thinking about committing suicide.”

If you have ever heard someone utter those words to you, you know the heavy weight those words carry. Those words pierce your heart, darken your mood, and cause time to stand still. Your mind races as it tries to think of the right words, as your choice of words at that moment has life or death implications. In this day and age where suicides are quietly and steadily increasing in the civilized world, much more so than in third-world countries, let us take a moment to examine the suicidal thoughts that many of us consider to be only those of the irrational and the insane.

Let us begin our discussion of suicide by emphasizing its importance. 20th century French philosopher Albert Camus once said “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine of twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer this.” Here is my answer.

Let us consider life to be like a poker game. You are dealt a set of cards, and you play them against other players as best you can. You win some, you lose some, and your value to society increases or decreases accordingly. Most people live their lives reactively, reacting to the cards they are dealt, and accepting the value society places on them. However, a few people realize the absurdity of a game where in the end everyone will end up losing what they have won. A select few people rise above this reactive lifestyle by deflecting outside influences and proactively taking control of their lives. One of the ways in which people take control of their lives is through suicide.

On occasion people that are overwhelmed with life will have a brief moment of clarity and realize the absurdity of this game of life. This clarity stems from the contemplation of suicide. Why continue to struggle through a life where your value is low and regardless of the cards you are dealt you still seem to lose? Why continue to even play your cards, if in the end the outcome will be the same for everyone anyways?

Once again I will borrow a quote from Camus to better articulate these questions: “You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”

It seems to me life is inherently absurd, and any thought to end one’s own life is inherently rational. I imagine that most people would not consider suicide a rational thought. But then again, most people live reactively, continuing to live purely out of habit, and any idea that threatens to break this habit is viewed as false. In the Western world, we were born into a society heavily influenced by Christian ideas, ideas that claim anyone who commits suicide will die a sinner for rejecting God’s gift of life. St. Thomas Aquinas preached that suicide was the most evil of all sins, because it was the only sin one could not repent of before going on to the afterlife.

Suicide, I believe, is a method to take control of your life by ending it. It is a rebellion against the authority of God, against fate, against whatever force it is that determines our beginning and our end. It is your first true act of free will in your life, for you did not choose to be born, but you have the power to choose when you die. It is a liberating thought to know that you do have some form of control of your life. It is from this single liberating thought, of suicide, that you may embark on your journey of liberation towards Enlightenment, whether it is in death, or in life.

Once someone truly contemplates committing suicide, there are two options. One is to commit suicide, and attain a state of Nothingness through death. The other is to leave the poker game, and embark on a journey towards Enlightenment in life.

Once you seriously consider suicide, whether you follow through or not, you become much more powerful. You realize you can drop your cards and leave the poker game, and face a world of uncertainty where you discover a freedom of will within yourself. You can end your own life at any time by your own will, but if you can do that, imagine everything else you can accomplish that takes less willpower! You can quit the job you hate, you can finally talk to that pretty girl you’ve been afraid to talk to, you can run across America barefoot, you can do anything you set your mind to because you have looked death square in the face and said “wait one minute, I’m going to do this one last thing before I die.” And in this way you begin to exert your will over your life, and you begin to finally feel like you are actually living! And then you can say to death, “you know, maybe I’m not quite ready yet.”

This option, while it does not involve physical suicide, does involve an aspect of mental/spiritual suicide. It involves killing a part of your old self. Once you kill the part of yourself that was subduing your consciousness and causing you to live reactively, you become master of your soul. As Inazo Nitobe, 19th/20th century Japanese scholar noted about the samurai, “Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametomo can pierce.”

What is the way forward for Western society? We need to remove the negative stigma from contemplating suicide and emphasize that it is natural for rational humans to contemplate suicide. It is a topic that we do not discuss in schools, and parents are afraid to discuss it with their kids because of its sensitive nature. In many cases, churches lead the discussion on suicide, and while their efforts to prevent suicide are commendable, their underlying view that suicide is bad is problematic. We need to establish that suicide is a normal, rational thought so people are not immediately alienated as “troubled” or “insane” when they come forward with the words “I am thinking about committing suicide.”

You have a kind and pure heart.

Don't let anyone take that away from you..

And frankly, this is the point: Humans are social creatures. We evolve with our actions. The agricultural evolution marks the ROOT OF OUR sense of self-ALIENATION. Self and other become "split" when the Human assumed the right to own land - and the behavioral implications that followed suit: pridefulness, because I "have" land, and you don't. Power enters the picture as a larger and greater determinant in social relations. The unconscious qualities of feeling become 'tilted' towards defense, more and more, generation after generation, that the subtleties of interpersonal knowing - the ancient hive mind - remain occluded and hidden by the generation of the "ego-self".

Suicide is demented - it is a way of leaving "the system" and pretending that you yourself aren't the very creature which, as another member wrote, "wanted to be born", or, in any case, is he only force in the universe able to do anything about the structure which determines us.

We are non-linear creatures ruled by non-linear laws. This means we are not perceiving as we should be: we are demented, so demented that we talk about suicide as if it were a normal or good thing. We "spiritualize" it, but fail to recognize substantial dissociation from the ultimate purpose: why are we here if not to perfect what is damaged, and so unite the plenum with the actuated?

Whereas I can understand suffering, I feel sorry for the person who failed to recognize in life that interpersonal experience is regenerative. If such a person only cares about control and power - suicide is indeed the ultimate expression of that need.

The idea of suicide is deeply entrenched within the society that we live in.

In most Western Nations, it is illegal. I find this quite funny in fact. It is only illegal if you fail in your bid.

Western Nations tend to see it as a failure of their system and so become hostile to anyone that wishes to opt out.

Some countries willingly allow suicide without the social stigma that others attach to it.

If you ever want to get just a little insight into what it would take, then try bungee jumping. You will get a tiny insight when you find the ability to take that leap.

Suicide is always an option but also, a failed bid will usually get you the help that you need.

Try not to compare failed bids versus those that did not fail.

P

It's just so logically explained-I really do appreciate your thoughts.
Being raised Christian.....well...let's just say they have no logic, except a long time ago I believed it was a terrible sin-and against God.

Then, my saint of an uncle, committed suicide-he lingered in pain for a couple days-then he died.

This man was a very strong christian. He was one of the kindest most giving people I have ever known but he suffered greatly from physical and emotional wounds from the Korean War. Horrible, unspeakable pain-could talk hardly or even walk. But gave rides to the handicapped and sick and gave money to any and all. Whatever the cause-didn't judge-and did it all quietly. Most I didn't even know about til his funeral. But I knew he suffered. My own mother did not visit him much "because he was really hard to understand." (she lived 5 miles from him) His children gathered more around his wife as she suffered mental problems all her life and stood by her and took care of her. This man knew how to love.

We all, meaning our huge family, held his hands and arms as he passed. I have never felt so much love as his spirit left.

I am not religious-but I believe this mighty man had his right to make his own decisions. The pain was too much for those closest to him.

I don't believe anyone knew what his life was like.

I respect his decision. The world was a better place with him here but it was his decision, alone. I miss him and still love him.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: Wang Tang

Suicide is not the only way of conceiving of enlightenment, and frankly, it seems like a poor candidate for affirming the specialness of the magic of living.

If you could peer inside your cells and see the magic of its self-creation, the thought of 'killing yourself' would seem obscene - indeed, a function of a confused and disturbed consciousness.

I do agree that suicide is not the only way of conceiving of enlightenment.

I do not agree that the thought of killing yourself is a function of a confused and disturbed consciousness. Rather, it is a natural progression of our consciousness to a higher state. All rational humans at some point in their lives come to the realization that they have the power to end their own lives, which is a realization that is unique to humans, as I do not believe any animals are known to consciously take their own lives. I agree it is not the only path to enlightenment, but I believe if we can support those contemplating suicide with the notion that they are not disturbed or insane, they will be less alienated from others and see more hope for themselves.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

I sincerely doubt a person that close to taking their life is thinking about what comes after it. It's an " ending" about ending pain, ending the suffering. Everything else they tried to do about it failed to take away the feelings of wanting it all to end. It's a last straw. It's not about beginning a new journey. There's no desire to begin anything.

originally posted by: schuyler

What if you DID choose to be born? What if you thought about it a whole lot, yearned for it constantly, chose your own parents and your own circumstances promising that THIS time you would learn all you could from a life? Then you decide you can't hack it and quit, thus nullifying your own reason for existence.

This is an interesting counter-point that I had not thought of. I constructed my reasoning based on a Materialistic outlook, based on what we can know just based off physical experience. Your counter-point introduces a non-physical aspect that changes the nature of this debate. Looking at this from a Materialistic lense, I am not able to access my consciousness from the time before I was born, so I cannot have knowledge of this choice I may or may not have made. In this case I personally can't consider this as anything more than a speculative argument against suicide.

You seem to be looking at this from a Dualist lense where you are conscious before and after you are born, and suicide is the ultimate act of disgrace against your True Self. I cannot speak knowledgeably from a Dualist lense, as my personal experience has not revealed to me any Truths beyond those of the physical world. It is possible you have knowledge of non-physical worlds that I am not aware of, but until I also acquire this knowledge I'm afraid we will be talking past each other regarding suicide.

Interesting viewpoint especially with the Western world's movement towards Euthanasia and the Right to Die

originally posted by: violet
I sincerely doubt a person that close to taking their life is thinking about what comes after it. It's an " ending" about ending pain, ending the suffering. Everything else they tried to do about it failed to take away the feelings of wanting it all to end. It's a last straw. It's not about beginning a new journey. There's no desire to begin anything.

That view is very western centric.

If your beliefs are in re-incarnation, then you are just opting out of one life in the hope that the next one is better.

So in those cases, there is a desire to try something new ... by killing oneself.

P

a reply to: Wang Tang
Camus' Myth of Sisyphus was the book I chose to bring when I took my wife to a public maternity clinic. It may not be the appropriate book to bring on the occasion of my first daughter's birth, but that's how it happened that night more than 20 years ago. I was watching X-Men: The Animated Series on TV when my wife told me that she was having the tell tale signs of labor, part of me wanted to finish the episode while my mind ran in different directions.

I was thinking of suicide since I was about 10 years old and I'm still here telling you all about it in a conspiracy theories site forum. Isn't life absurd? Maybe I'm not too serious about really doing "it" or maybe don't have the balls?

Jumping off the roof head first, a quick stab in the chest with a double blade fan knife, poisons, the proper way to cut one's wrists, riding my bike under a truck or a head on collision? For years I have a noose hanging in a corner of my makeshift studio just to remind me of that option. I still have that piece of rope.

About a decade ago, I have an old friend who told me that he was thinking of killing himself, we were both stoned at that time, he's also a borderline alcoholic, if not full fledged. I didn't said a word to him, I just looked at him in the eye and the first thought that crossed my mind was "He's not going to do it." Just last week we attended the funeral of our common old friend's father, he told me that he quit drinking... at least for the time being. Am I a psychic or what?

Then few years ago, I have a co-worker who committed suicide. He drank poison, he was just a kid in his early twenties. His girlfriend was pregnant at the time and he was treated badly by the girl's family. His mother just died a few weeks before he took his own life. He was a good kid, hard working, could've been a good father I guess.

So what's my point? I don't know. Do I have regrets? Too many to mention but life is still interesting even when it sucks big time... Makes me want to reread Camus' The Rebel.

a reply to: Wang Tang

Why would the realization even occur? The thought is emergent i.e. dependent, on the apperception of a duality, or conflict, between 'this' world and 'another world'; as if the two weren't reconcilable within ourselves.

The problem is - and to which you have not yet addressed - the human being is a literal ecological node of energy transformation, built and shaped by the dynamics of interpersonal processes with other Humans. It is therefore a biological impossibility to have the thought "I want kill myself", without a structural, biodynamical (neurologically embodied) reason for that affective, linguistic and narrative expression, to feel "I want to die".

If you can take a second from your substantialist and formalist biases, and recognize that speech, thinking, and yes, you and I, are events in the natural world, occurring as a function of a biodynamical ladder of emergence with a structural, evolutionary history, it can then be appreciated that modern Humans have become epigenetically 'dissociated' from the evolutionary conditions of our evolutionary adaptedness i.e. the unique condition of developing and growing besides people we know and trust.

Today's context (about 11,000 years old, with a longer prehistory, no doubt) contains a 'hybrid' creature - a mankind shaped by its own dissociation from reality because its feeling relations towards one another have become more threat and power-based. I am in the middle of writing a book exploring just these evolutionary themes of our past: culture, indeed, is a reification, or "emergent expression" of the general ecological conditions Humans live through; and so, harsh conditions express a "harsh" culture, i.e. expressed necessarily as a mythological system. Even more amazingly, generation after generation of harsh conditions will lead to successive brain-change i.e. epigenesis and even morphogenesis of brain-structure, i.e. in a threat-based Human culture - such that we live in today - the amygdala is "charged" by a structuring of the life-way that includes within it experiences of threat which are interpersonally "reconfigured" dissociatively as "power expression".

Is it not possible (as a scientist, I say this rhetorically) that mirror neurons were more plentiful in ancient environments, simply existing and serving to buttress Human perception? Since the brain is essentially plastic, my theory is, 75,000 plus years ago, Homo Sapiens had brains with much smaller amygdalae (we have two on each side of our brain) and a much thicker cingulate gyrus, insula, oritofrontal cortex, corpus collosum, and even thicker vagus/heart connections.

Do you know why this theory is so plausible? Because brain-casings only reveal volumetric data: not organization. Furthermore, as evolutionary neurology has shown, the brain "morphs" based upon what functions/sturctures we activate, which is based upon how we act, which is based upon our environment.

In short, suicide is a decision which happens in an evolutionary context that is disturbed. I do not mean to say that such a person isn't suffering or wanting "release" - otherwise, why pursue suicide? Only that such a thought is so deeply, deeply fundamentally related to growing up in a society that cultivates at a very deep structural level a dissociation of the Human spirit from its lived, embodied reality.

its agricultural practices, city building, commerce, etc, which has rendered the 'super-andividual' of tribe, to which we once existed mentally and phenomenologically as a sub-component that was telepathically connected with others, from