On suicide

The instinctive resentment against those who opt out of life

Ever since Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington ended his life in 2017, I couldn’t shake the public display of vitriol spewed against him by certain individuals, including his own friend, Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch.

After hearing of Chester’s suicide, Brian took to Facebook to share his take on the matter:

“Honestly, Chester’s an old friend who we’ve hung with many times, and I have friends who are extremely close to him, but this is truly pissing me off! How can these guys send this message to their kids and fans?! I’m sick of this suicide shit! I’ve battled depression/mental illness, and I’m trying to be sempethetic, but it’s hard when you're pissed! Enough is enough! Giving up on your kids, fans, and life is the cowardly way out!!!
I’m sorry, I know meds and/or alcohol may have been involved, I’m just processing like all of us and I know we are all having some of the same thoughts/feelings.
Lord, take Chester in your arms and please re-unite him with his family and all of us one day. Be with his wife and kids with your grace during this difficult time.”

I’ve always found it cruel to hate someone who just killed himself. You can call him anything you like, but a ‘coward’ for managing to bypass the by far strongest human instinct of self-preservation is the least accurate epithet for such a person.

Do I admire suicides? Do I encourage suicides? No. I believe that when someone finds himself in such a position of disassociation from the world - so much that ending his existence becomes preferable - then it is a real tragedy for and failure of the people around him as much as it is his.

Fear

I understand that suicide scares people; and what we fear and don’t understand we hate with a passion. I am guilty of this too… I have had suicides in my broader circle, and my initial reaction was one of disdain. But then I felt guilty… guilty for hating someone for being hated so much that he had no choice but to leave a place that wasn’t for him. I felt sympathy, but not veneration. I can’t glorify something as tragic as suicide.

Narcissism

I even found myself feeling condescending pity for people who have taken their lives. But didn’t that betray a smug self-righteousness in me?... a self-obsessed type of narcissism and pretentious moral high ground? Who am I to pity him from my high horse? Am I better just because I didn’t have to face what he had to face? Am I “braver” simply because I just happened to not find myself in a dead end of life? Am I better because I wasn’t dealt the hand that makes suicide a viable option?

And here the “free will” cult will predictably say: “This is determinism! We are all responsible for the choices we make. People have free will, and we all make our bed!” Convenient that the people who say these things tend to be successful, and thus arrogantly claim full ownership of their favorable circumstances, instead of having the humility to acknowledge them. The irony is that they fail to understand the determinism in this vapid statement: that the fact that some are predisposed to making better choices is an admission of luck and lack of free will.

And yes, we are indeed responsible for your actions, but are we to be blamed for them too?

Being responsible and being blamed are two different beasts.

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Perhaps this is what hating the suicides boils down to: narcissism. Suicide grants attention to someone posthumously, and perhaps this is what makes the idea of suicide attractive to some: a cry for attention that the people around them failed to give in life. At least knowing that attention will be granted after death is enough.

But this attention the narcissists envy. Imagine, a tormented individual takes his own life, and this guy Brian Welch makes it all about him him him. Talking about self-obsessed narcissism as well as lack of empathy; blaming the sick for the sickness.

Accountability

The attention we give to suicides is not about glorifying suicide; it’s about reflecting on what we did wrong to make such a thing possible. When someone in our circle takes his life, we are all responsible; we all carry some responsibility. We failed him and we failed ourselves. And perhaps this is another reason why we hate suicides: we hate being reminded of our failings and our responsibilities that we so cowardly deny.

Why hold ourselves responsible for suicides? Because with a mindset of self-accountability, we begin to invent ways to prevent such things from happening. By rejecting our responsibility (no matter how miniscule it is), we don’t contribute to something that could prevent even one suicide. And what could we do? Maybe show people more respect and recognition, especially when you see them being dissociative. And if you don’t care about them enough to do that, then be consistent and don’t suddenly remember to care after they take their lives just to disparage them - for killing themselves because nobody had acknowledged them, no less.

Existentialism

Is this instinctive hate for suicides always the consequence of arrogance and envy of posthumous attention? Or is there something more?

My question is this: Why do we instinctively hate people who commit suicide, even when we never knew them? They’re not hurting anyone. And it’s their right to do whatever they want with their own lives. If they have to suffer their life, then it’s their life, not a god’s nor a devil’s. It’s theirs. I reject the religious argument that “God gave you life, so it is not yours to take.” No, it’s mine to live and struggle through, and it was given to me without having asked for it. So yes, it’s mine.

Granted, if you have children, then you do have an obligation to those children because those children never chose to be made; and since you bring them into this world without asking them, you owe it to them to give them the best childhood you can give them. As a parent, you owe it to your children not to kill yourself. As a child, though, you don’t have the same obligation to your parents. And perhaps this is what many suicides are: a final act of defiance against traumatic parents, the ultimate insult of rejecting the life they made.

Yes, killing oneself hurts the people who love him, if he indeed has any who truly love him. In most cases, I’d say that people who commit suicide don’t have good people around them, otherwise they wouldn’t be driven to take their own life. Depression is nothing more than being surrounded by bad people. Yes, that’s my scientific opinion, and I am willing to take on any hack psychiatrist-charlatan out there.¹

But if they do love him, would they want him to stay in an insufferable life just for them? Would they want him to stay alive and suffer just so they don’t have to deal with his death? Who is being selfish here; the suicide or the people who demand that he stay with them? It’s a Catch-22: either he takes his life or chooses to stay for those who love him, one side is being selfish.

Societal utilitarianism

Society needs to regulate suicide by casting shame on it. I imagine that, in ancient societies, each member of the tribe was precious. Losing one to suicide weakened the tribe. Even honor-suicides are discouraged - the central theme of Sophocles’ ‘Ajax’ is the conflict between honor-suicide and the implications of a suicide on the people left behind.

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Threat

What is it about suicide that threatens us so much? Does it remind us that perhaps someone we love might also take his own life? Do we fear only the possible existential implications of suicide? Or does it offend us and our deeply held beliefs about life itself?

Suicide scares people because it suggests that life has less value than what they attribute to it, than what they want it to have. If we saw, let’s say, 40% of people around us committing suicide before they were 40, what would that mean for life in general? If so many people found life undesirable, then we would begin to question our own life’s assigned value. What if 60% of people committed suicide, and we were part of the 40%? How valuable would life be in our eyes then?

We don’t want suicide to be credible, nor a viable option regardless of circumstances, because the idea of suicide alone threatens the perceived value of our own life. It is simple economics: if people keep dumping, the price falls fast.

So, we resort to the manipulation tactic of shame to disincentivize suicide. The implied blackmail is that, if you take your own life, paying no regard to how painful it is to you, we will ridicule you, disrespect you, and smear your memory. The same shaming strategy is applied by the crypto bros on Twitter: “You sold cause you were scared, but then failed to buy the low. Ha ha ha!”

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Suicide terrifies us. What if our life isn’t as universally valuable as we want to believe it is? If anyone can take his own life, then what is my life worth? What is my life worth to me and others, no less? Is my life’s value just the consequence of random circumstances beyond my control?

And maybe that’s what scares us… that the only thing keeping us from suicide is sheer luck; that we were fortunate enough to be endowed either with the strength or the favorable circumstances to not consider suicide.

Guilt

Suicide hurts everyone around the person who commits it, mostly because they know they failed him. And that’s why maybe suicide can be a vengeful act sometimes: one takes his life to guilt-trip the people in his circle who failed him.

I had a great comment on this issue by

Scott

: “The hate is internalized for the failure to recognize and step in. It haunts you for the rest of your life that you couldn’t be there and change the result. It’s not hate it’s regret and guilt with nowhere to go.”

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Other times, suicide is just the consequence of guilt. Someone cannot forgive himself for a mistake, so he ends his life. It’s perhaps a sense of redemption, a final act of nobility more than escaping Erynies of guilt; a closing act of catharsis, of purging the impurities so they can regain their sense of self, even for one final split second before death. It’s the only way to separate himself - his self-image - from the mistakes, lest those mistakes define him. And when things you despise get to define you, then your distorted identity becomes worse than death. Thus, suicide gives life back to you - your pure identity.

Voluntary

I believe that people have the right to do what they wish with their lives - voluntary self-murder is still their right, and we need to acknowledge it. You also have the right to an approving or disapproving opinion. But it takes grounded humility to admit to yourself that perhaps you are not morally entitled to an opinion when you cannot experience what led them to suicide - because if you could, then you’d be joining them. And perhaps that’s what scares us the most.

Closing remark

I do not condone suicide. I do not encourage people to take their lives. I do not want people to glorify suicide. I want people to live. But I also don’t want people to manufacture shame-based smearing of those who do choose to take their lives. Suicide is tragic enough.

I understand that this forced hatred towards suicides is motivated by utilitarian socialism, a social engineering tactic to keep the plebs from escaping the plantation. “If it saves one life,” right? Wrong. Utilitarianism is meaningless. Deontology, on the other hand, grants meaning to our lives. If a life clings on just because of fear of posthumous shaming, then what meaning is there for that life to still be? Perhaps the shame of posthumous shaming keeps someone alive long enough to find help and shed suicidal tendencies. Perhaps. Perhaps it keeps him suffering longer, and he still ends up killing himself. Who knows? And who gets to decide? By the same token, a slave owner can forcibly keep as many sex slaves as he wants in hopes of one of them someday falling in love with him. Who knows? Who gets to decide?

And another thing…

Those who pretend to “discourage” suicide by hating those who commit it don’t seem to want to discourage other more lethal activities like speeding cars on public roads. Whenever they face an incident of a deadly road accident resulting from modified cars and speeding, they don’t disparage those who died and took innocents with them too. Instead, they glorify them as noble “victims of the asphalt.” They don’t feel the need to take to social media to call such people cowards, idiots, or clumsy embarrassments; things that are true. Because only an idiot would take a perfectly useful apparatus - the car - and turn it into a cheap thrill, an immature hobby for needy weaklings desperate for attention, and who have so little self-respect that a stupid movie like ‘Fast and Furious’ is enough to dictate their life choices. So, if we shame suicides to disincentivize suicide, then why aren’t we showing the same zeal for activities that are much more lethal than suicide? Hypocrisy, much?

Takeaway

Disparaging suicides is blaming the sick for the sickness.

If someone chooses to end his life, then our opinion of him truly means absolutely nothing. Shaming, guilt-tripping, disrespecting, ridiculing, or hating on the suicides to discourage those considering killing themselves is not a well-thought-out tactic.

It’s delusional to imagine that our opinion has any weight whatsoever in the mind of someone staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

Hating and mocking those who commit suicide just shows a sociopathic lack of compassion and a projection of cowardice by narcissists too scared to admit that perhaps their lives aren’t as important as they thought; scared to face the reality that death will take them too one day; that perhaps life isn’t the divine gift they imagine it is, given that life demonstrably doesn’t work well for everyone.

I’ll leave you with a question:

If we hate and ridicule suicide to discourage it, then why do we venerate those who die in war, thus encouraging blind obedience to state propaganda, and perpetuating mass murder and atrocity? At least those who died of their own hand don’t take anyone with them, nor do they serve the atrocious interests of government. Those who die in war are basically murder-suicides akin to school mass shooters: they willingly go to die for their governments in a ditch far from home, but not before enabling the murder of others. Why do we discourage self-murder while we glorify the mass murder of others, for petty political interests, no less?

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Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. All my work here is free.

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References

‘Korn guitarist brands Chester Bennington a 'coward' after hearing of his suicide’ - The Independent

Interesting Twitter thread on the question of suicide

1. Joanna Moncrieff, Ruth E. Cooper, Tom Stockmann, Simone Amendola, Michael P. Hengartner & Mark A. Horowitz “The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence” (2022) Nature