Suicide is a human privilege. As far as I know, no other being, animal or plant or anything, can freely decide to end their own life.
Isn’t this fascinating? Imagine that you’re God, and let’s assume for a moment that you exist. Do you equip your most fancy creature with a self-destruct button? You are designing man1 to your image, that is, you are generously providing humans with the freedom to do as they wish, including the freedom to do all kinds of bad choices. Does this mean that you, God, could have suicidal thoughts? Could you decide to end your own existence? Finally, is God more or less God-like if he has the ability to commit suicide?2
Most of the time, suicide is a mistake. It results from the wrong assumption that we can think clearly: if I assume that I can think perfectly clearly right here right now and I’m sure that there is no solution to whatever I think my life problem is right here right now, then it makes sense to kill myself… right here and right now. Of course, there are so many mistakes in this reasoning: first, it’s laughably wrong to pretend that we can think perfectly clearly; and, as a matter of fact, it’s incredibly arrogant: we’re imperfect beings, so we can never be entirely sure that whatever we’re thinking is correct.3 The second mistake is similar: the wrong perception that what I feel now, in particular if it’s pain, is going to be my feeling forever. If this was true suicide might make sense, but it’s not.
These are unfortunately the mistakes that many people who fall suddenly into suicidal thoughts make. When this happens abruptly and people don’t have the skills to deal with it or don’t have anyone around, close one or professional, to help them to see their mistake, they risk making a bad decision. There are of course many other parts to this, but I think the first essential tool to prevent suicide “as a mistake”, is very simply that we should all be as humble as possible in our thinking and keep in mind that things always change: the world changes, people change, our feelings change. The second essential point to remember is that there’s no shame asking for help, especially asking those close to you; people who love you would certainly prefer that you bother them when you feel bad, rather than making a stupid choice on your own. Independence is not always a good thing and pride can be a trap.
While it’s important to prevent these deadly mistakes as much as possible, it wouldn’t be fair to consider suicide as something bad in general (it usually is, of course). There is a kind of universal notion that suicide is a bad thing and should be prevented by any possible means. As if humans are not supposed to choose their own death, and this is certainly in part due to the fact that most humans don’t want to think of suicide as an option for themselves; the idea of suicide brings uncomfortable intimate questions for many people, they don’t want to think about this. And to deal with their own discomfort, the majority imposes a rigid moral rule on everybody, once again denying individuals their free choice. Because this has been carved into a social norm, most suicides are lived by the close ones as a horrible failure, causing guilt and shame: not only they didn’t succeed in detecting or preventing the person’s suicide, not only they miss their loved one, they often perceive that society blames them, as if they are responsible. This is why very often families don’t want to say the cause of death, because this is still a taboo and it is still lived as shameful.4
This is so wrong: first, there’s no good reason to put the blame on anybody, especially on the loved ones who are actually the main victims, the ones who suffer the consequences. Society often has this unhealthy need to put the blame on somebody in order to preserve its own rightfulness, and this naturally affects individuals who internalize it and suffer from it. But more importantly, a person’s suicide, whatever their reasons, is this person’s own individual choice. Even if it’s an obvious mistake, the person should not be deprived of their ultimate choice. We should let people follow their own choices and offer them our understanding to the best of our ability, not try to control them as if we know better. A suicide is a choice which is neither brave nor shameful, it leaves family and friends wondering but there’s nothing to understand; there’s only to accept the person’s choice, even if it seems wrong. Loving someone means offering them support as much as possible, but also giving them credit for making their own choices… even if sometimes their choice seems like a horrible mistake.
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the unavoidable sexism of religious texts gives them a very old-fashioned feel, doesn’t it? It’s like listening to an old racist person, it’s unpleasant but one has to admit that they didn’t know any better at the time. Doesn’t this alone, the fact that these texts appear to have been written for a different time than ours, implies that religion is really showing its age? Maybe it’s time to check the use-by date, isn’t it? ↩︎
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This a variant of the contradiction of the perfection of God. This part is not really interesting, but it came to my mind and later I thought I would keep it to lighten the mood. Not that lightening the mood is necessary in any way in my opinion. Kind of like this footnote going way to far into insignificant stuff, completely unnecessary. ↩︎
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An extremely common mistake, I know. Imagine how much violence could be avoided if most people could realize and remember this: “Ok I think this now, but I’m imperfect so I might be wrong, so let’s not act too harshly just in case…” It feels like a beautiful dream, right? But is it really a dream? There are some modest signs that people could slowly progress towards this humility, in my humble opinion. But humankind might destroy the world before reaching the destination, obviously. ↩︎
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Even in my favourite newspaper, I sometimes see articles about somebody’s untimely death, without any explanation but with this a slightly sinister message at the end, saying that people who feel depressed can call a suicide prevention helpline. I understand that this is often the wish of the family, but I think the family and the newspaper should consider honouring the suicided person themselves, and respect their choice instead of hiding it like it’s a shame. ↩︎