gam@proper.UUCP (Gordon Moffett) (04/07/84)
> From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) > Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR > [ quoting previous article ] > > | For Christ's sake, if someone is going to commit > | suicide, can't he at least be allowed to do THAT? > | (R. Christian Call) > > I quite disagree. The suicide is stealing something very valuable > FROM ME AND EVERYONE ELSE - a human life. This may seem maudlin, but > the value of a life is in the good or evil it gives to other lives... [ emphasis mine ] Is this to say that my life belongs to everyone else, but not to me?
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (04/09/84)
<arsenic for the line bug> Some people seem to find it somehow disturbing that I consider there to be absolutes. Strange. Actually, I do think that my life belongs to others, as well as to myself, and that I have a stake in the lives of others, within some fuzzy boundaries. Since I did not expound on this in any detail, misunderstandings have occurred. So, I expound a trickle more. This culture, here in northamerica, is a VERY selfish and most immature one. We assume that because we enjoy tremendous freedom from the control of our lives by others that we are somehow also free from responsibilty to, and for, other people. This is poor thinking, even if one has to revert to the inadequate notions of enlightened self-interest. One mistake we make is then to assume that when someone else does something to themselves that can have a persistent effect on them and us, that we can have no say in it. Ultimately, to guard our own choices, we have to say that everyone must be allowed freedom except in those few cases where that will reduce the freedoms of others. However, we can, and do, as a society via whatever method, choose to infringe on these freedoms. All that preamble now stated, I get to try to relate it to my perception of the value of life. We do not exist in a vacuum. My actions are not only meaningful to me but can, and sometimes do, affect the lives of others. This is true of everyone, to varying degrees. The experiences that shape a person, the texture and sound and taste of another personality, cannot ever be replaced, and in that, every human is unique. To destroy a human life, one's own or that of another, is to prevent that life from ever enriching another. Or from impoverishing if the point need be made. There are sometimes situations where one cannot judge in more than shades of grey, and will never be sure of the outcome. Some suicides, a very few, are people who are suffering physically and who cannot stand it any longer. Most are people who suffer emotionally, and though their pain is real, it can be healed. I choose to claim a right to intervene in the latter case if I can do so. The suicide by choosing death is hurting me and others, and is doing even more harm to (it)self by preventing any healing that comes from outside. Enough of this rambling. Hutch
notes@iuvax.UUCP (04/13/84)
#R:proper:-111200:iuvax:400008:000:1151
iuvax!dsaker Apr 12 15:12:00 1984
Reply to Hutch:
If you just happened to see me about to leap from a high and (apart from
me and, unexpectedly, you) lonely place, you would step in and prevent me.
If I then explained to you that I wasn't merely in the grip of a sudden
gush of emotion, that I had thought long and hard about life and had
decided to end it, you would, I gather, still prevent me.
Are not you the one who is being selfish here by putting your preference
above mine.
Let's weigh the pains. I think that we can rely on the fact
that I am really finding life painful. Just how much pain are you going
to suffer by letting me jump? Don't tell me that after you save me
my pain will be healed. That would be incredibly arrogant on your part.
I allow that many suicides are acting out of a pain that can be healed.
That justifies, perhaps, the initial stepping-in to stop them.
But it does not justify always stepping in. You have to stop and think
carefully about what you are doing.
If I killed myself tonight, I am sure that you would not really miss me.
I wouldn't really be taking anything from your life.
Daryel Akerlind
...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!dsaker