spaf@gatech.UUCP (06/04/83)
I do not think that suicide should be considered a "right." (In fact, if you'll pardon the pun, it is often a "wrong.") Consider some common causes of suicide: fear, depression, rage. I'll give examples of each in a moment, but the question I ask myself in each is whether the individual involved is able to make an accurate decision of such finality. I ask myself, if someone I loved were to wish to die, and gave me their reasons, would I be able to be the one to "pull the plug" for them? Or would I tell them that their perspective is temporarily skewed? (And do I have any "right" to make such a judgement?) Let me list a few examples for illustration: When I worked in a hospital emergency room I saw a number of suicide attempts. Perhaps the one which stuck in my mind the most was the case of a 17 year old girl who tried to commit suicide by taking 300 aspirin. This was on Mother's Day. It took six of us to hold her down while her stomach was pumped -- she very much wanted to die, it seems. Why? She was afraid she was pregnant and could not face her parents. A friend of mine back in high school days wanted to graduate early from high school. He was very bright and personable, a talented athlete, a great wit, and a caring person. He was very impatient and bored with high school, however. He completed all the necessary courses in just 3 years and felt very stiffled in the regimen of the school. He and 2 other people in the same situation went to the vice principal to petition for early graduation. They were denied (I don't remember why). They were very angry and tried again -- petitioning the district superintendant. I remember hearing from another friend about how angry with the situation Chris was. He complained that the administrators just didn't understand, that they just didn't care. He commented about how they needed to be shown how important it was to him and his friends. Well, he showed them. At the meeting where they were informed that their second petition had failed, Chris pulled out a gun and shot himself. He left a note indicating that he hoped this would be a "lesson" for the administrators. Again, high school days. Someone I knew had his girlfriend drop him for someone else. He was inconsolate. This was his "one true love" and he felt there could never be another. It was also his first real girlfriend and they'd only been going together for a few months, but for him it was the end of the world. Literally. He was so depressed that he couldn't deal with it anymore. So, after a threat to this poor girl that he would kill himself if she didn't come back (which she ignored as excessive melodrama), he drove his car into the side of the school building one day at lunch hour at about 70 miles an hour. His ex-girlfriend saw the incident, as did about 200 other people, and had to be hospitalized for a while due to feelings of guilt and the like. Now, I look at all of those cases, and many others I have heard of or seen, and the one common factor I see is profound lack of perspective. What I mean is that the individual involved just had not had sufficient experience or insight to be able to realize that the situation was one that could be dealt with and better times would come. I would not go quite so far as to claim that they were not sane at the time, but I do believe that they were not thinking clearly. So, is it their "right" to not think clearly? A look around might class a lot of people in that category, including members of our government and military, not to mention some of us netters. I am all for allowing people to think whatever they want, but the action they take concerns me. Suppose some one my friends thought about my (ex-)girlfiend breaking up with me. I was very depressed for quite a while. Suppose my friend felt that I just couldn't deal with it and decided to put me out of my misery? Is that a "right" of his? What really makes the point is time. After enough time we can look back at things we did and either say "Gee, was I a jerk! Things have gotten better." or "Wow, was I mistaken! Things weren't so bad then -- look at my situation now!" If someone doesn't move forward, they cannot look back with the perspective of time and make comments like that. The same person would make a different decision later in life, so long as they had the chance. Suicide prevents that perspective. Therefore, I don't think it is something that should be considered right. Maybe all of this is imposing my own values on the situation, but I'm a firm believer that each life is special and deserves respect and nurturing. Tomorrow may dump more garbage on me tomorrow, but it may bring me some more joys too. I won't be in a position to judge it all til the end and I can look back. I think suicide causes premature evaluation -- before all the results are in. Let's not encourage anyone to make such a hasty decision. Gene Spafford Spaf at GATech (CS Net) Spaf.GATech at UDel-Relay (ARPA) School of ICS ...!allegra!gatech!spaf (uucp) Georgia Tech ...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!spaf Atlanta, GA 30332 -- "The soapbox of Gene Spafford"
swatt@ittvax.UUCP (06/05/83)
Regarding Gene Spafford's comments about "suicide is not a right". I tend to agree with him that a lot of cases of suicide are just poor judgment, or lack of perspective. My own high school had at least one suicide I know of over trivia (not being elected to something). 10, 5, or perhaps even 2 years later those events which seemed so important are reduced to more realistic proportions. However, to conclude from this that suicide is "not a right" one must ask: How does one prevent people from exercising this non-right? It was the case in Great Britan until recently (1974 I believe) that the property of suicides was confiscated by the state. Is this preferable? One method that is employed today is simply to declare people who attempt suicide incompetant (in the legal sense) and take away their freedom to act. I don't believe our written laws state this view, but in practice, attempted suicide is viewed by our society as grounds to put the person under some kind of guardianship, which is to say, put in an institution. Certainly with minors, who are to some degree legally incompetant anyway, parents or relatives who want to have them involuntarily committed to an institution will have little trouble if they have a history of attempted suicide. Now perhaps in the cases of just plain poor judgment or lack of perspective, a few months under supervision and restraint would suffice to cure their attitude. I bet several hours spent really TALKING with their parents or other adults would have the same effect. Parents want to save their children from all the mistakes they made, but without having to admit to them! I think growing up around grandparents used to have the effect of giving a larger perspective to kids; they could usually get a story or two about what their parents were like when they were growing up. In cases of chronic suicidal depression, there is also strong support from society if parents or relatives want to force institutionalization. The record of involuntary committment is not a terribly good one. It is very hard to perform the functions of both jailer and therapist. People won't cooperate with the therapists because they know everything they say is reported back to the authorities who grant or withold priviliges according to their notion of "progress". Whatever was wrong with them to start with, being forced into an institution tends to develop paranioa (justifiably). Other cases: painful and terminal diseases, general boredom with life, etc., how are you going to recognize who might be thinking of suicide if they are otherwise managing their affairs? Will you require all private therapists to report "indications" of suicidal thoughts? This will only make people not cooperate with private therapists, and turn the whole society into an institution. (It is worth noting that the USSR treats certain political ideas as "mental illness" requiring institutional treatment. The "treatment" is, of course, controlled by the state). You might be able to reduce the number of suicides by adopting a penalty for "success", such as confiscation of private estate, but this seems only to punish the survivors, who are presumably grieved enough. You might be able to force treatment of all people who attempt suicide by making it a crime with a mandatory sentence (sentence to treatment facilities), but I would want more proof of effectiveness before I endorse this approach. It is interesting that the original opposition to suicide was based on religious grounds, that is your life belongs to God and you have it only to use "in trust". In an officially secular society, if God doesn't own your life, and you don't own it, who does? If the price of reducing suicide is to make the state the "owner" of individual lives, then I'm afraid I prefer to have the suicides. In conclusion: Suicide is a "right" unless you're willing to adopt policies and practices sufficient to prevent it. - Alan S. Watt