[1441] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: Depression is....Living
sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Aug 30 19:56:41 1990
I think that most people I know in my age group (i.e., born between 1965 and
1975) have had suicidal thoughts at one time or another. (I loaded that
sentence with qualifiers because I haven't really done a survey.)
I'm not sure why this is true. I suspect it has something to do with the
dreariness of everyday life in modern society; this is one of the main
tenets of Situationist ideology. (If you want, whycare, I can loan you
a nifty xeroxed pamphlet explaining Situationism.)
I personally have never seriously contemplated suicide. If this be
delusion, let me make the most of it.
Is it in your rational self-interest to commit suicide? A tough
question. The problem is that as Shakespeare said, death is "the
undiscovered country from which no traveller ever returns," so you have
no reliable information on the quality of life after death; more
importantly, you have no reliable information on how that quality
depends on your behavior in this world. (What if everyone who committed
suicide went to Heaven, while those of us foolish enough to live out our
threescore and ten went to Hell after death?)
Here's something to consider: if you *tried* to commit suicide *and
failed,* you would probably feel *much* worse than if you simply muddled
through to the end of your depression. Imagine this scenario: you jump
from the top of the Green Building, but because of an updraft or
something, the impact does not quite kill you. You are rushed to the
hospital. You spend the next three months in exquisite physical pain,
in traction, and powerless to get out of your hospital bed, much less
implement your suicidal thoughts. Not fun, eh?
