Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:06:01 +0100

Life is wonderful, and should not be wasted, unless you are trapped in a room surrounded by flesh/brain eating zombies and you only have one bullet. Or if I we're trapped in a room with Nancy Grace

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:17:28 +0100

I think its not bravery or cowardice at all... It's simply a choice...something that you decided to do because you believe it's the only solution...you may want to read my article regarding life, death and change.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:16:56 +0100

Life, death , and change

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:43:46 +0100

there are circumstances in which suicide may be justified: chronic pain, incurable disease which will progress for months or years until the individul is a vegetable, paralysis, etc..

then there are those who end their lives through unclear and illogical judgment due to mental incapabilities such as depression, anxiety, pschyzophrenia, etc...

if the former individual is making a decision rooted in logic it can make sense.

and i just realized i can't really speak on the latter example. it's just too damn complicated.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:11:58 +0100

My father killed himself when i was eight years old, he was not a coward. He was a man who suffered greatly all of his life, and he died when he could no longer endure the pain of living. I love him, he was no coward.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:48:58 +0100

I would have to say that most suicides are an act of desperate depression ... which is neither cowardly or brave but most often a result of a chemical imbalance which can be brought on by many things including both psychological as well as physical events. There are exceptions of course, but the premise that suicide is either brave or cowardly seems to miss the point entirely.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:35:33 +0100

I would say that 90% of suicide acts are cowardly. People who leave their kids behind and the kids that have to find their parents dead on the living room floor where they watch SpongeBob Squarepants is cowardly.

The 78 year old man who lost the love of his life and has no other family there is just speeding up the process.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:21:37 +0100

If you are an A$$hole I would say it's bravery!

But if you're one of the good ones - hang in there buddy, it aint that bad...

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:57:58 +0100

Life should be fully utilized when functional and optimally for society, short when not.
People not functional and lacking medical care for functionality sometimes choose not to be burdensome. I respect one who demonstrated this. Life at all cost has a practical aspect, and for any who waved flags as we bombed Iraq/Afghanistan people may be sitting on a very thin fence.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:18:37 +0100

It depends which way you look at it, as in all situations, suicide can go either way. If someone takes the "emo" view on their situation and decide that they have nothing else to live for in this world, then that would be cowardice. But if you look at certain heroic situations such as the soldier who a year or two ago took off his own helmet and sacrificed his life to cover a live grenade, that would be considered bravery. Then again, it is pretty brave, even if this sounds a little strange,to decide that you are going to take your own life and then follow through on that decision. Of course, suicide, brave or nor, is a terrible thing to do so we honestly shouldn't be questioning the characteristics of the situation but we should be trying to avert the circumstance.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:25:22 +0100

Albert Camus famously posited, " The only true philosophical question is whether life is worth living." It's rather judgemental of those left behind to call it cowardice, just because the act hurts them. On the other hand, we have an obligation once we've landed on this planet to try to live out this life as best we can. Let's face it, it's a pretty remarkable opportunity--to have conciousness and a body. Once we're dead, we're dead. Bye-bye blue skies, chocolate cake, sex, and bye-bye mortal coil.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:37:34 +0100

Do we stop people from having unprotected sex? Do we stop people from using drugs? Do we stop people from becoming fundamentalists? Why should we stop people from committing suicide? It's just another self destructive behavior - I say behaviour because most attempts are unsuccessful.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:15:52 +0100

Cowardice could be considered a part of it, but also the loss of desire to live and the rage of continuing to live when you can't deal with current circumstances can overpower strength and bravery. It is a loss of the natural impulse to go on living by any means possible. And occasionally it pops up when someone else's life is at stake along with your own, e.g. those rare stories you hear of someone allowing themselves to die to save someone else. That couldn't be considered cowardice unless it was done to appear brave when one truly does it as an acceptable way to kill yourself.

Some may not consider it "lucky" to live long lives... that is the worst kind of cowardice... wanting to die, too afraid to kill yourself, and going on living hoping to die as soon as possible, even doing things such as smoking and drinking to speed up the process... i've been guilty of that trend of though on occasion... and i'm only 22.

What would you consider those who kill themselves with goals in the mind? Like Jonestown (even though some of that was involuntary) or the Heaven's Gate deaths, or even individual circumstances. Mass hysteria? The definitive brainwashing?

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:52:45 +0100

Reithc -- For a 23 year-old, suicide should be the farthest thing from your mind. If you are lucky enough to be alive in 50 years time, you might find that you consider the option a little differently, especially if your quality-of-life is less than you can cope with.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:30:24 +0100

Suicide is silly. You aren't supposed to kill yourself for no good reason. If you do then what you just did was show how unserious you were in life. It's an act of courage to kill yourself for sure because it's against all natural instincts but it's dumb since you aren't sure you are going to be any better off dead. If you really don't fear death then whatever life throws at you you can always say that death will balance it all out in the end. The only other factor is the pain of living which sucks from time to time but you got to remember that the worst pain is self-imposed.

This is coming from someone who's contemplated suicide on many occasions.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:56:47 +0100

It seems to me that the discussion here is focussed on suicide of the capable. Suicide for the elderly or non-capable is an issue of 'quality-of-life'. This does sound like a good topic for another thread.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:35:32 +0100

I don't think its possible for anyone to pass judgement on a person who has commited suicide when they have not been in there shoes or lived the life they have. I have had many friends who have been suicidal and at face value appear to be the most confident, exuberant people. They must have secretly been troubled without a method to deal with it.

Personally I think that for most of us the thought of committing suicide and ending our own lives would be the scariest thought ever. It takes some sort of courage to actually go through with it, not that I condone it.

Additionally I'm lead to think of all the creative and intellecutal geniuses who have commited suicide. Some of the most influential people Eg. Nick Drake, Ian Curtis, Hemingway, Tchaikovsky. I can't associate the notion of cowardice with people such as these who had the courage in life to create such profound masterpieces in their respected fields.

There are people who do think suicide is a result of cowardice or lack of strength. However, tragedy is difficult to bounce back from. Repeated experiences of tragedy even harder. There are those who are succcessful and that may not be due to personal strength but more to environmental factors. There are people out there who have grown up in horrible situations, with no support network, lack of social abilities, lack of education, leading to various mental and physical conditions. In the end it comes down to a persons ability to cope and its our role to try to help them cope where possible as human beings.

Labeling people shouldn't be the priority, the priority should be to prevent tragedies from reoccuring.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:35:22 +0100

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:05:00 +0100

ok. yaa its not usually a mental disorder and it is kind of an act of selfishness because you hurt a lot of the people around you.

Comment on: is suicide a final act of bravery or cowardice?

Bigthink — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:04:53 +0100

Folks who consider suicide to be cowardice, may be too young to have encountered the circumstances where it comes up for consideration. In some case, it can be triggered by total EXHAUSTION from the effort of staying alive.