Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

Slippery slope or cherry picking. Either people should be held accountable for their wrong actions, or they cannot be.

I don't dispute that. I dispute that suicide is intrinsically wrong.

If ethics were the field of showing things to be intrinsically wrong, there would be no ethics.

I understand that. And, in this case, as in few, if any, others, the self deserves the ultimate say in the matter. There may very well be negative consequences for others, but that doesn't justify--in my understanding of ethics--forcing a person to live against their will.

Right. In many cases, forcing others to act in a way you think is ethical is also unethical, since it deprives them of their liberty, and makes them bystanders in their own lives. But we're not talking about how to treat suicidal people. We're talking about whether suicide is ethical-- and I don't see many contexts in which it would be.

I should hope not, directly. But, to compare the desire to end one's life to the desire to sexually molest children, even to make a point, is very unfair and unkind. I would hope that you wouldn't actually try to talk someone out of suicide by telling them how selfish it is, either.

The point is that they are behaviors considered unethical by others, and that both behaviors are mediated by brain chemistry and life experience. And yet in the former, we are more willing to see the behavior as unavoidable (Who could stand all that psychological pain), while in the latter, we are more likely to see the behaviors as demonic (How could that fucking bastard do that to those innocent little kids?). The reality is either that people are expected to have free will and to be accountable for their actions, or they are believed to be complex machines with only the illusion of free agency, in which case the accountability is piling social torment onto stunted development.

As for talking someone else out of suicide, I wouldn't. I'd tell them they weren't alone, and that everyone has those feelings, and that they are cared about. I'd tell them I felt I had a lot in common with them, and ask them to delay the act for now so I could have someone to drink coffee with and share my feelings with.