Can Suicide Be Logical?

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I keep reading about how suicide is never made in a rational manner, but I disagree. Yes, it is often done when a person is depressed or mentally ill, but what about situations where the criteria for one wishing to continue their existence simply isn't met?

Yeah if you had a terminal degenerative disease that will just drain
your family or public resources to keep you alive another few months.

If your committing suicide because of emotional pain then that can
hardly be rational. You could not make a rational choice if your
not thinking clearly.

NO.

Your existance is under control. Unless restrained, you one can commit suicide through a variety of methods. People commit suicide to end the trouble that they believe their existance causes. But in many cases it represents a failure to utilize other ways of ending the trouble in their life that are not lethal. The rational, logical mind will investigate each possibility for improving one's life and the lives of others before even considering, if ever, resorting to such a irreversibly eternal thing as suicide.

Last edited by hyperbolic on 15 Jan 2007, 5:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think a "Yes, but only under EXTREME circumstances" option would be nice, as I would've gone for that. However, you could argue that "Yes" does just as well.

It is best to have that relief valve that you can at least accept your own death. "Suicide" is another word in the English language whose meaning has been diluted and distorted the last few years. It used to be suicide to do something with a high probability of ending your life like drinking cyanide. Now it's suicide and maybe attempted homicide to own a tiger, which has a very low probability of prematurely ending your life or endangering others.

The point is that they work to make people so adverse to risk that it feels like a suicide attempt to try to do anything. It's not really attempted suicide to do many things but they want you to believe that it is. The funny thing is that clinging to the aversion can really drive people to suicide because they get sick of the sword hanging over their heads, of looking over that precipice all the time, of being punished with fear of death just because they want to walk on the more interesting side of life. Some people jump when they get sick of being dangled over the edge.

Sometimes a person can't leave the abusive situation unless he is willing to risk everything.

It depends on how you look at it. Short term or long term. In the short term, it relieves you of trauma. In the long term, you have no future and you lose any chances you had even with the traumatic cirumstances.

Suicide can be logical/rational if it planned out far in advance.

Say you are 20, and you at this age decide that you would like to end your life at age 45 and make all the appropriate plans to meet this goal. That would be rational if your reasons make sense.

That said, I would guess that 99.9999% of suicides are completely driven by temporary emotional states without regard to how it hurts other people.

It can never be logical. If you give up on things, be it through suicide or otherwise, then yeah, nothing can ever get better. That's the choice you made. If you decide to just see what could happen, then yes, things could get worse, but they could get better. EVEN IF it is a terminal illness, for all you know a cure could be found, or some other means of improving your life. That's the point, we don't know what tomorrow may bring, and giving up, deciding that it isn't worth finding out, is what suicide is all about. I'm not even bringing in to play how it could hurt other people, the bottom line is that if you give up, yes, it will never get worse, and it will never get better. If you just keep going, it could get better.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I'm in a piss-poor mood right now, so anyone that says I'm being an optimist is full of s**t. I'm a pessimist to the extreme, I'm just trying to be logical about it. Sure, it could get worse, but nobody knows for sure what is going to happen tomorrow, pessimist or optimist alike.

Last edited by shadexiii on 15 Jan 2007, 7:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

In the movie "Harold & Maude," was Maude's suicide rational?

I find it ironic that a cancer patient nearing death will have pain medication regulated because of fear of "overdose"...when if we had a pet suffering the same fate 95% of us would have them "put to sleep" to humanely end their suffering.

But we are not permitted the same options for ourselves?? I value life...but I think it can be a logical decision if circumstances warant it.

About the only circumstances under which I can even conceive of the possibility of committing suicide is if I had a terminal disease of some kind which was causing me considerable pain and hardship. At that point, living would be more intolerable than the alternative.

I'm trying to appreciate the view of, for example, the cancer patient that's in a lot of pain. I can never understand that level of pain, and hopefully I never will. So yeah, my saying things is just that, saying things. But giving up is just that as well, its giving up. Its accepting defeat, willfully deciding that things are over with.

I've been tempted to just quit before, but if you quit then your fate really is certain. Maybe that's all it is, that I've never really been in a position that I honestly believe that there's absolutely no hope. At the moment I don't think that's possible, but I simply can't know that. Hopefully I'll never believe that to be the case.

I do not believe so. I'm not the most objective in this area admittedly due to personal experience. However, I must say that even in the "best circumstances" legalized assisted suicide has led to the medical profession abusing it's basic principals (although I must admit that I believe doctors have a duty not to involve themselves in ending life). For more you can read the testimony on legalized assisted suicide in the state of Oregon and The Netherlands.

Last edited by jimservo on 15 Jan 2007, 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't believe in euthenasia. However, it's absurd to limit a cancer victim's pain medication in her last hours and it upsets me that doctors take an oath that involves not doing anything about someone who's in pain and has no chance of recovery based on a remote chance of overdose. And in the last few hours of this type of death, there's absolutely no doubt whether or not survival is possible. This isn't about suicide, it's about overly cautious legislation.

However, I don't believe suicide is ever the best choice.