Is suicide painless?

"Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...."

I was watching a story on A&E yesterday about this 19 year old kid who apparently got the crap beat out of him on a daily basis by his grandfather. Said grandfather also repeatedly beat and raped the boy's mother (his own daughter), beat the boy's grandmother, and the boy's sister. Grandad started making moves toward the sister. After one particularly brutal beating, when the boy was 19, the boy, a friend of his, and his stepfather shot and killed granddad while he was sleeping.

The psychologist hired by the defense said that people can feel trapped in a situation, and murder seems the only way out.

Now, that's just not true. Neil from "Dead Poets Society" demonstrated that aptly.

When is suicide understandable? Even forgivable? When your physical pain becomes so unbearable as to make simply living hell on earth, I'd give that. But what level of psychological suffering must one reach before it's okay to off oneself?

 

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I consider it better to try to solve the problem without killing people, yourself or otherwise. They might have been afraid to contact authorities, but I think it was worth a shot.

 

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Suicide is never painless for your family and friends. I think most who commit suicide know this, but want to spread their hurt onto others.

 

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i don't think you ought to base your existence upon the opinion of others. if you really want to kill yourself, then you should be free to doing it. just do it right the first time, and for gods sake, don't swallow pills [grr..].

 

Its always understandable if the said person wants to die. Forgiveable? I'm not sure that even applies.

For me, suicide seems too convenient to follow through with. I've threatened myself a couple of times. Threatened to follow through with the threats, but now I can always call the bluff.-- I simply love life too much.

Even hell can be fun if you're creative.

 

Bitterchick:

When its social.

 

If you have a very bad disease and you know that you are going to die in a very short or long period of time you should be able to commit suicide AFTER talking about it with your loved ones. If your going to be in allot of pain and suffer quite a bit it is one quick way out of all of the suffering AFTER you discuss it with loved ones. I repeat myself for I want everyone to realise that suicide isn't always the way to go but perhaps for some it should be. Say your 80 years old and cannot walk and have cancer that will slowly take your life and you will be in allot of pain, then that person would be ready if they so choose to commit suicide IMO.

 

I think this is a misconception, that suicide, is because of psyhcological suffering, and nor do I think it is wrong to willingly end your own life. I am pro-choice, that is their choice, then I say, more power to them. The reasons for suicide are many, and yes, one of them is, unbearable pain, but there are others:

1: You are bored
2: You have no drive to continue
3: You feel you do not fit in the world, and nor want to
4: You are killing yourself to a short-cut to the after-life
5: You are killing yourself to save another

 

Ok am I the only one who is wondering why suicide is being asked about when homicide was committed. The 19 year old, along with his accomplices, Killed the grandad....no one killed themselves....did they?

 

yeah i'm a little confused

 

Because suicide was an option, as opposed to homicide? Maybe?

 

Neil from dead poet's society killed himself not his father ..
This thread probably belongs in "morality & ethics".
WHy would anyone give up his life for a brutal rapest? I would've killed that bastard way before I was 19.

 

I would have tied him down, castrated him and connected his genitals to the farthest electrical outlet using aligator wires...now tell me how killing could be more fun than that??

 

It brings on many changes, but you can take or leave it, if you please.

 

"Suicide is never painless for your family and friends. I think most who commit suicide know this, but want to spread their hurt onto others."

most people who commit suicide know this, yes, but they dont do it to be spiteful, what the hell would that achieve? they do it because they are having only bad times in their lives, no good ones

 

Granted, it was a long way getting there, but the story was to illustrate the "he had no other choice than murder" of another, when in fact he could have chosen to kill himself. (I'm guessing he didn't because it would have still left his little sister vulnerable to granddad's attacks).

I agree that an informed choice of suicide and assisted-suicide is reasonable when the act of simply being alive makes life unbearable. We euthanize dogs when they are going to suffer but we don't allow humans the same courtesy.

It's the ones that don't come from physical pain that I wonder about. Pain comes in many forms, physical pain being only one manifestation of it. What level of emotional pain must someone suffer before we can forgive his or her choice to check out?

 

Suicide is never understandable nor forgivable. There is always going to be someone out there, blinded by sadness and rage, to fully understand why you commited suicide in the first place. Those who are close to you and wanted you to live will find ways out of the situation which caused you to commit suicide and will always wonder why you never took that way out. They will find ways WHY you should live, HOW you could have stayed alive, Where you could have lived and so on. They would wonder why you never came to them, why you never sought help (even if you did), and what they could have done to prevent it. No matter what the circumstances are there will be people who will think this and who will grieve over your death for a long time after you die. So, no it is not understandable nor forgivable by everyone.

 

I am in favor of physician-assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness. All other forms of suicide are a cowardly escape, there is, almost always, some other means of escape- religion, drugs, the bus, psychotherapy. In the case of this grandfather situation, they did the right thing- if someone is keeping you in an intolerable situation- they are the problem that must be addressed, not yourself. In fact, he got off too easy. Perhaps the police could have done something sooner, though.

 

You know, you should really to talk with a psychologist, because frankly you've got some strange ideas about why people kill themselves.

"you are bored/no drive to continue/don't fit in" are all abbreviated signs of depression (certainly psychological suffering) which is by and large the most common cause for someone to kill themselves. "Shortcut to the after life" would likely be a justification that an already clinically depressed and suicidal individual might give themselves to help them muster the initiative to go through with it. And killing yourself to save another only happens on TV, outside of maybe some rare situations in wars and the like, I don't think that this happens very often at all.

Now, as for the suggestion that this boy might have considered killing himself instead, I'd just have to say that this is a completely despicable and unjustifiable point of view! Why in the world should he die just because this old man has made his own life and that of his family a living hell? I agree that the correct course of action would probably have been to first contact the authorities and get the old bastard locked away, however, regardless the act of murdering the old man was close to being heroic. His grandfather bought about his own murder, you don't screw with other people's lives like that without warranting punishment or retribution, that's why we have laws to prevent such things, and it's far better that this young man should have taken matters into his own hands to solve the problem, and give his grandfather what he had coming than to sit back and let it continue. It was certainly much better than taking himself out of the equation, now THAT would have been tragic, and senseless. To propose that if someone antagonizes you enough that you then are responsible to take your own life if you've got a problem with the situation is utterly absurd. I assume he was only trying to solve the problem in the only way that his shattered psyche would allow him, and more power too him I say!

On the issue of Suicide in general I'd have to be against it entirely in any case (ahh though not against murder in all cases, oddly enough) It's most often an act of desperation made while in a state where you simply can't see that your life could ever get better again. I'm generally against making decisions based on hypothetical projections of the future that your choice wont let you live to see.

 

In the example situation you gave, suicide would have been a much worse option than murder. He would have been abandoning his mother, grandmother, and sister to this man, and only freeing himself from the abuse. The way he went about it, killing the old man in his sleep, almost seems like a very level headed responsible way to go about it. If he was more of a damaged person he probably would have wanted his grandfather to see it coming, to gloat a little, but doing it in his sleep, in a way that seems to lack any vindictive spite, it seems like he still had his head about him.

In a situation like that, I can't say that murder was wrong, if this old rapist thug had been making his life hell, and the life of his family hell, and you cant trust the authorities (who can blame him for not trusting authorities, he gets beaten at school after all, the place is supposed to be bristling with responsible people). What he did seemed from his perspective, and from someone trying to see his perspective, like cool headed justice. While suicide would have been almost traitorous to the rest of his family, left behind with fewer family members to absorb the wrath of this old man.