> What if he tried that, but every day just got worse than the last day?
Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they? How many people struggling today think that their life will get no better? Look at all those who made it through slavery, what hope did they have? Their hope came from their faith.
Suffering has a purpose, this is something your grandmother understands through her faith. Buddhists understand this as well. Maybe the problem is not our suffering, but our lack of faith in others and in in something bigger than ourselves.
Well, but what if I ain't a christian nor a buddhist and don't think suffering as a normal living condition is necessary? (Can you proof it is? Also I don't think all christians/buddhists share that believe)
So sure, suffering and pain are part of life. And accepting that helps a lot to not get stuck in that condition by avoiding painful things, you cannot avoid.
"Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they?"
So no, not anyone is saying that.
Only those with a death wish.
And I don't consider having a death wish as a mental condition. It can of course result of a illness, but it can also be a consciouss wish and then finally a decision.
And if other people decide they may not do this, but have to remain in their state of living hell, then this is just torture to me.
> Well, but what if I ain't a christian nor a buddhist and don't think suffering as a normal living condition is necessary? (Can you proof it is? Also I don't think all christians/buddhists share that believe)
At the very least, suffering (through childbirth) is a prerequisite to bringing life into this world.
edit: strange that this is flagged. my parent asked for proof that suffering is inherent in life, and I don't know anyone who has said that the physical act of giving birth is anything but painful.
There is no such thing as constant suffering and there’s no such thing as constant joy.
Without suffering, we would not know joy and without joy we wouldn’t know suffering. So these are two sides of the same coin, do you see that?
It’s our attachment to ourselves that brings us both joy and suffering. So, I’m sorry, if you want to get rid of suffering you’re going to get rid of joy as well. So I don’t know if dying brings us joy or gets rid of our suffering. We really don’t know what happens to us after we die, do we? You can say that everything just ends, but I’m really not wanting to say that because, well, I’m still alive.
I told my schizophrenic brother why he shouldn’t take his life by suicide. I just asked him if he knew what it was like being dead and if he thought he was certain that being dead would be any better. He literally told me the confusion of that question. Let him to accepting his life as it was. Better the Devil You Know than the one you don’t.
> Without suffering, we would not know joy and without joy we wouldn’t know suffering. So these are two sides of the same coin, do you see that?
Bullshit argument.
The suffering that many people experience is profound. These people don’t have a more profound experience of joy than those whose lives are chill. And the happy lives of people who haven’t suffered are not better because the sufferers have felt worse.
> I told my schizophrenic brother why he shouldn’t take his life by suicide. I just asked him if he knew what it was like being dead and if he thought he was certain that being dead would be any better. He literally told me the confusion of that question. Let him to accepting his life as it was. Better the Devil You Know than the one you don’t.
“You should suffer because the next part may be even worse suffering” is such a fucked up argument.
> The suffering that many people experience is profound. These people don’t have a more profound experience of joy than those whose lives are chill. And the happy lives of people who haven’t suffered are not better because the sufferers have felt worse.
Some people have great suffering. Some people have small suffering. But the suffering is the same, and the source is the same. You don’t need great suffering to understand suffering.
A lot of people who have everything they want still suffer, even though nothing is wrong in their life. That is the most interesting kind of suffering to me. But it almost seems like you think these things you’re totally independent or maybe I don’t understand your argument.
> “You should suffer because the next part may be even worse suffering” is such a fucked up argument.
It’s a logical argument. And it kept my brother alive who had no hope and wanted to kill himself, then he has Hope again and he didn’ think about killing himself.
I don’t know what he might’ve done if he read the original article. I might’ve not have had the 20 years with my brother that I did.
Or maybe your brother was guilted into suffering because you injected a greater fear into his life and your faith is fiction. Maybe your faith isn’t fiction but suicide is ok and Jesus tells him it was completely unnecessary to oppose his own reasoning at the pearly gates (or whatever your faith is).
There is no clear answer that extending life is for the best. Not unlike a painful, fruitless intubation that has no chance of providing quality life-hours.
Not saying this is true of your brother but a lot of people are content to say “good job team, he will suffer tremendously, but he is alive!” And that’s fucked up.
The first of the four noble truths set fourth by the Buddha:
The truth of dukkha: Recognizing that suffering is a fundamental part of existence
They even call Joy “hidden suffering”. Because whenever the thing is that gives us joy, if we become attached to it and it is taken away then we have suffering.
And the Christians believe that the suffering of Christ was needed to forgive everyone of their sins.
So they both view suffering as an important aspect of life. Something to be used for learning and understanding the human condition.
But the buddhist and the Christians believe that you can escape what you would think of a state of constant suffering through religious practices. It’s the faith the American slaves had in Christ that got them through their state of living hell. And we’ve even seen a Buddhist light themselves on fire to protest the war in Vietnam. So I’m sorry, but I can’t look upon suffering as something that’s negative and I accept it as part of life and just as I can learn things from joy and I can learn things from suffering, and they are both the same size of the coin and equally as valuable.
Both the Buddha andJesus were real people. I wasn’t bringing up God as I don’t believe in a Christian God, and Buddhists don’t believe in God at all.
But those two characters taught us a lot about suffering. Where it comes from and how to face suffering with courage and not just throw your morals out the window once you have the glimpse of even future suffering.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see every moment as the best it can possibly be. Whether I’m seeing this gorgeous sunny blue sky today or I’m 95 years old with terminal cancer. It’s a miracle to be born and to exist in this world, it’s extremely rare. And I want to live every last second of it. Maybe that’s what’s upsetting me about reading what he wrote. If you just try to grab the good times in this life and use that as a goal you’re going to be severely disappointed.
My only definition of “morality” is are you doing something that affects other people. If you aren’t doing anything to hurt other people, I consider that “morally neutral”. If you aren’t doing anything to help other people, that’s “morally good”.
How is my hypothetically deciding to end my own suffering “morally bad”? I don’t
owe suffering from a terminal illness to anyone.
Your calculation for what you will suffer to enjoy another day of life may be different than mine and that’s fine.
> How is my hypothetically deciding to end my own suffering “morally bad”?
Because you’re saying that life is not worth living at some point. But that’s just my level of morality. I think life is so rare and precious that I do not even want to miss the suffering that’s given to me.
The action by the man in the original article is advocating for the killing of oneself. His advice is to avoid suffering it is best to kill yourself. Approving of that message is advocating for death over suffering and that’s just something I disagree with. It is my personal choice, but his personal choice has an impact on society so it’s not really a personal choice. If we find it acceptable for people to kill themselves to avoid suffering or in his case to avoid future suffering than I think this is something that needs to go beyond personal choice.
How did his choice impact anyone else besides people who cared about him? Society is not harmed by people not wanting to endure suffering if he isn’t leaving dependent children or a disabled spouse. Why should he be forced to suffer because someone else is uncomfortable?
When anyone’s life is taken it is considered worthless, less than. Whether that is someone else’s life or your own, that sets a precedent, and it sends a message. No action happens in a bubble. Again, he was not enduring suffering either. He was merely afraid of future suffering. Which makes this in my opinion 1000 times worse.
Glad for you. I really hope you never come into a situation that you wish for your life to end. But please take into account, that other people might experience life different at times.
No one has a death wish, because things are a bit rough sometimes. But if life is constant hell and when there is no hope anymore. Then you wish for death to release you.
(Also do you know what latestage cancer can mean? Constant pain that does not go away, ever.
And Jesus might have been a real person, but that he choose crucification out of his own choice is very much part of the mythological story that other people told after his death)
So many of you, here are thinking that my father did not die of a rapid metastatic cancer. Or that I held my schizophrenic brother in my arms after he tried to overdose on pills. Or that I’m not suffering from a disorder that I’m not going to detail here.
When you deal with suffering every day, you come to have a different relationship with it that is, if you don’t take the view of material list and instead follow the past of the several spiritual leaders who dealt with suffering and understood it in a way that is much deeper than “suffering is bad”.
Christ test there is much more complicated than he wanted to die because he was suffering. Christ chose his suffering and his death as a sacrifice for other people. Christ did not die by his own hands, but from others. He chose peace and love over his own suffering and death. It’s one thing to die because you have no hope and it’s another thing to die to give Hope to everyone else.
The man in the original article, he died for nothing. He died for his own selfish desires. He died because he thought it was embarrassing to be old.
Yes, when dementia has you terrified of, or raging at, your closest loved ones (who you don't remember at all so you think they're demons or strangers) all day every day to the point where they all can't stand you and feel terrible for wishing death would come to end your massive suffering. Beautiful moments, just beautiful.
Hanging in there with cancer? Sure, fight it and deal with the pain. Dementia? No, please end it. The two aren't even close in comparison, cancer feels easy and merciful.
It’s interesting to read here how many people believe their thoughts are themselves. They are more worried about losing their minds than losing their limbs. Your thoughts and memories are as much you as your hand or your foot. As a society, I think we’ve become so attached to our “self“ that we think is “me“. These people who lose their minds, do they have a sense of self? And if they have a sense of self, do they suffer? Cause you really can’t suffer if you have no sense of self. It may look like you’re suffering from the outside, but it’s hard to say with someone deep in dementia or Alzheimer’s if they’re suffering. I don’t know if it’s something that ever can be known or if it’s ever been asked. I know I have a friend‘s mother right now pretty deep into dementia and she seems OK with everything.
But this is what happened with the man in the original article. He had a sense of himself that he wanted preserve. And that to me as a sickness, a spiritual sickness, greediness almost.
How is it “greedy”? I consider greediness as hoarding resources more than you need thst could help someone else. You are not being greedy for refusing to suffer especially when you don’t have any dependents.
Yes, you’re right which is why I said greedy almost. I think there are some aspect of him wanting more than he’s deserved. Like wanting a life that ends perfectly while everyone else’s life has to go on with their suffering. But I think it is just generally selfish what he did.
Being selfish is being overly concerned with one’s self. He took his own life without regards to the consequence how anyone else would see it. He was also overly concerned with his self image as he stated in his letter.
And he’s taken something, he’s taking his own life. Which I do not believe it was his to take.
Does he own his life? How can a thing own itself? Did he obtain this life or was his life giving to him by his parents? If he was created by his parents do his parents own his life?
Are we even sure that our life ends when we die? I’ve had to have someone come back and tell me one way or the other.
I think we are so certain of things that once you really start thinking about them that certain you can disappear quickly.
Slavery has been against the law for a few years. Are you saying the state owns his life? I’m sure at 90 years old his parents are dead and don’t own his life.
I also don’t know if there are little green men living on the moon. But I’m almost sure that the earth wasn’t created in 6 days less than 7000 years ago. Can you tell me abt religious belief that makes sense?
do you think I’m a Christian or something? Because I’m not.
And I’m not staying the state owns his life, I’m saying I don’t know who owns it. I’m saying that’s a really difficult philosophical question.
But in the United States, you cannot die by suicide legally. So the state does have control over your life.
But let’s say I own my life. Why would I want to destroy something I own? Who is the I that benefits from that action?
If you own your life then why do you allow your life to suffer? Why don’t you just stop you’re suffering if you own your life by other means then killing yourself?
If the government doesn’t own your life which you agree with, then it doesn’t have the right to tell you what to do with it. If I’m in debilitating pain that has no chance to get better, why wouldn’t I want to end it.
And the US has always been hypocritical about controlling people’s lives.
The historical Jesus was with a high degree of certainty quite different than the way he is currently remembered and the way he is portrayed in much of the new testament. The majority of the stories involving him either did not happen or were significantly changed between when the event occurred and when, generations later, it was recorded.
I see your last paragraph as naive, and cruelly dismissive of what true suffering is. It is possible to be in a place where the only life you have left is excruciating and intolerable. You are in a privileged position to have never seen a beloved family member die a slow and terrible death, or to have had a serious prolonged health event and have the moment of realization that for some people, your horrible weeks of insufferable illness are their entire experience of life, and wonder if you'd even want to live if that was all you had left.
It's probably because I've experienced a family member's suffering that I wouldn't wish anybody to do through, and also had health events myself that led to such a "reduced quality of life" (read: constant discomfort bordering on torment, allowing no comfort, relaxation, sleep, or ability to focus on anything even mildly enjoyable.) for several months on end that I considered that if believed it would never get better from that point, I really wouldn't want to live anymore. It was effectively an anxiety attack that stayed at maximum intensity for three months solid, and didn't respond to any kinds of drugs, even benzos. I was constantly terrified that I was going to die, and I couldn't hold conversations during the entire period. During this period, I considered that there are people who experienced my condition as a lifelong experience, rather than a temporary, albeit long, episode. For people with dissociative disorders and dementia, they experience something like that, but with significantly higher terror and without even a reasonable grasp on reality. My horrible experience that made me ponder how much more I could survive is somebody else's "good day".
"It's going to get better" is a reasonable position. "It's not going to get better, but still keep hanging on while you experience intolerable torment for all the time you have left, however long it may be" is sadistic and sick.
Seeing someone else experience something is not the same as having it happen to you, and those who wish to instill their opinion on others often have the smallest worldviews and ability to think about what it might be like to experience what someone else is going through.
Please stop assuming you know what suffering I’ve had in my own body and my own life. I don’t wish to discuss it here, but I don’t think it needs to be discussed. My experience doesn’t matter in the logic of the argument.
I am saying it’s relevant because suffering is suffering. It has the same source so it does not matter if it’s a big suffering or a little suffering. Understanding suffering does not need a degree of suffering. It just needs suffering.
The man in the original article was not suffering at all yet he killed himself. What kind of suffering was that? It’s not that he was suffering. He didn’t wanna suffer at all. He didn’t want to suffer shame. This man knew so little about suffering that he took his own life rather than try to figure it out and the remaining years of his life.
I’m sorry, I’m not one of those people. I don’t have “religious beliefs“. There are things I’ve learned in my rather long life and through my suffering and happiness and reading a lot of different spiritual books as well as a lot of materialist books. (my current fascination is the possibility of tubules being the source of a quantum consciousness.)
All I wrote was a remark about how suffering has the same source. Why do we suffer? Isn’t that an interesting question? Do we need to suffer? Can we have pain without suffering? These are not answers I can tell you. These things people have to understand by experience and observation.
I want saw a Whitetail deer with a compound fracture to its rear leg. The bone was sticking straight out. Probably hit by a car. But there it was walking with its herd, calmly eating grass with the rest of them.
So that’s what I do, I look at my life outside of me and I look at the life inside of me.
Suicide is not evidence someone failed to understand pain; it's often proof they understood it too intimately, lived within it until nothing else remained.
What you've attempted is a philosophical sleight-of-hand that collapses under minimal scrutiny. Your "suffering is suffering" assertion—tracing all human agony back to a singular, universal source is a fallacy of composition. I encourage you to look into this concept, as you seem like a person who would like to be thoughtful in the way you approach these subjects.
The deer example highlights that you are mashing vastly different experiential realities to avoid dealing with the contextual depth of human distress. The resilience of a wounded deer, driven by biological signaling, offers no insight into the psychic anguish, societal shame, or cognitive collapse that is often part of human despair. Pretending these are equivalent is intellectually bankrupt from the start.
Claiming the person noted the article "was not suffering at all" and "knew so little about suffering" is stunningly out of touch.
The issue here is intellectual humility: your personal framework cannot possibly encompass the private hell another person lived with - well, until they couldn't anymore.
Anyone can say that about their life right now, can't they? How many people struggling today think that their life will get no better? Look at all those who made it through slavery, what hope did they have? Their hope came from their faith.
Suffering has a purpose, this is something your grandmother understands through her faith. Buddhists understand this as well. Maybe the problem is not our suffering, but our lack of faith in others and in in something bigger than ourselves.