- Joined
- Aug 17, 2023
- Messages
- 1,647
- Reaction score
- 2,019
- Awards
- 11
This could go into General Occult or LHP but I'm putting it here since it concerns a social issue: suicide & public attitudes. Recently I had to disabuse a kinswoman of the notion that the Netherlands sanctions suicide tourism. (She is in chronic pain &c&c.) So I decided to take a look into what's state of the art re: self-removal. I recall the net in its early days where just about anything was discussed. Now, page after page of suicide prevention sites/articles/screeds/and more.
On the one hand, I can understand a cautionary tone. Final decisions should not be made on impulse. And suicides have a bad tendency to become locally fashionable in outbreaks among certain collections of people (e.g., adolescents.) On the other, the (arguably) more functional civilizations of old Rome and Japan institutionalized the practice of suicide, subject to certain recognized conditions. The stuff I find online now is mostly squeamish semi-hysterics, "DON'T!!!" There are a few exceptions like the folks at Painless Pill, but these are scarce.
Of course mental health (read "people management," a.k.a. "the sanction of the put-upon") is a big concern in these times. It's a pretty clear sign that the lug nuts are loosening if you have to overtly teach people "life is worth living." A sign that they are coming off, if refresher lessons are needed. I am put very much in mind of the latter-day Gnostic Luis Felipe Moyano's teaching that the whole Judeo-Christian/humanist/progressive edifice is cover for civilization-wide psychic vampirism. In particular, the sufferings of the hopeless are savored as a sort of liqueur. So, of course suicide must be discouraged: pleasure is being denied to the adepts.
I'm not saying I believe this. For one thing, it violates Hanlon's Razor. (A useful implement; not an inviolable axiom.) Still it is worth pondering. Is the "sanctity of human life" at work in the anti-suicide ethos? Or are baser motives operative?
On the one hand, I can understand a cautionary tone. Final decisions should not be made on impulse. And suicides have a bad tendency to become locally fashionable in outbreaks among certain collections of people (e.g., adolescents.) On the other, the (arguably) more functional civilizations of old Rome and Japan institutionalized the practice of suicide, subject to certain recognized conditions. The stuff I find online now is mostly squeamish semi-hysterics, "DON'T!!!" There are a few exceptions like the folks at Painless Pill, but these are scarce.
Of course mental health (read "people management," a.k.a. "the sanction of the put-upon") is a big concern in these times. It's a pretty clear sign that the lug nuts are loosening if you have to overtly teach people "life is worth living." A sign that they are coming off, if refresher lessons are needed. I am put very much in mind of the latter-day Gnostic Luis Felipe Moyano's teaching that the whole Judeo-Christian/humanist/progressive edifice is cover for civilization-wide psychic vampirism. In particular, the sufferings of the hopeless are savored as a sort of liqueur. So, of course suicide must be discouraged: pleasure is being denied to the adepts.
I'm not saying I believe this. For one thing, it violates Hanlon's Razor. (A useful implement; not an inviolable axiom.) Still it is worth pondering. Is the "sanctity of human life" at work in the anti-suicide ethos? Or are baser motives operative?