Suicide.. The ultimate freedom?

[EJinCT]

Why is suicide illegal?

Is it simply a case of laws being created from morals?

Now as far as the method, thats a different case; but if done in a responsible manner, why not allow it?

Personally, I am morally against suicide; but if someone does not wish to live, who am I to decide what is right for them?

[Lex]

Because a suicide is potential lost revenue for drug companies (if you live you are very likely to be put on antidepressants, etc). It is also lost revenue for the government in terms of taxes. And as you have pointed out it is the ultimate expression of freedom to do as you wish with your own life and the government will have none of that. And if you are into some of the conspiracy theories then you also have to take into account that Americans are the collateral for the national debt and the bankers won't accept dead folks as collateral. Anyways, those are just some ideas.

[eques]

You may as well ask, why do seatbelt laws even exist?  Lawmakers give the impression that it's in order to protect us, but is it really about protection?  For all of the fatalities and injuries that seatbelts prevent, there's a class of fatalities and injuries that they do not prevent, as well as a class that they invent.

The reason why is far simpler than interest groups' claims and all the other kinds of madness: it's about control.  It's about telling you what you can and cannot do.  Be it safer overall or not, you ought to be the one deciding whether you will risk wearing a seatbelt or not.  You ought to carefully weigh the risks regarding whether your children will wear them until they are old enough to understand the risks themselves.

The requirement of life to make those decisions is what these laws are all about.  Suicide is the ability to end your own life.  The law doesn't actually strip you of your ability to make the decision--it merely imposes penalties if you attempt and fail.

[Edit] - the indoctrination of the law, however, may well be considered to strip you of your ability to make these decisions, if you consider that the decision has already been made for you and, hence, you do not need to think about it.

[Raineyrocks]

Why is suicide illegal?

Is it simply a case of laws being created from morals?

Now as far as the method, thats a different case; but if done in a responsible manner, why not allow it?

Personally, I am morally against suicide; but if someone does not wish to live, who am I to decide what is right for them?

I agree with Lex and James on the selfish nature of the control freaks and greedy scumbags.  Suicide is a very personal choice and sometimes for some people it's just too hard to live.  I had a cousin that hung himself over a girlfriend issue but I have a feeling he was really messed up as a kid, abused and stuff.  James is so right there is nothing they can do to punish you if you succeed but look out if someone saves you, you'll be put in a mental institution probably.  My mother often tried to kill herself when I was a kid and they'd lock her in the loony bin for awhile but that was in the 70's, today god knows what they would do to you.

[eques]

How's this for a method (warning--it's gruesome):

http://www.bash.org/?488793

[MaineShark]

Power isn't just the ability to force someone else to obey your will.  Power is the ability to tell the lie, and have him agree that it is true, despite everything he knows.

"Reasonable" laws (eg, "don't murder people") can't accomplish that.  The law has to violate all common sense, and then people have to go along with it, to accomplish what the power-hungry want.

Joe

[lildog]

When it comes to government, "my body my choice" only allows for murdering of unborn.  Once you've been born you're government property and must be protected at all costs!

[wolf]

As far as the government and big business is concerned, you are nothing more than a resource to be exploited for profit. They are willing to allow you just enough so you can survive to work another day just to have them extract more taxes, interest, insurance premiums, and ripoff utility bills. If you kill yourself before the end of your ?useful life? you deprive them of the profit they could have made otherwise. Once you are too old and sick to work you become a liability to them and they want you to die so you don't diminish the profits of the health insurance vermin.

[error]

[dalebert]

How's this for a method (warning--it's gruesome):

http://www.bash.org/?488793

Hmm... I doubt that I'll ever be considering methods of suicide, but if I were considering that one, I'd want to run it by Mythbusters first. I'd wanna make sure it would, in fact, cleanly decapitate their dummy Buster first. Could be a really unpleasant way to die.

[eques]

What would probably work better is if you were able to wrap the piano wire around your neck before you jumped, tethering the piano wire securely so that it doesn't merely cut your throat... but you'd also have to be certain that it cut through your spine... and yes, it'd be a very unpleasant way to die, but you'd pretty much guarantee that you will die by cutting your trachea and major arteries in your neck (assuming the piano wire did the trick).

[Caleb]

I don't think it should be *illegal* to kill yourself.

But I wouldn't call it "the ultimate freedom" either.  Freedom implies life.  Once life is gone, there is no freedom because there is no ability to make choices.

I don't think it is immoral to intervene if someone is trying to kill himself, however.  Common sense and sheer decency would dictate that you would intervene in a loving way, not with violence.

Look at it another way:  Would it be immoral for me to take away a friends alcohol (in effect, stealing it) if I knew that he was struggling with severe alcholism?  Is any intervention on behalf of person who is dear to us wrong?  I think there is a clear difference between a *friend* doing such a thing and a government doing it, because the motives of the friend are completely beyond reproach.  A true friend acts in behalf of a friend's best interests.

[eques]

Well... I know it's only an example, but if your friend was severely alcoholic and was asking for your help, that would be a little different than if you just up and poured all of his gin down the drain despite his protests.  Any alcoholic--and, for that matter, any suicidal individual--has to realize within themselves that they have a problem, and that it's almost certainly manifesting itself in this self-destructive behavior.  That is to say, alcoholism/suicide is not the problem, but a symptom.  Attempting to resolve the symptom without addressing the root cause is a pretty risky venture.

One might even say that it is doomed to fail. 

[MaineShark]

I don't think it is immoral to intervene if someone is trying to kill himself, however.  Common sense and sheer decency would dictate that you would intervene in a loving way, not with violence.

Look at it another way:  Would it be immoral for me to take away a friends alcohol (in effect, stealing it) if I knew that he was struggling with severe alcholism?

Stealing is an initiation of force and, hence, immoral.

Is any intervention on behalf of person who is dear to us wrong?  I think there is a clear difference between a *friend* doing such a thing and a government doing it, because the motives of the friend are completely beyond reproach.  A true friend acts in behalf of a friend's best interests.

What do they say about the surface of the road to hell?

You might be able to make an argument based on diminished capacity in some way... that you know your friend well enough to know he really doesn't want to kill himself and is only at risk of such because of temporary intoxication, but once he sobered up, if he demanded his alcohol back you would have no moral ground to withold it at all.

And I say "might" on that... I know that if you injured him in the process, or if someone saw you stealing his alcohol and intervened to protect him, you would certainly be culpable.

Joe

[Caleb]

I don't think it is immoral to intervene if someone is trying to kill himself, however.  Common sense and sheer decency would dictate that you would intervene in a loving way, not with violence.

Look at it another way:  Would it be immoral for me to take away a friends alcohol (in effect, stealing it) if I knew that he was struggling with severe alcholism?

Stealing is an initiation of force and, hence, immoral.

Is any intervention on behalf of person who is dear to us wrong?  I think there is a clear difference between a *friend* doing such a thing and a government doing it, because the motives of the friend are completely beyond reproach.  A true friend acts in behalf of a friend's best interests.

What do they say about the surface of the road to hell?

You might be able to make an argument based on diminished capacity in some way... that you know your friend well enough to know he really doesn't want to kill himself and is only at risk of such because of temporary intoxication, but once he sobered up, if he demanded his alcohol back you would have no moral ground to withold it at all.

And I say "might" on that... I know that if you injured him in the process, or if someone saw you stealing his alcohol and intervened to protect him, you would certainly be culpable.

Joe

This is why I find myself moving more and more away from the individualist anarchist approach; in reality, it is as "rule based" as the current law is.

The guys who are holding Russell can't make a distinction between Russell and a drunk driver.  I know this, because I talked to the Lt. myself.  In his mind, the whole system of rules and regulations ad infinitum are designed to prevent drunk driving, and thus, Russell removing himself from that whole system is a danger to his system.  It isn't *people* based, it's rule based.

And it seems that in order to systematize our thought, we are also guilty of drawing up "rules" and then holding them inflexibly so that they crush the spirit of the rules.

The goal of any prohibition is to protect a person against unwarranted aggression.  There are times, however, when a person presents a danger to himself.  I've lived with a suicidal person.  Trust me, it's not a lot of fun. I've hid weapons, knives, anything sharp.  I've dumped medicine down the toilet. I've taken car keys with me so that she couldn't use the car to kill herself. All these things were, by the most technical application of ZAP, immoral.  I disagree with that because it overlooks the spirit of ZAP, which is to *protect* life and property. 

Please understand, I'm not advocating a system to draw up rules and regulations. But I'm talking about direct personal interaction between people who care about each other. That is the foundation of all Society.