Teen commits suicide after onlookers goad him into jumping

[Siegtaru]

5meg sig is a much smaller crime than upgrading a Mjollnir.

Only thing in this thread that made me lol besides "Poof"'s stupidity

[Melena]

Why is it every thread that has a post from Poof in it gets shitted up? Can we BRP rule her yet?

Meh, I can come up with several people more annoying then Poof that should be given the boot.

[Senoska]

Please remove your almost 5meg sig Q_Q

No, screw that, that sig is awesome. I find myself watching it over and over again every time I scroll down.

[Izzy]

5meg sig is a much smaller crime than upgrading a Mjollnir.

My tears are tears of sorrow and pain

[Gaea]

It is a choice. When they feel that all is lost, that there is no hope, things can never be as good as they once were, and that no one will miss them when they're gone, they have a choice to endure all those perceived hardships and eternal agony, or embrace the sweet release of death and finally be at peace and away from all the suffering.

You are kinda missing the point. I'm not saying there isn't a reason to try to talk someone out of it. I'm just saying I don't think we have the right to stop them. If a friend or relative of mine were to try to jump off a cliff, sure I'd be like "why are you doing this?" "Come down and lets talk about this." "Maybe we can find another way." But in the end it should be ultimately up to them. If I can't come up with a compelling reason for them to stay alive, then there's nothing else I can do. It's not my position to stop them.

Also, while depression or mental illness can alter the person's perception of their situation to make it seem perhaps worse than it really is, it still takes a pretty strong conviction to override the basic instinct of self-preservation. I know I couldn't do it. I'm too much of a pussy (lol). The ability to override that, alone, earns my respect. In the end, the final decision should be up to that person and it really is none of our business. Of course, we can try to make it our business and talk them out of it, but we have no right to stop them.

Under the United States constitution, I think that the right to self-terminate should be protected by the 14th amendment. Growing up in the United States and under the constitution of the United States has probably given me a different perspective on this than people in other nations.

I'm also not arguing to be right or wrong on the issue because I think it's an issue that doesn't really have a right or wrong. People on both sides of the argument seem to have good intentions. One side respects personal privacy, the other side wants to underscore the priceless aspect of a human life. The same argument is made with abortion.

Until we live in a perfect world, things like suicide and abortion have a place in our society. Anyone that disagrees with that needs to focus less on arguing about it and more on making our world a better and better place to minimize and eventually extinguish these solutions as reasonable.

[LD]

You are kinda missing the point. I'm not saying there isn't a reason to try to talk someone out of it. I'm just saying I don't think we have the right to stop them.

Thing is, they weren't stopping anybody. The asshole heard both sides of the point (I'm damn sure the cops had megaphones while the on-lookers did not) and still decided to jump. A bunch of pissed off people didn't automatically mute every officer in the area.

Also, fuck the guy. He's dead. The entire point of telling him to gtfo was so we could all get on with out lives.

[Plow]

If I can't come up with a compelling reason for them to stay alive, then there's nothing else I can do. It's not my position to stop them.

If you can't come up with a compelling reason to stay alive, you, well, fail at life.


Which is, of course, news to everyone.

[Charla]

If you can't come up with a compelling reason to stay alive, you, well, fail at life.

Well why don't you give it a try then? Go right ahead and tell me why I should be alive. And don't forget to define 'compelling' while you're at it.

[LD]

To provide labor or otherwise act as a stepping stone on the path of human development. All emotion is irrelevant, produce for the betterment of mankind.

[Plow]

Well why don't you give it a try then? Go right ahead and tell me why I should be alive. And don't forget to define 'compelling' while you're at it.

2. having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention, or respect

There's this thing called "pussy."


Quite compelling indeed.

[Khamsin]

The most compelling reason of all is to be successful. Make lots of money, steal other guys' hot girlfriends, and have lots of friends who admire and respect you. Just tell that to the next person threatening to kill themselves. They would be missing out on all that!

[Elvis]

Snoochie boochie.

That is all.

[Kuya]

But once you realize that the only reason you're doing any of that is so other people will recognize that you exist and that doesn't really add any tangible substance to your existence, you will go back to killing yourself.

[LD]

That's why I like my theory. It's like roaches and mice; after a few generations of a particular type of poison, they grow immunities. Evolution. A couple of thousand people have to come and go before we as a race become significantly better, but it'll take longer when people don't live long enough to get poisoned. We all must suffer to grow.

You have to take your petty misery like a man every day of your life until you die at 95 in bed watching repeats of who's the boss. Then when you die, we'll slice into you to see exactly what killed you. Why? Just so millions of years from now, humans will A: still be around and B: be slightly better off.

So keep living, fag.

[Charla]

That's why I like my theory. It's like roaches and mice; after a few generations of a particular type of poison, they grow immunities. Evolution. A couple of thousand people have to come and go before we as a race become significantly better, but it'll take longer when people don't live long enough to get poisoned. We all must suffer to grow.

You have to take your petty misery like a man every day of your life until you die at 95 in bed watching repeats of who's the boss. Then when you die, we'll slice into you to see exactly what killed you. Why? Just so millions of years from now, humans will A: still be around and B: be slightly better off.

So keep living, fag.

But hold on now, that only works if the mice/roaches who don't grow immunities keep dying to the poison. If we use modern medicine to keep all of them alive (which we are, at least in this half of the world), then nobody gets immunity to anything.

On top of that, you can extend the poison analogy to the suicide guy himself. In that case, life in this society is the poison, and he's the mouse without immunity. If he doesn't survive to reproduce, then the next generation will have less suicidals in it, right?

As for all the other responses, I guess that means the only good reason to kill yourself is if your dick falls off.

[LD]

Well, if meds work the way they're supposed to, they'll decrease the likelihood of the negative emotions biologically, meaning it's possible any offspring the person has are less likely to be suicidal and so on. If at some point such descendants commit suicide, the points kinda moot, since they've been cut out, haven't they?

[Charla]

First, that really isn't the same argument you were trying to make earlier. But according to those two sentences (as best I can parse them), you're saying that because medication can alleviate suicidal tendencies now, the possible benefit of generating a resistance in the population to conditions that sometimes induce suicide is rendered irrelevant, because said medication would be more effective.

However, that still leaves us where we started, and we don't have a reason to do anything in particular other than to get laid, and to continue surviving for the purpose of getting laid again.

[Kuya]

And eating and breathing, don't forget those.

[LD]

I was trying to make an argument? I thought I was just using a flimsy excuse to express my deep-seated and slightly irrational hatred of suicidal people while espousing my absolutist and pragmatic philosophy.

Anyway, wouldn't you agree that creating a product that can completely suppress or eliminate suicidal tendencies is a clear sign of humanity's advancement by adapting to an undesirable trait? Whether it is natural or artificial is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether or not it holds to our biological make-up.

In either case, the point is to breed good in and bad out. Art and Science are merely the means to measure such things, in the end what matters is growing as close to the edges of the petri dish as possible before our strain dies.

[Charla]

I was trying to make an argument? I thought I was just using a flimsy excuse to express my deep-seated and slightly irrational hatred of suicidal people while espousing my absolutist and pragmatic philosophy.

somtimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Anyway, wouldn't you agree that creating a product that can completely suppress or eliminate suicidal tendencies is a clear sign of humanity's advancement by adapting to an undesirable trait? Whether it is natural or artificial is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether or not it holds to our biological make-up.

In either case, the point is to breed good in and bad out. Art and Science are merely the means to measure such things, in the end what matters is growing as close to the edges of the petri dish as possible before our strain dies.

There's a difference between these forms of adaptation, however. Most importantly in terms of this thread, the advancement of medical science doesn't require any particular action on the part of any one individual. Science will (or won't if it somehow proves impossible) eventually develop a completely effective treatment regardless of whether or not Captain Jumper bounces.