I can't speak of suicide impulses in general, but I can tell you about my
own experience: the only time I ever seriously considered suicide was when
I was 15 years old. Going to highschool was a miserable hell for me, and I
conculded that if there wasn't a good chance that life would get better than
this, my most rational choice would be to kill myself.
I remember climbing up onto the roof of my parents' house and then up to the
top of the chimney. I wanted to be as far removed as possible from every
day life as I thought things over. I listed my options as I saw them:
1.kill myself; 2. run away from home; 3. complete highschool with the
expectation that things would be better once I got finished. I eliminated
option #2 based on my knowledge of the money-earning and food-gathering
opportunities which existed for 15 year old kids in that time and place. I
eliminated option #1 because I didn't have complete data about option #3
(although I'd read enough to have some idea of the breadth of opportunity
out there in the world), and option #1 seemed fairly irrevocable.
I decided to stay where I was for a while. I probably was suffering from
depression at the time; I spent much of my time drinking elixer of codeine,
which in addition to the opiate, contained a high %age of ethanol. Possibly
the ability to tune out my surroundings through the aid of drugs helped me
to survive a very unpleasant stage of my life.
As I've grown older I've learned to have more control over my environment
through the use of my mind; as a result, I've come to take the various
trials of the world less seriously than I once did. No matter how certain I
feel about this or that observation or theory I try to keep an open mind.
I first began to question the idea of certainty (no, that's a word of art in
certain disciplines, isn't it? maybe the term I want is...closed
mindedness) when I read an article in Scientific American in, I believe,
1974. The topic of the article was the unreliability of eye-witness
testimony, and there was discussion of several experiments which indicated
that, at least to some degree, people see what they believe in and expect to
see. When I write "see" I mean the interpretation of data which enter
people's awareness, ostensibly through their sense organs. In fact, the
data pass through some powerful filters, although people are not generally
aware of this.
Since then I've become convinced that people do indeed invent the universes
they inhabit. The bearing this has on suicide is this: there is no need to
scrap the body in order to end suffering. One can learn to slip into
another and more pleasant universe.
Bonnie
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.com
[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.com]On Behalf Of Cynthia
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 5:24 PM
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: Re: Suicide is Pointless
What is a suicidal impulse like. Any random thoughts of death or suicide,
have
been quickly followed up with the thought, that it would not be good. And I
end
up reaffirming my desire to live.
There have been a few times, that I have been in such pain, that I wished I
would go crazy. But I never wished to die.
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