Rational Suicide

Suicide is a controversial subject. In Eastern traditions it seems to be acceptable and in some cases a noble thing to do. In the Catholic Church it is a very serious sin.

I've argued in past posts that there is no objective morality, but that view is completely consistent with arguing about right and wrong and hoping that my readers share my basic beliefs and values.

I have struggled with depression for my entire adult life. Sometimes it has been very severe. I have never planned a suicide or attempted it, but I certainly have considered it a great deal at different times. I have been on some antidepressant medication regimen for nearly 30 years, and I benefit from antidepressants a great deal. I have sometimes told myself, "Life is for me misery that will never get better", which makes suicide sound appealing. I have always stayed in touch with reality sufficiently to tell myself, "Every previous time you've felt this way, it has eventually passed and you have felt better again," however totally inconceivable it feels at the time. Other people don't always keep that perspective.

With this in mind, I support society in telling people who are feeling suicidal to not act impulsively. I support suicide hotlines. I support hospitalization for brief periods after a suicide attempt to try to stabilize the person. Monitoring a person over a longer period to keep them away from suicide may also be sensible. But I also feel clear that some suicides are motivated not by the feelings of the moment but by rational calculation over a period of time and they need to be considered on their merits.

I find utterly unconvincing the statement that suicide is a bad idea because just about everyone who survives a suicide attempt is glad they didn't succeed. Most who are not glad probably repeated their attempts until they succeeded. That is a literal instance of <survivorship bias>.

From <a paper> chosen more or less at random, we have, "Suicide is a major public health problem with advancing age being one of the factors associated with increased risk." The paper saw no need to defend the idea that old people choosing to end their lives is a major public health problem. I think it needs defense.

So, what cases might be considered rational suicide?

At one extreme, if someone is a parent to young children, the circumstances that would justify a suicide are very rare. If you chose to bring children into the world, you should expect to endure a great deal of suffering instead of abandoning them. Having a track record of repeatedly hurting the children badly and seeing no way to interrupt that pattern might make suicide a defensible choice.

At the other end, to start with an easy case, if a person is facing certain death within a few weeks and is suffering from intractable pain, I cannot see any objection to suicide.

People with degenerative diseases can rationally choose to end their lives. Robin Williams had <such a condition>. Sometimes life might not be so bad at the moment, but the person realizes that they will lose the ability to carry out a suicide later, and that makes it a sympathetic choice. This is an argument in favor of legalizing assisted suicide, so a person does not feel pressured to kill themselves before they lose the ability to do so. I could see that Alzheimer's that has progressed to a certain point would be a justification for suicide.

What I'm most interested in addressing is the argument against suicide that it will be emotionally devastating to a person's friends and family. This may be true today, but if so I believe it is based on a widespread misunderstanding. Clearing up this misunderstanding may take time, but it is a vital goal.

My gut sense is that the horror at suicide is intimately tied up with denial of death. Too many people view death as a terrible thing that will happen at some point in the distant future and a thing that is not to be contemplated in advance. When someone kills themselves, it means they rejected that formulation, and that calls on the survivor to question a view they do not want to question. I think there is a frantic depth to this kind of negative reaction that can be distinguished from more mundane concerns of abandonment. In contrast to the denier of death, the suicide understood that death is inevitable and that the choice was not between choosing to live forever and choosing to die now. It was a choice between dying now as opposed to living some future period of time (no longer than a few decades) and then dying. The "dying" part was constant to the two, as was the certainty of remaining dead and missing out on the millenia that begin after the end of their lifespan.

You could feel angry at someone for killing themselves if they knew that you valued their life and presence. But if you are not completely self-centered, you must assume they calculated how much you will suffer from their being gone as to opposed to how much they expected to suffer if they kept on living. It is arrogant to assume that you knew their suffering wasn't so bad. Those who suffer from long-term intractable depression can suffer a great deal. Feeling low self-worth, they are also susceptible to underestimating how much other people may value them.

Keep in mind that a measure of psychological health is distinguishing one's own happiness from other people's. Every adult is ultimately responsible for their own happiness, and a pattern of feeling that making other people happy is more important than making yourself happy is a sign of an unhealthy psychology. Suicides should deserve the same consideration. All else being equal, reducing your own pain is more important than reducing other people's pain. Parents of young children are an exception and in some cases need to put the welfare of their children above their own. However, when the children reach adulthood this obligation ceases.

You might say that if the person contemplating suicide knows or suspects that their friends and relatives will suffer a great deal, that gives them an obligation not to kill themselves. But it is much less clear if you believe their suffering is due to false beliefs. For comparison, suppose a black person knows that if they attend some party that is otherwise all white people, several of them will be unhappy and uncomfortable. Should they therefore not attend? Most of us will say they should feel free to attend, because while we recognize the reality of those white people's reactions, we also realize they are unjust. People of good will can explain to those unhappy guests why their reaction is unjust and one they should seek to overcome. We look forward to a world where fewer and fewer white people would be upset by the prospect.

Similarly, when friends and relatives of a rational suicide are deeply upset, people of good will should help them work through the reasons for it. They can analyze their denial of death and seek to overcome it. They can try to understand the sort of calculus the suicide went through and not assume they knew that they weren't suffering all that much. We can look forward to a world where most people's psychology incorporates the inevitability of death.

Of course, some suicides are not based on rational consideration but are impulsive, and survivors may not be able to determine which kind it was. But the concerns about wishing they had noticed and intervened all fundamentally apply to the impulsive suicides, not the rational ones.

For some perspective at the end of a topic with "negative energy", let me say that I consider life to be a wonderful and miraculous gift. We overcome temporary setbacks and enjoy the time we have here, and one big part of a good life is enjoying our relationships with other people. We mourn those who die of natural causes, but this does not upset the harmony of the world. Those who after careful consideration choose to end their lives should not upset this fundamentally upbeat view of the world either.