flawed:LOGIC

Foreward: The piece you are about to read is meant as a means of communicating a viewpoint that is normally ignored or dismissed. I, Justin Smith, do not necessarily hold these views, but rather I’m using this blog to attempt to argue a stance that is not my own. At times I may even write in first person, but I must stress that these “views” are entirely fictional. This is simply an exercise in debate; nothing more.

Today on a lark, I took a personality test based on the Keirsey/Myers-Briggs scale. It doesn’t tell you very much in the end, mainly things that you should already know. Tidbits like how you may work well in groups versus alone; how you prioritize family issues over (or under) work issues. That sort of thing.

It should come as no surprise that I was rated an “ISFJ“, or “introverted sensing feeling judging”. After doing a bit of research on this type, I found that us ISFJs will often argue a viewpoint that differs from their own. This is not because they feel the need to cause a confrontation, on the contrary, ISFJs are very anti-confrontation. It’s believed that this need to offer conflicting opinions comes from their near-obsession with learning. This makes a lot of sense – by being forced to argue a reasoning that they don’t necessarily have as much knowledge about, they are forced to learn as much about a topic as possible to defend such views.

Throughout the course of this blog’s life, I will periodically write pieces which will be about a societal-sensitive issue but from the opinion opposite the public. I will write about topics like: why we should go to war; why robbing a bank should be legal; etc. Not because I believe it to be the truth, but just to see how convincingly I can argue the point.

I will also have a separate RSS category for these posts called “Devil’s Advocate” which I hope, if nothing else, will stimulate comments on the topic. You can leave comments on a post by clicking the “Comment now” link next to the title of the article. No registration is required; just click the link, pick a pseudonym, and post your thoughts whether they be for or against the topic at hand. I will endeavour to respond to each and every remark in as timely a fashion as possible.

Today’s Devil’s Advocate post will be about suicide, and how it should be accepted as a practice to end one’s suffering.

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Suicide. It is generally regarded as the most indecent way of dying. In fact, according to the Bible, suicide is the only cause of death that will absolutely, positively prevent you from ever reaching heaven. Suicidal tendencies imply extreme mental stress on the part of the individual, and if kept unchecked, could lead to the individual taking his or her own life. My question is why does suicide have such a negative connotation?

As an ex-troubled young boy, I spent many of my waking hours pondering my own mortality. Not so much about the afterlife sense (being of the deterministic “faith”, such things don’t exist) but rather in the more dreary should-I-kill-myself sense. I will spare you all the trouble of an incredibly depressing story of an even more depressing (or rather depressed) youngster, but suffice it to say, I spent a considerable part of my childhood just wanting that pain to go away.

I didn’t (nor don’t) believe in Heaven, so I had no qualms about killing myself. Should my heart cease beating, I wouldn’t traverse an infinite plane to meet a wooly man dressed all in white, I would just cease to exist. I wouldn’t have any knowledge that I had perished, I was just dead. I never understood (or rather, don’t understand) why we as a society hold the dead to some higher standard that require praising on certain anniversaries or need to be treated with some extra respect; they just happen to be people who, if engaged in an arguement, would lose by default, because they couldn’t fight back.

Using this as a basis, ending one’s own life to cure depression should be just as accepted as seeing a psychologist, or taking a daily regiment of SSRIs. Life isn’t something to be celebrated at all. Who of us had a choice when our parents decided to bring us into the world? We were brought into this life like slaves; why shouldn’t we ultimately have the choice to break those chains if (or perhaps, when) we finally realize what a terrible existence it is?

We are born and for the first 3 years of our lives, we struggle with the most basic of basic functions: speech/communication. Something we all take for granted is something these little dudes and dudettes are having one hell of a time mastering. Instead of “Mom, I would like pickle,” you hear a combination of mumbling, gurgling, and crying, sometimes all at once. They’re unhappy and frustrated, but flailing their arms and legs back and forth is the pinnacle of their motor control at this point.

So then these little people grow into children, who are best known not for creating the most realistic nativity plays, but rather destroying even the most miniscule chance you might have once had when you brought your date out to dinner. Once again, the little terrors realize how miserable they really are, but now they have enough sense to disseminate the hate amongst anyone with a pulse, as a more or less cathartic release since mommy didn’t let them eat a sponge earlier in the day.

The children grow into young adults, and if they haven’t actually contemplated suicide by now, have probably only not done so out of ignorance that such a wonderful fate could await them. They are getting smart enough to see the world for what it really is: a disgusting place of pain and suffering, being perpetrated by the same people they had looked up to for the last 15 or so years. Their educators teach them about the wars and atrocities that have been commited since the beginning of recorded history and for at least some of the kids, they start to realize that the world isn’t that utopian place they were brought up believing it was.

It’s at this point that the realization that these feelings won’t disappear all on their own sets in. The person sinks into a depression which has a number of “outs”. They can go speak to a therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist. They can have their doctor prescribe any of a hundred anti-depressants, such as Paxil, Celexa, Zoloft, Ritalin, lithium, and the list goes on. They can also choose death.

While I completely understand that a family who has to deal with the loss of a family member can be at the very least devastating, these feelings have to do with your view of death, and to what regard you hold it. Obviously the person who has committed the act has (or had, rather) a different view of it, and when it comes down to it, why should the person be obligated to follow your views on anything. I’d go so far as to say that demanding that they follow what you believe to be the “true way” is incredibly selfish.

Yes, there are alternative methods to “curing” their depression as we discussed above, but why are any of those any more valid than suicide? They all have the same outcome: the depressed are no longer depressed.

In conclusion, whether or not suicide is accepted by the general population, it is indeed the cause of quite a number of deaths each year which means that at least a certain number of people believe it just as useful as talking about their problems. You can look down on those who have thought about committing (or committed) suicide with disdain and tell them that they have other choices before they end it all, but who are you to choose for them? We choose not to go parading around, telling those patients on pills that there are alternatives to having to take their meds every day. We let them make their choice; let us make ours.