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Inspired by a recent post, and brought to you by Gravekeeper's Famous Amos mini-cookies: happiness in a bag. 
A couple of folks have stated that they believe suicide to be a selfish act. Let's define selfish. Technically speaking, ANYTHING we humans do is inherently "selfish" - because it involves the *self*. Somewhere the word took on a permanently negative connotation and now it's slapped on anybody who does something that someone else disapproves of.
There is, however, a HUGE difference between the "good" kind of selfish, and the "bad" kind of selfish. Good-selfish is feeding yourself. You need food to live. Or, for a better example, good-selfish would be donating money to a charity because you enjoy doing good things for others. You get a natural 'high' out of philanthropy, even though it's helping others. Hence, selfish, but in a good way.
Bad-selfish would be feeding yourself while someone else is starving (literally) and you refuse to share any of your food knowing full well that you have plenty to go around for everybody. Bad-selfish is stealing money intended for charitable purposes and then going and blowing it on a big subwoofer or something.
Suicide is not necessarily bad-selfish, IMO. It's not a GOOD thing, to be sure (you're dead, where's the fun in that?), but I don't think that people who are in that much pain deserve that label; a lot of them will even go out of their way to make it LESS selfish (albeit in a fucked-up way) by writing notes, taking care of their material possessions so others don't have to, etc.
Now before you rip into me, let me explain where I'm coming from on this. I have had chronic depression for much of my life; this is made worse by my having ADD and being unable to cope/function with it on the same level as a "normal" person would. I UNDERSTAND what it is like to feel those "I wish I were dead/not here" feelings. I've had them for much of my life. It is Not. Fun. In a very sick sort of way, it can even be almost fascinating, staring into that black pit and contemplating tossing yourself into it. I have never actually attempted suicide before, but I've come close at least once in the past, and I have self-injured a couple of times before because I was so desperate for a pressure release. I also have 'death-fantasies' on a regular basis. (The kind of thing where you wonder what it would be like if you suddenly swerved your car into a tree)
Even now, there are times when I honestly feel my loved ones would be better off without me around to drag them down. And because my particular flavors of mental makeup screw with the brain so much, this kind of thinking is normal for me, and probably for others too. We rationalize things even though we're incapable of processing them in a healthier manner. That's why I said that suicides tried to be less selfish by 'setting their lives in order' to make it 'easier' for their loved ones to process the aftermath of their death. To an average suicidal person, this rationale is a very twisted logic, but it IS a logic of sorts. Using the possessions as an example, how many of us have had to sort through another person's things knowing that they're gone for good? That's pretty hard to do. The suicidal person is thinking to *spare* someone else that pain by getting the chore out of the way beforehand.
For me, I know that if I just wait out my bad spells, they'll go away eventually on their own and I won't have done anything that would get me in really big trouble. It takes time (see my bit about the 45-minutes thing in the 'support Ree' post elsewhere), and it's not fun while it's happening, but it does go away. (So you don't have to worry about me offing myself anytime soon. I have a couple reasons why I can't do it.)
Now, suicide CAN be a bad-selfish thing on occasion. Take the classic public shooting spree where a guy (and nine times out of ten, it's a guy, not a girl, doing this) blows away ten people or so and then shoots himself to avoid being captured by police. THAT, I would definitely classify as a bad-selfish suicide because the asshole took away lives that were never his to take. I'm not sure how many other folks like me have thought of this, but to me, suicide carries with it an unspoken rule: If you really feel like you have to kill yourself, don't *dare* take anyone else with you. (And that includes stuff like jumping in front of a train to do it - engineers have suffered mental meltdowns because they saw stuff like this and knew they were powerless to stop it. You can't exactly hit the brakes on a behemoth freight train.)
Suicide is one of those things that's been hit with a big Taboo and only now is it becoming more culturally acceptable to talk about it in public. I think that such stigma only contributes to the problem at large - it fosters the mentality that the suicidal person must have been a 'bad' person to have done something like that and the survivors are to be shunned, like they have some kind of mental cooties that are contagious. When you're depressed/suicidal, EVERYTHING is magnified by times a million, so that kind of stigma only contributes to the feelings that you're not good enough, you're better off dead, nobody wants you, etc. Talking about it, you don't feel so alone.
That's why I dislike judgmental statements like the ones that inspired other posts, and why I thought I'd clarify some things here.
A couple of folks have stated that they believe suicide to be a selfish act. Let's define selfish. Technically speaking, ANYTHING we humans do is inherently "selfish" - because it involves the *self*. Somewhere the word took on a permanently negative connotation and now it's slapped on anybody who does something that someone else disapproves of.
There is, however, a HUGE difference between the "good" kind of selfish, and the "bad" kind of selfish. Good-selfish is feeding yourself. You need food to live. Or, for a better example, good-selfish would be donating money to a charity because you enjoy doing good things for others. You get a natural 'high' out of philanthropy, even though it's helping others. Hence, selfish, but in a good way.
Bad-selfish would be feeding yourself while someone else is starving (literally) and you refuse to share any of your food knowing full well that you have plenty to go around for everybody. Bad-selfish is stealing money intended for charitable purposes and then going and blowing it on a big subwoofer or something.
Suicide is not necessarily bad-selfish, IMO. It's not a GOOD thing, to be sure (you're dead, where's the fun in that?), but I don't think that people who are in that much pain deserve that label; a lot of them will even go out of their way to make it LESS selfish (albeit in a fucked-up way) by writing notes, taking care of their material possessions so others don't have to, etc.
Now before you rip into me, let me explain where I'm coming from on this. I have had chronic depression for much of my life; this is made worse by my having ADD and being unable to cope/function with it on the same level as a "normal" person would. I UNDERSTAND what it is like to feel those "I wish I were dead/not here" feelings. I've had them for much of my life. It is Not. Fun. In a very sick sort of way, it can even be almost fascinating, staring into that black pit and contemplating tossing yourself into it. I have never actually attempted suicide before, but I've come close at least once in the past, and I have self-injured a couple of times before because I was so desperate for a pressure release. I also have 'death-fantasies' on a regular basis. (The kind of thing where you wonder what it would be like if you suddenly swerved your car into a tree)
Even now, there are times when I honestly feel my loved ones would be better off without me around to drag them down. And because my particular flavors of mental makeup screw with the brain so much, this kind of thinking is normal for me, and probably for others too. We rationalize things even though we're incapable of processing them in a healthier manner. That's why I said that suicides tried to be less selfish by 'setting their lives in order' to make it 'easier' for their loved ones to process the aftermath of their death. To an average suicidal person, this rationale is a very twisted logic, but it IS a logic of sorts. Using the possessions as an example, how many of us have had to sort through another person's things knowing that they're gone for good? That's pretty hard to do. The suicidal person is thinking to *spare* someone else that pain by getting the chore out of the way beforehand.
For me, I know that if I just wait out my bad spells, they'll go away eventually on their own and I won't have done anything that would get me in really big trouble. It takes time (see my bit about the 45-minutes thing in the 'support Ree' post elsewhere), and it's not fun while it's happening, but it does go away. (So you don't have to worry about me offing myself anytime soon. I have a couple reasons why I can't do it.)
Now, suicide CAN be a bad-selfish thing on occasion. Take the classic public shooting spree where a guy (and nine times out of ten, it's a guy, not a girl, doing this) blows away ten people or so and then shoots himself to avoid being captured by police. THAT, I would definitely classify as a bad-selfish suicide because the asshole took away lives that were never his to take. I'm not sure how many other folks like me have thought of this, but to me, suicide carries with it an unspoken rule: If you really feel like you have to kill yourself, don't *dare* take anyone else with you. (And that includes stuff like jumping in front of a train to do it - engineers have suffered mental meltdowns because they saw stuff like this and knew they were powerless to stop it. You can't exactly hit the brakes on a behemoth freight train.)
Suicide is one of those things that's been hit with a big Taboo and only now is it becoming more culturally acceptable to talk about it in public. I think that such stigma only contributes to the problem at large - it fosters the mentality that the suicidal person must have been a 'bad' person to have done something like that and the survivors are to be shunned, like they have some kind of mental cooties that are contagious. When you're depressed/suicidal, EVERYTHING is magnified by times a million, so that kind of stigma only contributes to the feelings that you're not good enough, you're better off dead, nobody wants you, etc. Talking about it, you don't feel so alone.
That's why I dislike judgmental statements like the ones that inspired other posts, and why I thought I'd clarify some things here.
Anyway, I've had to deal with depression most of my life. Contrary to what the "experts" on the TV commercials claim, it does *not* go away. You can control it with medication, but it never truly goes away. I have to deal with that shit *every* day. Trust me, it sucks.
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