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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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 Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 3:02 am Post subject: |
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It depends. If you're some kinda samurai lord or poet or something, who lives his life as art, and feels he's reached as close to perfection as will ever be possible and wants to end his life because it's all down hill from here, well then that's pretty noble in my books. 
If you're just really depressed and don't want to even try to sort your *beep* out, then it might be a bit weak. If you have people depending entirely on you for their well-being (like children), then that adds the element of selfishness.
Ultimately though, it's a personal choice. People who try and hold suicide against the person who committed it have no business doing so... |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 3:15 am Post subject: |
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| Sleepy in Seoul wrote: |
To the OP - you've obviously never had to clean up the mess left behind after a suicide. Someone I worked with once had to deal with a suicide where the person started up a chainsaw on his kitchen table then dropped his throat on it. Blood everywhere.
I would consider each suicide on its merits... not very long sometimes, but I would consider them. However, for the person who commits suicide simply to escape problems and merely leaves all of them plus the mess behind, I have nothing but contempt. |
yes
i have seen the devastation left behind by thoughtless self-absorbed cowards trying to escape their problems only to magnify the problems for those who loved them
stories i covered as a newspaper reporter:
a teenage boy hung himself from the town's pier, where everyone would congregate during the annual summer festival - after the death, it was torn down because the grief was too much for the small community to bear
a 53 year old man overdosed on his meds after telling many people he found his chemo treatments unbearable (including an offhand comment to me in an interview about an unrelated incident), he not realizing that the very next day his long lost daughter would arrive with his young grandson to speak to the suffering father she hadn't spoken to in decades
a husband angrily drove his car off of a cliff into a lake, a death reported as an accident but the coroner later told me in confidence ("off the record") that the speed must have been in excess of 120 km/hr on a windy road where no one goes more than 40 or 50, that he must have gunned the gas right before the turn to have reached that speed, hitting the turn and flying purposely into the lake; the man had a heated argument with his wife minutes before he alone got into the car and drove toward town, he having lost his logging job two months before that; his two daughters forever after fatherless
a man stabbed his wife, sister in law and nephew to death before killing himself, leaving his brother seriously injured but not dead. there was a lot of yelling at the funeral between the two sides of the family, none of which I put into print
an unattractive, lonely young woman was found drowned in the bathtub with a suicide note that said goodbye to her parents. her parents broke up after that, her mom found dead on the bathroom floor seven months later of an apparent prescription drug overdose
so i say with great emotion...
those *beep* cowards ought to think for a moment of the problems they are causing before taking the easy way out of the problems they already have
Last edited by VanIslander on Sat May 30, 2009 3:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
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dporter
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 3:35 am Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
yes
a teenage boy hung himself from the town's pier, where everyone would congregate during the annual summer festival - after the death, it was torn down because the grief was too much for the small community to bear
a 53 year old man overdosed on his meds after telling many people he found his chemo treatments unbearable (including an offhand comment to me in an interview about an unrelated incident), he not realizing that the very next day his long lost daughter would arrive with his young grandson to speak to the suffering father she hadn't spoken to in decades
a husband angrily drove his car off of a cliff into a lake, a death reported as an accident but the coroner later told me in confidence ("off the record") that the speed must have been in excess of 120 km/hr on a windy road where no one goes more than 40 or 50, that he must have gunned the gas right before the turn to have reached that speed, hitting the turn and flying purposely into the lake; the man had a heated argument with his wife minutes before he alone got into the car and drove toward town, he having lost his logging job two months before that; his two daughters forever after fatherless
a man stabbed his wife, sister in law and nephew to death before killing himself, leaving his brother seriously injured but not dead. there was a lot of yelling at the funeral between the two sides of the family, none of which I put into print
an unattractive, lonely young woman was found drowned in the bathtub with a suicide note that said goodbye to her parents. her parents broke up after that, her mom found dead on the bathroom floor seven months later of an apparent prescription drug overdose
so i say with great emotion...
those *beep* cowards ought to think for a moment of the problems they are causing before taking the easy way out of the problems they already have |
Personally I have a family member who attempted to commit suicide. He was acting strangely for weeks(in retrospect, at the time i didn't really notice being so wrapped up in a relationship problem that seemed massive then). I remember my mother and my father talking with him in their bedroom for hours on a Sunday morning and they thought he was 'just' depressed but said to keep an eye on him. Later that evening he drank weedkiller when my dad's back was turned. He was got to a hospital just in time. He was diagnosed later as bipolar and functions relatively fine now as he is on medication although it makes him dull..not boring..just less bright, attentive, etc.
If he had died, we would not have known he was bipolar and we certainly wouldn't have told some reporter everything about it. And you after reporting on it would have went home and though that he was a coward for causing us pain.
That girl in the shower, the boy who hung himself, you have no idea what their mental state was. You are in no position to judge them. So get off your high horse.
Visitor Q...being just really depressed is by all accounts a miserable existence which warps how you think. It is not just being sad.
I've stopped becoming angry at people's ignorance over mental illness(what''s the point), but this whole 'suicide=coward' thing gets me every time. It is wrong, plain and simple. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 3:47 am Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| That girl in the shower, the boy who hung himself, you have no idea what their mental state was. You are in no position to judge them. So get off your high horse. |
my *beep* high horse???????????????? i have waded in the grief left behind, my attitude toward those who offed themselves is purely from the gutter of experience
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| I've stopped becoming angry at people's ignorance over mental illness. |
play the 'mental illness' card all you want
a seemingly normal man loses his job and argues with his family over money afterwards then kills himself and them may be suffering by mental illness - heck by definition he is by some psychiatrist definitions - but I for one am not his doctor, just one of those left to see the mess left behind
was Rho Mu Hyun mentally ill?????? he was a man who had personal and social pressures. was his death the result of a brain chemical imbalance? i'm sure DRUGS could make him a dopey functional member of society, take away his stress and allow him to manage his emotions
some people don't choose suicide because of a brain chemistry problem borne of mental illness which causes their life to fall apart, and so of course the op calling it 'brave' is as absurd as calling it 'cowardly', but many people do choose suicide, and to those this thread is about |
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Forward Observer
Joined: 13 Jan 2009
Location: FOB Gloria
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 4:29 am Post subject: |
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| The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 6:24 am Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
some people don't choose suicide because of a brain chemistry problem borne of mental illness which causes their life to fall apart, and so of course the op calling it 'brave' is as absurd as calling it 'cowardly', but many people do choose suicide, and to those this thread is about |
Sorry, but you said
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| suicide is the coward's way out of life's problems, the act of a weak person unwilling to face their difficulties and deal with them |
and later
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| i have seen the devastation left behind by thoughtless self-absorbed cowards trying to escape their problems only to magnify the problems for those who loved them |
Among the examples you cited, a few could easily have been the result of mental illness. That led me to believe that you meant all people who commit suicide are cowards.
Now if you were abstractly saying that people that commit suicide just because of money problems, etc are cowards that is a different thing(I probably wouldn't agree..because you wouldn't really know their motivation/ mental state anyway). Your examples and language all do seem to be the 'all people who commit suicide are cowards..period..' point of view.
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| my *beep* high horse???????????????? i have waded in the grief left behind, my attitude toward those who offed themselves is purely from the gutter of experience |
I'm sure you have. I meant high horse in the sense that you are judging the people who commit suicide not that you have no experience of the situation.
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| play the 'mental illness' card all you want |
Here we come to the crux of the situation. Mental illness is not a card to be played. With certain mental illnesses, people are more likely to commit suicide. This is a fact. Therefore it is not unreasonable to cite these illnesses as possible causes for the suicide. I gave you a personal example and I'm sure there are many, many more examples like that.
Therefore, why do you dismiss it?
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| a seemingly normal man loses his job and argues with his family over money afterwards then kills himself and them may be suffering by mental illness - heck by definition he is by some psychiatrist definitions - but I for one am not his doctor, just one of those left to see the mess left behind |
so..you are unqualified to tell us if he was mentally ill or not but qualified to write lucidly about the mess he left behind.
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| was Rho Mu Hyun mentally ill? |
Well, I'm looking at his case file and....you get the point.
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| some people don't choose suicide because of a brain chemistry problem borne of mental illness which causes their life to fall apart, and so of course the op calling it 'brave' is as absurd as calling it 'cowardly', but many people do choose suicide, and to those this thread is about |
I agree, suicide is not brave. You didn't say that though. You said it was cowardly. If this thread is about those who choose, then I would cull your examples of the ones where you don't know their mental state. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 6:30 am Post subject: |
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so i say with great emotion...
those *beep* cowards ought to think for a moment of the problems they are causing before taking the easy way out of the problems they already have
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Eloquent, lofty, humble |
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Hyeon Een
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 10:53 am Post subject: |
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| Ilsanman wrote: |
It's cowardly. Period. The end.
OP, are you going to slap someone because they disagree with you? That's lame. |
Since you have the stupidest post on this thread, and you regularly make anti-Korean posts despite being married to one and the father of half of one, yes, I will slap you if you want.
Go jump off a cliff and tell me how cowardly you were after doing it.
Other posters: I UNDERSTAND that sometimes stuff is 'left behind' and it can cause all sorts of issues and problems. I UNDERSTAND that suicide sucks for everyone left behind in the aftermath. That doesn't take away from the fact that topping one's self in this manner is a very, very brave thing to do. I bet half the posters on this thread couldn't make the same jump even if there was a safety net below, let alone as a suicide.
My point is that it is a BRAVE man who jumps off a cliff, not a coward.
(Next class, which hopefuly someone else will be running will be on the difference between Asian and Western thoughts on suicide. That'll be a 'killer' class.) |
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Joe666
Joined: 19 Nov 2008
Location: Jesus it's hot down here!
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 11:55 am Post subject: |
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This whole idea of stuff being left behind is universal. If someone dies young or suddenly in an accident, stuff will be left behind. Maybe not exactly the same stuff, but it's not going to be easy regardless.
If a husband and wife break up because of the suicide of their daughter, it's a safe bet that they would have broken up if the death was an accident. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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| I dunno about bravery or cowardice, but it does seem a very selfish act, more so if you take your family with you, as happens often in Korea. |
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Ilsanman
Joined: 15 Aug 2003
Location: Bucheon, Korea
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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If you slap me, be prepared to lose your hand. Or you can 'bravely' jump off a cliff with my foot pushing you in the ass.
| Hyeon Een wrote: |
| Ilsanman wrote: |
It's cowardly. Period. The end.
OP, are you going to slap someone because they disagree with you? That's lame. |
Since you have the stupidest post on this thread, and you regularly make anti-Korean posts despite being married to one and the father of half of one, yes, I will slap you if you want.
Go jump off a cliff and tell me how cowardly you were after doing it.
Other posters: I UNDERSTAND that sometimes stuff is 'left behind' and it can cause all sorts of issues and problems. I UNDERSTAND that suicide sucks for everyone left behind in the aftermath. That doesn't take away from the fact that topping one's self in this manner is a very, very brave thing to do. I bet half the posters on this thread couldn't make the same jump even if there was a safety net below, let alone as a suicide.
My point is that it is a BRAVE man who jumps off a cliff, not a coward.
(Next class, which hopefuly someone else will be running will be on the difference between Asian and Western thoughts on suicide. That'll be a 'killer' class.) |
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rusty1983
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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I think that a suicidal person is obviously not mentally stable. It's more complicated than just calling them a coward, when you dont really know what's going on in their head. Most people have had a hard time but Ive never been in a place where I thought I wanted to actually die and do not know many people who have admitted to feeling like that.
Ive had some really hard times in the past so to get into a situation where Id rather be dead must be pretty grim. |
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agoodmouse
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Location: Anyang
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Talking about one's suicidal thought is taboo. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Hyeon Een wrote: |
| My point is that it is a BRAVE man who jumps off a cliff, not a coward. |
Not to me. To me, a 'brave man' takes responibility for his actions, admits fault when there is some, and seeks to rectify any injustices.
Noh jumping off of the cliff did none of the above, it simply left everything hanging (no pun intended). |
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