Isn't it also a little selfish to expect someone to live out their life in misery simply because you would feel bad if that person ended their own life?

I have people in my life who have been struggling with mental illness for many years. If any of them decide that they no longer have the will to fight, I would not think less of them (or call them selfish) if they decide to end their own life. If I did, I would be selfish.

It would be upsetting because it's more than likely not their choice but people assume it is.

Depression is like a broken bone it's a physical problem with a person's body beyond their control they need help to fix it.

People who have open-heart surgery have a 40% chance of developing depression it's not that all their life they were dealing with depression this is a sudden change. That's terrifying to see depression develop so quickly like a virus suddenly changing a person almost overnight.

If a person impulsively and mortally harms themselves because they couldn't control their actions due to chemical imbalance in their brain (depression) that would certainly be upsetting.

Knowing a person's actions were out of their control and they could have been helped or healed that's quite sad. We need to help people not accept it or mock it since it is just as much a medical problem as a broken bone, and it can be treated.

In most cases, depression isn't an illness, it's a result of life circumstances and the way you think. Think of it like obesity - it's a mismatch between ancient genes and the modern environment. The genes are fine, the environment we've created is what's fucked.

There are cases of depression that result from health issues, but these definitely aren't the majority. This is just a hypothesis society has put forth to avoid taking a long hard look at itself.

Both of these things are selfish, by definition, right? Suicide is an act performed by a person to remove them from a world they don't want to be in any longer (self focus). Being upset at a person for doing so is putting your feeling above theirs (self focus).

Selfish is inherently a negative word, though. Maybe self focused or self motivated is still accurate and less negative.

Bourdain's daughter just lost her father. I can't believe anyone could rationally and deliberately choose to inflict that much pain on someone they love. That's why I would infer that Bourdain was not in his "right mind" when he acted to leave this world. And that's why I would consider his suicide to be "wrong". Of course, I can't possibly say whether it was just, somehow. I just can't imagine how it could be.

Frankly, unless he had a hidden medical issue (like Robin Williams), I also believe Bourdain probably could have restructured his life in some way to make life better and worth living again. I'm pretty sure most mental health pros would agree that most suicides arise suddenly, emotionally, and irrationally, and can be productively prevented if the impending signs are identified early and addressed with help. Personally, I believe that suicide is never the best and only option anyone has -- barring an irreversible medical/physical condition.

I think the reason we see more tolerance for suicide today is we expect less from people in general. Forty years ago, society presumed that each of us had a continuing duty to other people -- family, friends, community, and country. This duty clearly proscribed certain behaviors which would hurt others or would fail to live up to other social duties, like voluntary military service in time of war, or working VERY HARD to overcome difficulties in marriage when children were still present in the home, and would suffer from the breakup. (I've been there. It's not a delight.)

I'm very saddened by Bourdain's passing, and I'd rather not judge him. But I regret even more his loss to his daughter and his friends. The act of suicide is a terrible legacy.

I can’t help but compare this to those angry with George R. R. Martin. Is it inherently selfish for him to not finish his book series? Maybe, but I don’t know if it’s the place of a reader to be arbiter.

My only secondhand anecdote of Anthony Bourdain - and it’s hardly even that - is from the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu community. Apparently he would train at Ralph Gracie’s on Howard when in SF. No commentary aside from this is often a deliberate attempt by an individual at bettering one’s self.

Suicide isn't anymore selfish than wanting someone to continue living so I can feel better. How do you balance the pure inner torment of a suicidal person against the surmountable grief of those they left behind, multiplied by their number? There is no objective balance.

I don't blame anyone who chooses suicide. Who am I to tell them to "man up" and deal with the torment? But I think we should do everything in our power to make staying a viable option.

You're telling someone who finds their life to be so unendurable that they need to be more considerate? Hell yeah it's selfish. And for a lot of people that do it, it's one of the few times they've done something for themselves. Everybody should have a right to die, and in a world where lives are constantly getting longer and society more oppressive with its demands, the right to die should be fundamental.

What about the argument that your rights are inalienable until they infringe upon the rights of others? Do people who care about me, or the people who invested so much time and money in raising me, not have a right to keep me in their life? By taking your own life you force people who care about you into a state of grief. I do not believe anyone has the right to force emotional distress onto another person.

I understand that from the perspective of someone who is suicidal, they might feel that they have nobody who cares about them, or that the people who do “would be better off” without the suicidal person in their life. But that thought alone is misguided and certainly not a justification for engaging in such a selfish act. Regardless of how the suicidal person feels, the people who care about them will be harmed by the suicide.

> I do not believe anyone has the right to force emotional distress onto another person.

But the person who is already under emotional distress should continue to endure theirs? Is your position really that you have a right not to be emotionally upset by others? How does this position account for any form of conflict at all?

> In taking your own life you’re also fucking up the life of everyone who cares about you, forcing them into a state of grief and possibly causing them to blame themselves for what was ultimately a selfish act on your part.

People who kill themselves are extremely aware of this. Consider that as an indicator of how much distress they are in, not how selfish they are. They're in so much pain that they would inflict grief upon their loved ones to get out of it.

If a person is being physically intensely tortured, and they kill themselves to stop the pain, are they being selfish? They are under so much distress that their only option is to end it all. They would MUCH rather not be tortured and not have to die. Suicide is jumping out of a burning building because you don't want to burn. It's not something you do because you're upset.

On the contrary, it goes against man's (and other life's) natural tendency to love himself, to want to keep existing, which is most selfish but fine and necessary. Suicide stems from being insufficiently selfish. The additional problem you're highlighting is that suicide is also an injury to the common good. That sort of thing is somewhat orthogonal to the selfish/altruist dimension though we conflate them a lot. Lastly, and this is probably more relevant to the history of it being wrong (at least in the west), it spits in the face of god.

I'm pretty sure if you told that to anyone who was suicidal, it would only quicken their departure. These people need some compassion and medical treatment, not more guilt.

The interesting thing to me is that it probably doesn't apply to most people either, although it seems like it should. Humans are very resilient and while we do miss and long for those that go before us, we can overcome them not being here anymore. We're able to adapt and move on.

I think you could get into an exception if there's mutually held debt or something similar that actually does affect a person long term.