flipper28

The idea of a long prison sentence is certainly a frightening thought. Weighing that against the idea of not existing and never existing again. There are very few situations I can imagine where death would be preferable than enduring. Being tortured with no chance for escape comes to mind and I can imagine I would welcome death to escape the agony.

Perhaps personally I am angry at Aaron for giving up, and this makes me selfish.

I guess I can understand people wanting to find someone to blame, because putting the blame on someone you love, in this case Aaron, is a lot harder. We would rather sympathize with his situation and forgive him for his actions. He was only human after all.

Maybe it's because I love life so much that I don't think I would choose suicide over prison. Even if you get sent to prison, that doesn't mean you will be there your entire life. You can still appeal, work towards getting out faster. You can still educate yourself in prison, stay active.

In other words, instead of laying down/giving up/killing myself, I would like to think I would fight my oppressors and protect my rights to be alive and happy by whatever means necessary.

Someone mentioned victim-blaming, and perhaps this has transformed into a discussion of suicide "victims" in general rather than Swartzs specific case. I mean no disrespect to the memory of Aaron Swartz, but I do feel compelled to say that given the choice of (a) killing yourself or (b) not killing yourself, one of these choices illuminate your personal fortitude and character.

I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.

Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.

It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.

He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.

Let's celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.