A girl at my school commited sucide on Saturday night after our prom, and it got me wondering; Why do people commit suicide in a non sacrificial situation?
I came to the conclusion that people that kill themselvs lack some kind of primitive gene or instinct of survival. This then led me to another question. Can animals commit suicide? I don’t think I have ever herd of an animal purposefully commit suicide.(Although I do think some of the squirls & birds that run out infront of my jeep have a death wish.)
So maybe we developed sepporately from animals because of our ability to choose to take our own life? Or maybe not, I dunno just a thought…
It’s not that humans lack a survival gene or instint, but that we live (our minds live… what we are concious of) outside of our immediate, shared existence (the “outside” “objective” reality).
Humans are able to think so abstractly, to exist in two realities at once (the shared reality, and the one’s subjective consciousness), that they can create an ideal world, an image of how one’s life SHOULD be, and interpret the present reality as conflicting with it.
If the person considers a certain world to be right… the way one SHOULD live, and see a conflict between that and their present situation… so far in that they feel they can never attain life as it should be lived, then they see no reason to live.
Animals try to avoid physical pain, as do humans. But the human also experiences psychological pain, and a dread of the future (in which one anticipates further psychological pain).
How to stop the pain? Suicide.
Animals don’t think in the same way humans do. A dead animal may see the dead body of another animal, and understand that it is no longer animate, but they will not understand that they will one day lack animation themself.
Whales seem to routinely commit suicide by beaching themselves. After being excluded from the pride, lions will stop eating and starve themselves, under certain conditions yeast will undergo apoptosis (controlled cell death – suicide, in other words) rather than mate, the list goes on and on.
The common denominator for these things is that they are driven by the community (except possibly for the whales – why the beach themselves remains a mystery). When an individual becomes alienated from the community, their individuality no longer serves a purpose and the animal begins to shut down. Humans are just able to do it more dramatically.
What do you think causes their refusal to eat? What I mean is… do they intentionally NOT eat, intentionally starving themselves, or have they become so accustomed to certain cues (received as a result of being in a dominant position) that the process of getting food and eating is interrupted?
Do they purposely starve themselves because they’ve lost pride, or are they so desperate to hold onto their pride that they refuse to eat until the group cues them to go ahead and do so (under the context that the lion is still a/the leader)?
But, since hunting is a specialized function in the pride-group, and the pride isn’t going to expel a hunter, I’m willing to wager the individual starves because they don’t hunt. Why they don’t ‘go into business for themselves’ is completely unknown to me. I’m guessing that there is a health-related cause for this.
But that they don’t even attempt is telling. They just understand that it is their time, and lay down to die.
Right, if a wolf is too weak/old to go on without help from the pack, he will seperate himself and go find a place to get himself killed. This serves a specified purpose in the survival of the wolf family though, and therefore is a plus for evolution. Most animals kill themselves for this reason, and it simply shows just how degraded man’s instincts has become when people kill themselves for no greater purpose at all.
The (psychological) pain stops when one stops thinking. So suicide is not the only option. It is possible for one to seperate oneself from thought and mind. To be completly focused on the present, fully aware of the now; will lead to a seperation of mind and oneself. The majority of the thinking we do concerns the past and the future, and that thinking will mostly bring up worry or dread, resulting in pain. Listen to what the voice in your head is saying, do not pass judgment on these thoughts (for if you do the mind has snuck in the back door). To do this is not to become unconcious, but exactly the opposite, it is to become fully conscious of the now thus aliveiating yourself from pain.
I don’t think they have become alienated from humanity, or at least in this case. The girl at my school had friends, and even wrote them each an email stating that she loved them. So she was part of some kind of “click,” Which further makes it harder for me to understand why she did it. That is why i came to the conclusion that it has to be a disorder, such as the missing of a gene, or a chemical imbalence ocurring naturally in the brain.
Suicide is the decision to end one’s own life… why so many people find it absurd or unfathomable is perhaps because they cannot grasp why they would do it themselves…
I doubt the answer to why people commit suicide can be found in a “general” sense… it’s an individual thing.
obviously those who commit suicide have no hope for the immidiate future… for example if they are, by circumstances, forced to become someone they do not wish to be… prefuring to end their lives rather than bare the “pain”.
many would speak of “changing your perspective” focusing on the positive rather than the negative… yada yada… but that too would be a change in an individuals identity… and for some… too big a change…
suicide is neither a flaw nor negative… it is simply the decision to end one’s own life.
what is negative however is leaving people behind who did not wish that life to end… but then you have to ask yourself… how fair is it to ask someone to live just because you want them to…
In order to judge this question one should be more specific and define suicide. Ofcourse, animals show suicidal behaviour but (unfortunately there’s no language they can use to tell us) how do we know that they’re aware of it? Does a lion that starves himself to death really choose this specific act? or is it just programmed behaviour? The fact that Xunzian states ‘lions’ kind of gives away that it’s part of the instinctive behaviour of the species.
With suicide I understand a certain individual deliberately choosing to end his/her life, implying that one needs high intellectual capacities to actually be able to observe oneself and his/her situation, and more importantly, be fully aware of it.
And in this case purposelessness works in advantage of the argument: if the human species really is the only species that is able to commit suicide without a higher, evolutionairy purpose, it means that only with humans intelligence seems to be able to overcome the blind will to live.
Thus, I tend to say No.
Animals have no concept of death. The exception is that sense of impending annihilation that creatures tend to feel when they notice that something terrible is just moments away. At that point strong instincts tend to kick in.
i think people kill themselves either because they are mentally unstable and cant live their life anymore, their life is that horrible, or for the shear fact that they just don’t want to live anymore.
We can consider counterfactual states of affairs, which paves the way for deciding against continuing with the way things are. In other words, someone can only make negative judgments about their lives after comparing them to other, non-real “possibilities.”
That’s not necessarily what I thnk separates us from the non-human animals, though. I think it was Kanzi, the bonobo at Georgia State, who provided the first hard evidence suggesting that non-humans can consider counterfactuals, but I wouldn’t be shocked if dolphins or pigs or elephants or octopi are capable of it as well.
The difference that stands out for me is that humans have convinced themselves that they have the right to be happy, and the artificial value structures that they put together to ensure the semblance of happiness sometimes fails.
Obviously, there are lots of other reasons why a person might commit suicide. I can’t personally think of any way that non-human animals would be capable of any of them, though. I agree that the term connotes intentionality, and for beings that have not cluttered their experience of the world with romantic fictions like heroism, tragedy, sacrifice, or fairness, suicide seems like an impossibility.
Beached whales and starving lions can easily be interpreted as suicidal by us because we have that concept to which we can compare their actions. I’m much more comfortable attributing them to behavioral/genetic quirks.
Animals don’t commit suicide, the examples that X gave are easily refuted and contrary evidence can be shown for every example we think might be conscience suicide.
