Day 2 -- The Myth of Sisyphus and The Fall

Types of Suicide

•  Depressive
• Self Sacrifice
• Euthanasia

As of right now, I can’t particularly think of any other cases in which suicide would occur; it would seem to me that these three are our main categories when we discuss the act of suicide. I’ll try to keep all three of these in mind when we discuss our next few topics within this post.

Reason and Ego

One of the things I gained from this last session was the concept of their being a level of ego needed to ask for a reason to live. This is really fascinating to me; we as humans are the only real animals in the known universe to have the ability to think abstractly, which means we are the only animals who can think of things in an existential nature. Because of this, all other animals within our world go about their business without the need to beg for some higher power to give them a purpose. We, as humans, are the only ones with this dependence. That being said, you could then go on to make the argument that humans are the only animals with ego in the first place. But that doesn’t necessarily detract from the point.

Suicide and Ego

When someone commits suicide, do you necessarily have to be close to the person to feel pain, and are you selfish if you appear that way? I say it depends on intentions. Some people genuinely feel upset towards the death of someone they might not have known as well. This can happen if the person was a celebrity with whom that person looked up to, or it could even just happen if that person is generally emotional. On the other hand, people can use a death as a way to justify their own means or to advertise themselves in a certain light. I believe that the former is genuine and good and the latter is insidious and evil.

Selfishness and Altruism

I would say that motives are also what matter here. But, in this case, let’s bring in something more practical: the everyday reality.

There probability is very high than in most events you will not be able to uncover true motives behind an altruistic act. Rather, you will only know the outcome. We cannot judge the motive because we do not know it; it is obfuscated from us. Therefore, we can only judge the outcome.

However, I believe that there are some circumstances in which even though one does not know distinctly what the motive is, they can infer the motive through certain actions and gestures that the motive becomes more likely one way than it is not. 

Now let’s come back and apply this to the previous topic. If we can only know outcomes when it come to pain from suicide, then most of the time we should take it how it looks; that the person is genuinely upset. However, in cases where we can infer the motives in a case where the motive becomes more likely insidious and evil than not, then we should do our job in calling it out.

Moral Relativity 

This is a whole can of worms for me, so I will not discuss it here. But hopefully I will have a chance to. Soon.