I made it 3 seconds in. I just can’t watch it. I’ve lost too many people like him(edit: in the same way). I think I’m allergic to suicide at this point, my defense mechanism is anger at the...
I made it 3 seconds in. I just can’t watch it. I’ve lost too many people like him(edit: in the same way). I think I’m allergic to suicide at this point, my defense mechanism is anger at the selfishness.
I hear you, but at the same time: It's hard to accuse the person who jumps out of a burning building as being "selfish" and I think the comparison to suicide is apt. Is it selfish to fear the...
I hear you, but at the same time:
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
- David Foster Wallace
It's hard to accuse the person who jumps out of a burning building as being "selfish" and I think the comparison to suicide is apt. Is it selfish to fear the flames more than the fall? Is it selfish to fear further suffering in life more than the unknown at its end?
Oh, I understand that I’m likely not being reasonable. Like I said, it’s probably just my defense mechanism. I used to be much more righteous about it, but now I realize where it might really be...
Oh, I understand that I’m likely not being reasonable. Like I said, it’s probably just my defense mechanism. I used to be much more righteous about it, but now I realize where it might really be coming from.
I made it 3 seconds in. I just can’t watch it. I’ve lost too many people like him(edit: in the same way). I think I’m allergic to suicide at this point, my defense mechanism is anger at the selfishness.
I hear you, but at the same time:
It's hard to accuse the person who jumps out of a burning building as being "selfish" and I think the comparison to suicide is apt. Is it selfish to fear the flames more than the fall? Is it selfish to fear further suffering in life more than the unknown at its end?
Oh, I understand that I’m likely not being reasonable. Like I said, it’s probably just my defense mechanism. I used to be much more righteous about it, but now I realize where it might really be coming from.