the sadism of suicide prevention

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Advocate
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the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by Advocate »

People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
commonsense
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by commonsense »

Advocate wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:07 pm People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
Do you mean additively or additionally?
Advocate
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by Advocate »

[quote=commonsense post_id=487917 time=1609787793 user_id=14610]
[quote=Advocate post_id=487877 time=1609762024 user_id=15238]
People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
[/quote]

Do you mean additively or additionally?
[/quote]

Hrm, subtle.. they both seem appropriate as far as i can tell. What are you thinking of as the distinction?
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

commonsense wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:16 pm
Advocate wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:07 pm People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
Do you mean additively or additionally?
I thought he meant 'actively'. 'Additively' is an odd choice of word.
Iwannaplato
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by Iwannaplato »

Advocate wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:07 pm People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
You say 'often'. So sometimes their urge to commit suicide is not that. How does the state decide that the person trying to commit suicide is one of those people and then decide to let them kill themselves? IOW should they let everyone kill themelves because some of them are doing it because of state intervention in their lives? If not, then how to they distinguish the motivations with a guy on a bridge say or found unconscious having taken pills?
Advocate
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by Advocate »

[quote=Iwannaplato post_id=488085 time=1609930139 user_id=3619]
[quote=Advocate post_id=487877 time=1609762024 user_id=15238]
People often want to kill themselves because of the intervention of the state/society in their lives, and yet the state/society additively interferes with attempts to die. There is no clearer example of sadistic evil.
[/quote]
You say 'often'. So sometimes their urge to commit suicide is not that. How does the state decide that the person trying to commit suicide is one of those people and then decide to let them kill themselves? IOW should they let everyone kill themelves because some of them are doing it because of state intervention in their lives? If not, then how to they distinguish the motivations with a guy on a bridge say or found unconscious having taken pills?
[/quote]

I would say that the state has some responsibility to ensure the person is not in a temporary emotional state of mind when making the decision, and if not, then to help. This assumes the legitimacy of the state generally, of course. If the state is the reason for the suicide attempt then of course they can have no right to be involved further.
Last edited by Advocate on Wed Jan 06, 2021 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Iwannaplato
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Re: the sadism of suicide prevention

Post by Iwannaplato »

Advocate wrote: Wed Jan 06, 2021 3:56 pm I would say that the state has some responsibility to ensure the person is not in a temporary emotional state of mind when making the decision, and if not, then to help. This assumes the legitimacy of the state generally, of course. If the state is the reason for the social attempt then of course they can have no right to be involved further.
I suppose I was thinking of things like ambulance personell and police finding someone after an attempt or during or just before there is an attempt. So, I could not see a way for the state, via these workers, to determine the reasons why someone is doing this. This means I was primarily think of short term interventions. In the back of my mind was also the issue of the state actually being all sort of organizations and parts and people, not necessarily in contact with each other with different values, methods, individuals, assessments and roles. I would also raise issues like:

someone might be thinking life is not endurable because of one set of state processes and this person is saved or temporarily intervened with by another portions of the state or a different process.

And also in the back of my mind is the idea that if you really want to kill yourself, unless you are seriously disabled, you will likely succeed. The state can delay the act, but long term there is little it can do. Committing people is much harder than 40 years ago. You can get 48 hour watches the like, probably varying region to region, but once that is over, unless the person is totaly incoherent or trying at all times to self-harm or violent to others, they will be released. To me the state seems only capable of enforcing at most a kind of second thought reevaluation period. And that seems like a reasonable buffer. temporary emotional states, especially if, say, drugs are involved may not reflect what the person as a whole wants. So, the state comes in and stops or prevents this attempt, but can do little in even the medium run to prevent the choice. This may not be how the state thinks of it, but it seems to me this is how it plays out in practice.

And if the people are not simply lunging for a suicide attempt, the state will likely not be able to stop the first attempt. Someone planning and careful about it should be able to succeed. If you have dangled yourself in front of others or the state in some way: heading out on a ledge but not immediately jumping, taking pills but are found as might be expected by a family member and so on - then the suicide attempter bears responsibility for dangling themselves in front of a society that will at least want to give them a chance to think it over.
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