The problem with feel-good ideas is that there’s usually a lack o’ standards applied to them, which encourages mindlessness like lead poisoning. This is ‘specially the case with a raw issue like suicide, a complex issue that has no easy rational answers, & yet has extreme consequences.
It’s quite easy to puke out irrational answers, but I doubt it’s easy to actually help someone with them, e’en if you put the pound sign before some mess o’ words mashed together to noncomprehensibility (I love how the internet is making us go backward in terms o’ linguistic development by making us forget how to use spaces). I already mentioned in a previous article wherein I seriously discuss this issue by making fun o’ a teenager’s 1st poem that proves the inherent badness o’ suicide with the famed “Missed Sunset Theory,” wherein I question the effectiveness o’ telling someone thinking o’ suicide, “Duh, don’t do it. Life’s sunny” & passing the buck to suicide prevention hotlines (which was the most effective, actually) & argued that talking ’bout suicide as a single issue was probably futile & only fed this abstraction to the point o’ mindlessness that makes anti-suicide rhetoric so useless.
¡But look @ how my prayers have been answered! Some shadowy figure named YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–whose name sounds mo’ threatening than calming: “DON’T YOU DARE COMMIT SUICIDE. YOU’RE NOT FINISHED. YOU GET RIGHT BACK HERE YOU SON O’ A BITCH”–offers a mathematically-tight proof that suicide is no good, man, in an article full o’ too many insipid Twitter hashtags for me to type here without needing to commit suicide myself in consummate shame:
I have heard (more than I ever want to) from some that suicide is freedom. Suicide is death, so that means if suicide is freedom, death is freedom (according to the math).
Actually, that’s a logical fallacy. Based on that same logic, we can prove that Stevie Wonder is god by showing the Stevie Wonder is blind, & love is blind, & God is love; therefore, blind is God, & thus Stevie Wonder is god.
I could also point out that to call this “math” stretches the definition o’ “math,” which is only 1 definition mangled here. Clearly YOU’RE NOT FINISHED is assuming that “is” means “equals,” & not “is 1 o’ potentially many examples o’,” as it’s clearly used here. It’s also true that murder is death, but no one would call that freedom. When people call suicide “freedom,” they’re focusing on the choice o’ death, the part that distinguishes suicide from other types o’ death. Hence why they say “suicide is freedom” rather than simply “death is freedom.”
Let’s unpack that for a second. To make sure I got this right I looked up the definition of freedom, knowing that word is objective. It can be interpreted to mean so many things to so many people. Three definitions stood out to me most:
Well, you failed there, unfortunately, before you e’en got to this point, & hereafter. Your “knowledge” that the word “freedom” “is objective,” for instance, is quite wrong. Anyone who knows anything ’bout language knows that it’s all, by nature, made up & therefore has no objectivity. “Objectivity” comes from concrete nature, not from people’s minds. That’s why it’s called objectivity–the focus is that it is a concrete object that can be sensed.
Notably, too, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED finished this paragraph wherein they claimed to look up the definition o’ “freedom” without bothering to provide a source, & then admits that the definitions they chose were simply those that “stood out” (can be used to back up the conclusion they already want to decide).
1) the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or physical restraint
2) exemption from external control
3) personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery
Note that these definitions are so vague (& to some extent simply repeats the word in a different way) that it could apply to any possible existence, making true freedom impossible. Only the 3rd entry is concrete ‘nough to be meaningful & it’s, tellingly, quite an open definition: pretty much every modern person in the western world would fall under that definition.
But that’s digression. Let’s look @ YOU’RE NOT FINISHED’s brilliant “math” theory:
When you die, you are confined to a coffin.. [sic] […]
Actually, your body is. By definition, if one’s dead, one doesn’t exist.
[…] subjected to people’s perception of you… […]
That’s true o’ being ‘live, too. Mo’ importantly, nowhere in the aforementioned definitions o’ freedom is there anything ’bout controlling other people’s perceptions o’ oneself. That would, ironically, be a violation o’ their freedom o’ thought.
[..] not at liberty to change and better your circumstances or live out your purpose.
Uh O: they’re breaking out into poem. I can already see the sunsets coming.
I don’t think I’d consider “better your circumstances” or “live out your purpose” to be precise ‘nough to be useful for a “mathematical” theory. Also, the rhetoric they use, putting the word “at liberty to” before it, could be used for anything. Indeed, that’s what that word-salad poem I made fun o’ before did:
- You’re not @ liberty to pick what song to play on the radio,
- you’re not @ liberty to pick your nose clean o’ snot,
- you’re not @ liberty to clean out your garage,
- you’re not @ liberty to kill yourself
(Note: that last 1 is actually a serious point–that “suicide is freedom” is self-contradictory, since suicide, ironically, eliminates one’s ability to commit suicide. [Granted, such logic would eliminate almost all freedoms, given the inevitable permanence o’ one’s actions, leading me back to my belief that nothing’s “free”] ‘Course, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED doesn’t bother with such technical nonsense, ’cause it’s clear that they don’t understand basic logic & would rather puke out flowery cliches ‘stead.)
[…] Not free to love and be loved. […]
Like these. Note that the freedom “to be loved” hinges on someone else, & thus the only way to ensure it is to eliminate someone else’s freedom.
[…] You’re gone. […]
(Laughs.) & ‘gain we see someone momentarily hitting a ’bout o’ self-awareness & admitting that their nonsense is helping no one, & thus anyone suicidal ‘nough to need to read this is probably doomed, anyway. Mo’ like YOU ARE FINISHED, ¿amirite?
All of those definitions, even the other two I did not list, […]
Wait, wait, wait: hold on. ¿What other 2? ¿Why aren’t you listing them? ¿Why bring up something that you refuse to e’en tell us? ¿Are you Fermat? ¿Did you prove the Theory o’ Suicide’s Badness, but ran out o’ room in the margin o’ your blog post to type it out?
[…] imply that you have to be alive to experience freedom which means that death could not possibly equal freedom in any circumstance, no matter who you are.
Literally the only example YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–god that’s a stupid name; it’s e’en dumber than “Careerealism” & “Post-Keynesianism”–that is relevant to the listed definitions is the 1st 1 ’bout being stuck in a coffin, which relies on the assumption that someone who choses to leave any consciousness or awareness o’ their body cares what happens to their body afterward, which is doubtful.
& now that I think ’bout it, you could just choose to have your body cremated or e’en frozen. So e’en the assumption that suicidal people have no control o’er their body after they die is obviously false.
This is like the “neoclassicalism” o’ suicidology–& just as useless for curing depression.
