Existence and Choice, Suicide and Happiness

There are several different reasons why Humans choose to commit suicide.

Accidentally shooting yourself in the face is not what I consider

suicide. (However there is a gray are for other behaviors.)  It is

difficult to understand  the intentions of humans very well, let alone

animals and other species. Humans often commit suicide because of

physical conditions, for temporally related emotional reasons, for existential reasons or combination of all of them and various other reasons.

All of these specific reasons for suicide are deeply rooted to sources

of happiness.

Life and Death are as close as we can get to eternal universal, objective truth in the physical realm. The science of medicine has clear definitions of life and death (again, gray areas do exist but clear cases are the norm)Good and Bad- Ethical judgments, are more subjective terms and happiness and sadness are even more subjective.

What do we control?

-  In the film castaway the main character realizes that the only choice he has is deciding when he will die. People often feel they have no control over life and happiness and that is why they commit suicide. Victor Frankel is a psychologist who survived the holocaust. He wrote a book called Mans search for meaning. He believed that we have free choice in terms of our perspective on life. This is the single most important question in all of philosophy. Do we have free choice in terms of our own happiness? 

What do we not control?

 -As I mentioned in the last post, If we come in to existence. Nature and Nurture. We can not control the country we are born in or the parents we will have. We can not affect our inherited genetic traits. From a strictly materialist perspective (the physical world (matter) is all that exists and everything in this world is a result of physical interactions) Some would say we do not have control of anything. Our choices are a result of our specific brain chemistry, this is a strong argument, many commit suicide because of physiological reasons. 

Robots and Rabbits do not have free choice.

The first step to having free will is believing you have free will. If you don’t believe you have it you don’t have it. As Isaac Bathsheva singer put it “We must believe in free will, we have no choice”. Animals and machines are preprogramed. 

The decision to exist, to do good and to be happy are the most elemental aspects of human existence.

 Daniel Dennet, in Elbow room gives the example of a loose determinism. An example he gives is that of a dog with a leash attached to it connected to a wagon.What choice does he have?  We are all attached to the train of history being dragged on by something we did not create. What we can create is our attitude. The dog can choose to strut along proudly or to be dragged by its legs.

Lose of control, actual or perceptual is at the root of many suicides for a reason. People see life and death, an objective measure,  as there only choice. The only thing that makes them feel alive is choosing to die.

Happiness is something we choose to cultivate every day

What is happiness ?  See the next................




We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”  
 - Victor Frankl