Here’s a notion about suicide. I got the idea from a friend.
People think suicide is a person killing theirself.
But it might be helpful to back up a bit. Is a person one thing? Do people know who they are? What is a self?
I’m not positive about all this, but it seems we’ve learned from science and Freud that the self is made of a few parts. There’s a fight-or-flight part called the ego. It’s a strong thing that deals with the crude basics of our life. It can also recruit our mental powers and execute subtle moves.
I’d think that most thinkers would agree that the self is mysterious. We can probably know more about ourselves than we do, but beyond that it seems likely to be sketchy.
Here’s something: it often seems like we are “of two minds” about something.
It also seems to be true that people develop identification with basic aspects of their lives. This would seem to be an ego move of convenience and efficiency. For example, we might say: I’m a teacher. My function is teacher. I defend my function as best I can. I get food and acceptance among those who agree that I am a teacher.
So we’re a teacher but of course we are also MORE than a teacher.
But it seems likely that many people identify more or less strongly with their job. Also they might not even realize how much they consider themselves to be their job. They might even say “It’s not that important to me,” but on another level it really might be.
So it seems like we have different sides, levels and functions in ourselves. And some of these it seems like we might know about more than others. And the extent to which all the parts are willing to say “We can’t be sure” probably also varies.
We also very often identify strongly with our genders and with how we were trained to know what that means.
We also know about depression and about people experiencing crises or having disasters in their lives or having big or little things happen that cause their world to come crashing down around them. What does this mean? What is a world? It seems like it means that their expectations of life are suddenly stressed or disappointed — no matter what they might be. That wouldn’t matter. It’s relative. A disaster for one might be common for another. “I just lost my house!” “Well, I’ve only ever lived in the bushes running from killers, but some days are pretty good anyway.”
It seems like we could think of situations where something goes wrong with what our ego thinks should be happening but that our physical self or biological self is just fine and doesn’t notice a thing except for the stress and maybe its accompanying blood pressure or stomach upset caused by the ideas that are unsatisfied. And it also seems like the unknown other parts of the self could be in any sort of condition — stressed, fine, who knows: do we have the skills to tell? These probably can vary.
It seems like one of our parts, especially the ego, can decide that everything is wrong. This “everything” can be big or small — it’s relative. It might depend on whether the ego is being guided well or is trained well. The ego handles fight or flight but about WHAT and HOW it reacts is where its training comes in. For whatever reason the ego might find its situation unacceptable and want to quit.
It seems like the various parts of a self can change over time, can maybe even learn, can adapt to what is happening to them. Or maybe they even feel their old identity actually die off and IF they are willing to wait, listen, be vulnerable awhile, will start up again as something new — maybe better maybe worse, but whew, they might think, boy am I glad I had support around me during those hard times! (Of course this all depends, too.)
In addition to an ego we have an ID and a super-ego or conscience. We have all sorts of things.
When one part suddenly finds things to not be working it can work on its own or with the other parts to revise its old idea to find a new way to accept how things are or have become. Or one part can try to patch things up with prescribed meds or self-medication.
Some people might be more aware of their various parts and say “I know how I am.” Other people might not be at all aware of some parts of themselves. They might say “My job isn’t all that important to me. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of quitting.” But if they haven’t reflected very much or very deeply they might not appreciate the role of their job in their life.
Some people are really talented, clever and smart. Maybe they’ve found ways to recruit their skills toward explaining how things are to themselves. And other people like how they do it, too. Maybe they become famous for making fast and severe decisions: “You’re fired!” “This is great.” “This is terrible and here’s why…” Maybe they’re on TV shows where they walk into a business and in five minutes start telling the owners what to change to find success. They see the solution to problems in an instant. They have amazing focus. Maybe this focus is even strengthened by medicine since previously they might have found themselves daydreaming too much to earn as much money as they wanted…
Consider those who live in a culture that prides itself on answers and confidence.
Or, consider someone having an idea of how life should be. An idea they’ve never articulated, but it’s the content in the background filtering their experience every day. And say there’s a mismatch in some number of arbitrary details between expectations and reality. This might cause stress. It might make the person work more in an inner sense to keep things together. (What are the things? What was separate that needs to be kept together?) This takes effort and their overall life level might be noticed to be lower than it was compared to the effort being put in and then we might say we are depressed. At some point a person might get tired of making that effort.
What if someone for whatever reason has the idea in the back of their mind to not disappoint important people in their life. They don’t even know they have this idea. They live along, doing the right thing like they grew up watching their parents do. Or doing the opposite. …Keying off their surroundings to whatever extent.
Then one day they make a mistake. Or they indulge in something. And they lose their job. Or their car. Their credit rating. Their house. Their spouse. Their children look at them funny. Or they just imagine this will happen.
Or maybe they’re retiring. …And they had no idea how much they had identified with their job.
Or, heck, maybe something really good happens to them. Over and over again. Everything working out. More and more. Could this be a stress as well?
But maybe stress is more often related to bad things — though I question this.
Anyway, some people lose 5 houses in foreclosures and don’t care. Someone else is faces bankruptcy for the first time and they feel their world collapsing. It doesn’t matter the degree of the stress.
What if something happens and the ego part of them sees no way out or gets overly scared for whatever reason. And feels itself dying. It can’t live with what is happening. It needs to change but the ego isn’t good at seeing ahead, at seeing beyond itself. It can panic. …Without us even knowing it! …Especially if we haven’t reflected much.
Or maybe it sees budget cuts, the icecaps melting, the environment collapsing, or refugees being slaughtered and even though their life is fine, their sense of justice can’t take “it” anymore.
They might lash out at the culprits if they think they can identify them.
The person might think I’ll sacrifice myself in an attack against these bad people!
Or maybe the shocked, thwarted or exhausted ego will turn against its own body.
They could do this quickly or slowly.
It seems like an identified, confident ego part of ourselves could make a judgement decision against the rest of the self and say “I quit and I’m taking the rest of me down, too!” Or the ego might blame the self. “You’re no good! It would be better if you were dead.”
So one part kills the other.
It seems like this could come as a total surprise even to the “main” part of the person. The part that motivates action might be unconscious. The self is then a victim of the attacking part.
Their family might be surprised at the news of the death. It came out of nowhere! …The deeper part of the person may also be just as surprised if they could talk.
It’s a murder. A homicide. A crime of passion. Or maybe a crime of analytic deliberation. A very smart ego might think it knows best.
…It doesn’t accept that there are parts of the self that it doesn’t know and should submit to or learn from.
Or the ego might not be smart at all. It tells itself here is the reason why I have to die. It might not make sense at all, but the decision is made. The ego is satisfied enough to inspire action.
Now, we might live in a culture that is against pain. So if the person sees pain in its future it might decide there’s no reason to live and so puts an end to it. Sometimes this makes sense to us, other times not. People decide to do these things very differently from each other. What means unbearable pain to one might not to another.
Sometimes it seems like the super-ego might be more in play than the ego. The person doesn’t want to die at all. But they’re finally at the point of a dread disease where they can’t breathe or some level of pain has been surpassed and they take the action to end their life even though they would rather not.
But some people are diagnosed with bad arthritis and years before they suffer much they kill themselves.
This end of life decision process can maybe come to seem similar to other suicides that happen. One part decides for the rest of the person that their life is worthless. Whether this is a good decision or not depends. It depends on which part is doing the deciding and how sensible it is. We might have a clue if other people agree with us. But whether they’re right also depends.
Medication might contribute to one part either seeing better or not knowing how bad off the other parts are. If the effects wear off over time or by accident the decision of one part to kill the other might seemingly jump out of nowhere. Or medication can be a patch keeping one part from knowing how bad off another part is.
It does seem that what we expect our condition to be affects how we experience it. If a person expects to be a billionaire and only becomes a millionaire this might mean unbearable pain to them.
The gap between the conscious and unconscious seems relevant in terms of whether suicide is surprising to the person or others. And the gap between the ego and reality seems to relate to suicide happening in the first place.
The strength of super-ego or conscious also seems to be a factor. There are times in life when our old ways need to be left behind. This can happen in all sorts of ways. An old role has to be dropped and a new one accepted. A super-ego could see this and understand it. But someone who is undeveloped in that regard but who has a huge ego identity might conclude life isn’t worth living. A person who identifies with being a boss genius might decide to murder their body rather than being a retiree or invalid — even though millions of invalids would tell them that life is still fine and that one can even still contribute. Or maybe one identifies as a doer and cannot accept being someone who is helped and so decides to die instead. What if the existence of someone who needs care can be enriched rather than diminished? What if a photographer loses their eyesight and decides to die when if they had lived they would have discovered more joy in hearing or making music.
Can we predict what life will be like? Is it prideful or nervy to think we can? Sure, a confident person can make statements about this, but what does that say about them? “If I can’t race cars I don’t want to live.”
Some become angry with dementia, others accept it. Who knows what people experience who can’t communicate.
Someone who is aware might still have an ego idea that isn’t sustainable for them. So they might even explain what they are likely going to do to others. The murder might happen like any other where the killer has told people they’re going to do it.
I haven’t sorted all this out. It’s not really sortable, I suspect. It does seem like people have various parts that can get their own ideas. …And normal is relative.
The idea of people having separate parts that might attack each other seems like it adds the idea of homicide to the usual view of suicide. It might also help explain why it sometimes happens as a surprise. The victim might sometimes be as surprised as anyone.
A person might have a right to have whatever kind of fight or lack thereof among the parts of themselves. A culture might come along where people kill themselves for what seem like the best or the silliest of reasons. It seems like the dynamics are worth looking into. It does seem like the more we know the better might be our decisions.
BALANCING THE PRESSURES…
It might be that whenever we do something that we don’t need or isn’t healthy or isn’t creative that we are likely doing it to balance the pressures between the parts of ourselves, between expectations and reality. We might not know the tension is even there. …But if we shop compulsively or drink habitually or “have” to run every day or maybe even need a prescription brain med, maybe there is a tension in our life that we’re trying to regulate, to adjust so that it matches or can be tolerated.
What makes these tensions? Unexamined motives seem involved — or, at least checking our motives can give indications. But of what?
It seems that we’d have better ordering and fewer out of whack tensions if we lived from a reliable basis — if our ego was tamed by a sustainable, reasonable super-ego. If our roots were sound.
One definition of truth is that which is reliable, it won’t let you down: it is true and loyal. Science has another definition of truth which is that the evidence appears at this time to be able to be accurately described. We then use this information to build things. Facts are useful. Further investigation might reveal a fact to be different than we thought it was which might change how we use it. But we aren’t saying they’re describing reality, only that they are doing as good as our instruments tell us for now. It seems like there is a science of things which uses one set of skills and tools and that there is a science of life which is different. They should be able to work together.
Well, in the science of life in the Western world we have had religion. Religion means in Latin: that which we use to tie us to our roots, to “tie back.” It seems likely that if we have good roots in our life that we would be less likely to do things that are expressions of parts of our lives or selves being unknown or in disarray or at war with each other.
Then too we need to realize that mishandled religion is a big cause of evil and confusion and increased psychic tension. This doesn’t mean we should stop any attempt at finding a way to live that won’t let us down. But maybe there will be no particular thing we should try to lean on. Things fail. Even ideas fail. Anything created has flaws. Is there a way to go beyond that? To the uncreated? Is there a thing or a nothing beyond which is actually reliable? Maybe the result could be more of a process or a way than anything particular. …But even the way would have limits or flaws. How can we get all the way back to find something healthy to live from?
First, it seems like we’ve already found a problem: wherever you go, there you are. Trying to get beyond things that let us down only brings us to more … things that let us down. I’m guessing this indicates that life is a paradox. So that might be a good first step: To appreciate that life is essentially both a yes and a no. Everything is both good and bad at the same time. So if we start from there, maybe that would be good (and bad)…
In Western religion we are said to have 3 faculties — memory, will (drive, force) and understanding. They should probably all be working right — they naturally do — not naturally as with animals but naturally if trained right. Humans are the creative animal: they need inputs beyond food and shelter. When do the faculties work right? Classically, it is when they are detached from things in particular so that they can work freely and as they like, unbound. And, guess what, religion says that memory liberated is hope; will liberated is love; understanding liberated is faith. Those are the powers of those faculties. The flip side is when they get fixated on things or fixated in various ways the results are expressed in, guess what, the various kinds of sins — the ways they go wrong. The 7, or however many. Everything is good. But when a thing is mistaken to be more or different than it is, it doesn’t become bad, it becomes bad for us or we get into a bad relationship to it. We’re no longer seeing it right. There is clear light, and bad light. And guess what bad light is? Illusion. Ill vision. What is the classic word for that? Evil. What are the forces or tendencies that result in evil? Classically: Who or what brings bad light? Lucifer, the angel of light gone bad. Something else throws things over, overthrows, puts something else in its place: the Devil or Diabolo — the Latin for which means “over throw.” If things aren’t right, what force tears down and destroys without thought of renewal: the Destroyer — Satan.
Bad seems different from evil. Bad is just a fact of life going wrong for us at the moment. A tree falling on our car is bad luck. A tree falling on the dog that was jumping to bite us is good luck. Things happen. We meet people. Opportunities arise. This is the material of life. None of it is virtuous or evil, but any of it can be part of either for us. Well, bad is bad. But we can creatively use it for good. It sucks when a plague kills the town, but I don’t think it’s evil. It would be evil for an oil baron to hire a mercenary to spread plague in a rebel Muslim town that was trying to take over the oil refinery to use its profits to feed its dying children.
One problem might be that the ego might consider any threat to be evil. Or maybe it doesn’t care: a challenge is a threat. Alert, alert! Also, because the ego is in charge of physical survival it might tend to seize upon things and label them as “precious.” This thing is good! I need it, I want it! …Rather than seeing it as something that can be used for good if we handle it right. It seems like the ego lacks perspective. However, the ego can be tactical. It’s just not good at stepping outside itself. Is it?
God is what is good. …When the aspects of life are in their right order. Eternity is the timeless, which is where the qualities of life exist: when our guides and motives in life aren’t based around a thing or an idea of duration then we can say they’re rooted in the timeless or that we’re living in heaven or hell. (Hell is the timeless suffering that comes from treating any particular thing as if it was eternal.) In Western religion, God has 3 aspects that cover his or its scope: *the Father — the source, the seed; *the Son — the expression in life, the Word, the creative result; *the Spirit — the energy motivating our action. There’s a fourth angle that is sometimes underappreciated: *the Woman — the birth, the rebirth, the womb, the material, the mother, the matter (mother comes from matter in Latin).
Also it seems like we could look at the various religions and even political ideologies as each having something to offer, a strongpoint in addition to a worldview. Like, Christianity is about redemption; Judaism about the Law; Islam about justice and peace; Buddhism about acceptance; Hinduism about many forces. Capitalism about liberty (as distinct from freedom); communism about equality. The kinds of philosophy and psychology probably also have insights we can use.
It seems likely that the kind of religion we grew up with would be easiest for us to access its mature roots. We would consider it one way as kids and could then break through and beyond to use its truth as adults as a foundation for how we live — as a way to develop our super-ego and conscience to be able to withstand and harmonize the tensions that the adventures of life bring to us.
I’d guess these can all be seen as factors or forces involved in what and how we live. They aren’t things or people or beings as we know them.
