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From: ash@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (David Ash)
Newsgroups: alt.suicide.holiday,rec.skydiving
Subject: Re: Parachute
Message-ID: <1991Jun11.233812.29102@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 11 Jun 91 23:38:12 GMT
References: <1991Jun11.114807.1@st1.vuw.ac.nz>
Sender: ash@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (David Ash)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Ca , USA
Lines: 33

In article <1991Jun11.114807.1@st1.vuw.ac.nz> strahd@st1.vuw.ac.nz writes:
>
>Could parachuting be considered attempted suicide...with a success
>being when the chute doesn't open?
>
At the risk of giving a more serious response to this than it deserves, if
the person really wanted to kill themselves, they would not even wear a
parachute.  Also, jumping with a reserve parachute tends to increase the
probability of survival so that it is even less a suicide attempt.  Many 
jumpers also use automatic activation devices (AAD's) which automatically pull
the reserve when the jumper velocity exceeds, and the altitude falls below,
set thresholds.  Again, setting this device might be viewed as an attempt
to reduce the probability of death so as not to make it a suicide attempt.

And yet at the same time, much as parachutists like to deny it, there is an
elemental thrill in taking part in an activity which should by all logic lead
to inevitable death.  This thrill tends to defeat the logic of probabilities,
and the fact that parachutists feel this thrill is evidenced by jokes about
"crater parties" and "going in" and so forth.  One might view parachuting as
being qualitatively similar to Sylvia Plath's death, where one takes an action
*expecting* that something or someone will intervene to prevent death, but part
of the reason one takes the action is that there is a possibility the
intervention won't come about.

However, parachutists tend to be *extremely* optimistic and joyful people,
and this seems remarkably at odds with the stereotype of the suicide victim
as a depressed loser.  I doubt very many parachutists would commit suicide in
the more conventional sense.
-- 
David W. Ash               | "Being in a minority, even a minority of one,
ash@sumex-aim.stanford.edu |  does not make one insane."
HOME: (415) 497-1629       |
WORK: (415) 725-3859       |         --Winston Smith in Orwell's "1984".