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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: Opinion on Suicide - a right?
Message-ID: <684@shark.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Apr-84 04:26:19 EST
Article-I.D.: shark.684
Posted: Mon Apr  9 04:26:19 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Apr-84 01:25:32 EST
References: <1112@proper.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 46

<arsenic for the line bug>

Some people seem to find it somehow disturbing that I consider
there to be absolutes.  Strange.

Actually, I do think that my life belongs to others, as well as
to myself, and that I have a stake in the lives of others, within
some fuzzy boundaries.

Since I did not expound on this in any detail, misunderstandings
have occurred.  So, I expound a trickle more.

This culture, here in northamerica, is a VERY selfish and most
immature one.  We assume that because we enjoy tremendous freedom
from the control of our lives by others that we are somehow also
free from responsibilty to, and for, other people.  This is poor
thinking, even if one has to revert to the inadequate notions of
enlightened self-interest.  One mistake we make is then to assume
that when someone else does something to themselves that can have
a persistent effect on them and us, that we can have no say in it.
Ultimately, to guard our own choices, we have to say that everyone
must be allowed freedom except in those few cases where that will
reduce the freedoms of others.  However, we can, and do, as a society
via whatever method, choose to infringe on these freedoms.

All that preamble now stated, I get to try to relate it to my perception
of the value of life.  We do not exist in a vacuum.  My actions are
not only meaningful to me but can, and sometimes do, affect the
lives of others.  This is true of everyone, to varying degrees.  The
experiences that shape a person, the texture and sound and taste of
another personality, cannot ever be replaced, and in that, every
human is unique.  To destroy a human life, one's own or that of another,
is to prevent that life from ever enriching another.  Or from impoverishing
if the point need be made.  There are sometimes situations where one
cannot judge in more than shades of grey, and will never be sure of
the outcome.  Some suicides, a very few, are people who are suffering
physically and who cannot stand it any longer.  Most are people who
suffer emotionally, and though their pain is real, it can be healed.

I choose to claim a right to intervene in the latter case if I can do so.
The suicide by choosing death is hurting me and others, and is doing
even more harm to (it)self by preventing any healing that comes from outside.

Enough of this rambling.

Hutch