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Here is a summary of Chapter 10, from A Most Reasonable Death by Keegan Cochrane, which begins on page 231. It attempts to narrow down 56 pages to the core topics and statements made in each section.
https://reasonabledeath.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/book-a-most-reasonable-death1.pdf
Italicized statements are my own.
10.1-How I became depressed
During my childhood, I was what you might call “philosophically spoiled.” That is to say that I had a more or less ideal childhood. My family was low-income, but thanks to food stamps, I always had food and shelter...My parents were divorced since my infancy, so I never knew my father...I excelled in school. I probably could have skipped several grades (one school almost let me skip four grades), but I was unable to for various reasons, mostly from moving around too often...Regarding friends, I had just a few wherever we lived. I was extremely arrogant as a kid especially regarding my intelligence, so I only surrounded myself with the top of my class, out of a desire not to associate myself with stupid people...My father as well as my step-father and step-brother (in my life during the ages 8-14) were abusive. My mom was hurt by financial stress. My siblings all had their own demons to deal with...My depression started out as just episodes which would last one to three months with about four to six month intervals. (rapid cycling bi-polar IMO)
Being the people pleaser I am, I ended up becoming a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in order to please that male role model I mentioned earlier...I eventually picked up new-age ideologies, namely those spit out by Rhonda Byrnes in her “The Secret” series.It wasn’t until the summer after my first year of college that I was able to rid myself of this folly. I had taken my first (and only) philosophy course, which gave me tools for finding criticisms in philosophical arguments...But I had nothing left. I didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. I learned about Descartes’ radical skepticism and didn’t know how to know anything with absolute certainty. (This can be a really hard philosophy for some people to digest - it makes the entire world feel like it is full of crap)
Concerning my depression, I still felt sad throughout all of this. And it didn’t help that the spring of that year was when I fell in love for the first time. It was with some French guy. With my new tentative philosophical methods which I would edit and build upon for the next few years, I eventually looked at value theory... I arrived to the conclusion that our desires push us to do things. In other words, people live not because they live for an end goal, but because they want to live in the first place. The only problem was that by my second year of college, I didn’t have that desire.
10.2 Emotional arguments
I have many reasons why I would rather die than live. Here is an extensive but non-exhaustive list:
To begin, life is hard.
I hate the human condition in society.
Winning the lottery wouldn’t even be good.
Life is also so dreadfully boring.
Another issue in the human condition is the human body.
I also hate sex.
I also despise the unreasonableness of human beings.
I remember every time I have made people cry.
Not only do I do immoral things and cause harm, but I also don’t do everything I can to stop it.
In addition to being bad for the environment and others around me, there are some ideas which if we accept, I am unfit to be a good person.
I confess that I am probably racist and misogynistic even without such extreme arguments.
I am willing to kill myself selfishly!
I do hate myself for being the immoral of the Earth that I am as well as for having the repulsive tendencies my body has, but I hate myself for other reasons, too. I am a perfectionist (“You don’t say!”
. Yet I fail so much in every aspect of life.
He goes on to reflect on self-love and forgiveness and his struggles with both.
10.3 Philosophical reasons
Aside from the emotional arguments of the last section, I have philosophical ideas pertaining to life and death which lead me to prefer to die than to live.
Firstly, I am going to die anyway.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy life or its prospects, it is inauthentic of me to continue on living.
In chapter 7, I talked about the inherent meaninglessness of life (I actually think that life itself is outside the question of meaningfulness or meaninglessness inherently). Indeed, I don’t believe life is inherently meaningful.
I find that my lack of desire for life stems from my natural disposition. However, I also believe that mental illnesses are a part of one’s selfhood. And I have little doubt that my depression plays at least some part in my lack of desire to live. I’ll even grant for the sake of argument that my depression is the very root of my lack of desire for life.
I’m not saying I’m right. But in my condition, I am reasonable in following my dispositions just as much as a happy person is with following theirs.
I am a very strong skeptic (chapter 1), and as such I find myself unable to arrive at the knowledge I seek. This leads into a major point, that being that I do not wish to live a life in which some of my strongest and most basic desires cannot be fulfilled in life.
10.4 An ideal life
I already talked about my career plans if I were to remain alive, but there’s a lot more to life than working. There are enjoyable things like movies, books, shows, video games, friends, and relationships. So here are some things I would like to do in life that I couldn’t if I were dead.
I would like to play Kingdom Hearts 3, a game I’ve been waiting for over 10 years.I’d like to watch movies by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks. I want to read more and more philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. I want to learn a lot more languages than the 16 I have already learned (Japanese, Chinese, and then a lot of Romance andGermanic languages). I would like to learn chemistry, math, and physics (if I could,seeing as I struggled to understand AP physics despite getting a 4.0 in the class)...
As for romance, I don’t know. I do have a strong desire to find a nice man with whom I’d have a mutual love, but I fear it’s not enough...In the most ideal (but still realistic) conditions of this life, I would win the lottery.This way, I could recompensate all of my friends and family with money for having dealt with me for so long.
He goes on to describe his ideal life, and then points out all the ways it is fantastical or impossible.
Another way would be to argue with me and convince me that life is better than death, but so far none of the arguments against death or in favor of life have been all that promising to me. Still, I like to keep an open mind and am willing to change my views given better arguments, reasons, and evidence.
10.5 Why I lived for so long
If I really hate life as much as I’m giving on, then why haven’t I already died? Essentially two reasons kept me alive as long as they did these past few years: the desire to not be unreasonable and the desire to please others.
As for the desire to not hurt others, I came up with some ways to diminish the harm. First, I tried to get everyone to hate me...That wasn’t my only attempt. I also just tried to cut off all ties entirely. For weeksI stopped talking to people and hanging out with them....By talking about my desire for death and hatred of life, my hope was to desensitize people to the idea of me suiciding. This way if I did ever die by suicide, they would be understanding of my situation. I understood that the harm of just telling them would be great. Additionally, even if my plan were to succeed, my suicide wouldn’t be without harm. However, my thought process was thus: “Which would be worse? Me committing suicide without telling anyone and them just waking up one day to discover I’m dead with no warning or explanation just left in confused ignorance, OR me telling them and causing some initial harm to prepare them emotionally for a suicide which is likely going to happen anyway and me giving them tools to handle the situation emotionally and logically?”
In the end, my attempt to ease people into the idea of my suicide in order to diminish the harm was one of the greatest failures of my life! What a terrible fool I was!
10.6 So then why did I die?
Looking at my moral theory, I realized I couldn’t be rational in choosing to die if I wanted to be moral. After all, in order to be moral according to my theory, I would have to do whatever I can to minimize the harm that I do.
Looking at why I don’t like harming others, I found that my reasons are selfish. My desire to not hurt others stems from my desire to not be in pain...The second implication is this: in death I won’t be able to experience the pain of knowing I have harmed others by dying.
I have been able to stay alive for so long because I can tolerate this near stressless lifestyle I currently have. However, as my college career draws to its conclusion, I will need to get a job and work more than three times as hard and as often as I currently do.My life will be filled with stress from work, from financial issues and concerns, from my philosophical issues, from my emotional problems, and so on. Moreover, with 40+ hour work weeks and the need to do my own cooking, transportation, errand running, and the like, I will no longer have time to do the pleasurable activities I enjoy.
I choose suicide because the hard life of working is more painful to me than the thought of all the harm my suicide will cause to those I love. I still love them, but I care about my own well-being more. I admit that I am selfish.
10.7 Reasonableness and rationality of my suicide
He asks you to reflect with him on whether his suicide was rational or reasonable. At least read this section before opining on his decision as it offers his counter arguments in anticipation of what you might be thinking.
Starting with rationality, I don’t see how I could have likely been irrational in my decision. I chose the option which satisfied more desires as well as the option whose desires being satisfied was more important to me.
While it’s true that many my desires which cannot be fulfilled in life such as the desire for absolute knowledge and undistorted perception of reality, that doesn’t mean I cannot rationally die with these desires in mind.
As for the fact that I cannot feel relief in dying, I deny that this is what I desire.
There is one area in which I may not be rational by choosing suicide. I say I hate emotions, and I do. Moreover I say I want to rid myself of my emotions, which again I do.But this might be irrational. It certainly is contradictory to desire to not have emotions.
Some may say I am irrational because I don’t have enough knowledge to accurately weigh and understand the consequences of my choices (Cholbi, 286). This is a weak argument. If you doubt that I have an accurate understanding of what life entails,then even if I chose to live, I would be irrational under this contention.
And it wouldn’t make sense to say I’m irrational based on facing death which I fear naturally. I’ve never had an issue with death. What about reasonableness? Was I unreasonable in choosing suicide? You know what? Maybe! I admit that since I’m not that great at philosophy and certainly didn’t write a great book here, maybe my reasons are poor and I was unreasonable in committing suicide. However, I dare you to sit there and think that I was excessively unreasonable. I spent years developing my beliefs with an open mind.
I wrote an entire book after years of research in philosophical investigations. This book is a collection of my beliefs and perceptions and the justifications and reasons which came from my perceptions and led to my beliefs and conclusions.
P. 274 Method of Suicide
I was smart in my suicide... Ideally, I would die by inhaling a noble gas like helium in a bag covering my head.
However, this is a later resort because it isn’t too successful. I would rather practically choose a way that is probabilistic in lethality. I also want a method which others won’t have to clean up or see a disgusting scene... So I have decided to leave society to die. I will die in a secluded area where I don’t expect anyone to discover me.
I also choose drowning as a method. This is lethal, can hide my body well if I sink to the bottom of the water (with a weight attached to prevent my body from floating), and I can avoid the pain by taking sleeping medicine such that they will take effect shortly after I descend in the water.
As an extra precaution,I will strangle myself until I pass out so even if I gasp for breath, my lungs will not fill with water until I am unconscious so as to avoid the pain of drowning.
The best part is that I live in Michigan with very large lakes all around. No one will find me or even know where to look. This way, nobody has to worry about expensive funeral costs for me (I don’t want to cause financial harm either) and nobody has to see my dead body, which I imagine would be traumatizing for a lot of people.
I will time my death in such a way that nobody will see me enter the water and be suspicious. I will be very intelligent about this.I’m a tactician, or like to think of myself as one. So in the event that my plan fails,I have backups, and backups to those backups.
I will be prepared to die by hanging myself with knowledge of what knots are lethal, where to tie the rope, and how to make it probable that my face will not become engorged in blood afterwards. If that fails, I will use a noble gas bag.
I can then try drinking two bottles of soy sauce which could kill me due to the massive salt intake.
He goes on to describe several more options. The above offer the best clues to what may really have happened IMO
10.8 To those who love me
Firstly, to those who love me, I truly am sorry.
I find the assertion that I should accept myself particularly humorous. People can only handle having serious conversations with me (usually philosophical in nature) for a maximum of an hour or so. And when it comes to my depression and suicide, they quickly become overwhelmed. Here’s a particularly amusing story. I was discussing my suicidality with someone who studies philosophy himself and is probably better at it thanI am. He was prepared to call the police on me (he literally told me he was about to)because he was afraid that I would kill myself that night. But apparently he was so concerned about me staying alive that he couldn’t stand to talk to me anymore! What kind of twisted logic is that?
I wonder what you will think of me.
I must ask you not to feel guilty, if you do. It’s not your fault. Any thoughts like “If only I had said or done something, he would still be alive,” are misleading. I was too determined. There’s nothing you could have done to save me.
So I ask you to look at my death with the understanding that I am free. I am no longer in so much pain. I am no longer hurting. I am no longer full of desires I can never have fulfilled. I am no longer struggling for knowledge with a mind that is so full of doubts and uncertainties. I am no longer tortured by my thoughts and by the stresses of life. I am no longer controlled by my neurology just like I think everyone is. In that respect death is liberating...
10.9 This book, suicidology, and something optimistic
Well, we’ve come to the final section of this chapter. I hope someone reads it. I hope someone reads this book. But it’s reasonable to wonder why. After all, don’t I think nothing matters in the end?I do indeed think that. But as I state in chapter 7, I do have desires, and I want people to know about my ideas. I want to be understood. Moreover, I want this book to help people. Not only do I think this book can help people who are hurt by my death to cope, but I think that this book has potential elsewhere. If some of my arguments are indeed good, then they can be helpful for philosophers. If my ideas on suicide in particular are good, then maybe my book can help others who rationally and reasonably wish to commit suicide to be in a society which understands them and has more compassion for them.
This is an optimistic position, but that’s because it’s an ideal hope for this book,not an expectation. I don’t consider myself a martyr and I don’t think I have illusions of grandeur about my suicide. Actually, it would be surprising for me (if I were broughtback to life for example) to discover that my book became popular at all.
If a suicidologist is reading this, I want to make some things very clear. 1. I diedin April. However, I did not die because I have been feeling cheerful due to spring andfinally found the energy to die. I died in April because it’s just before the end of thesemester.
(I find this passage especially interesting, because he argues against studies using statistics to generalize an "epidemic", and does not want to become another one)
It has indeed been a misfortune that I was born. The pain I’ve causedhas been an even greater misfortune. I hope everybody finds peace. Even if they can’t, Isuppose it won’t matter, given enough time. And at least I won’t have to deal with itanymore. I’m free from all the pain. I’m happy for all the good things in my life though.I’m sorry everyone. I do love you. And you, Aang, I love you so much. I’m sorry wecouldn’t be together. I love you my brother, my friend, my twin, Aang.” I want my finalword to be his name. As I descend into death, I’ll be listening to pre-recordings of myfavorite quotes from him from the show. The last thing I hear will be his voice. I’ll smileas I take my last breath in relief. I’ll die happily in peace, hopeful that everything willturn out okay. I’m still the optimistic little kid who loves learning and laughing and intellectual subjects. But above all, I’m only human and am imperfect. I make mistakes,and I do immoral things. I’m sorry
The Aang he refers to here is of the Avatar anime. http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Aang
https://reasonabledeath.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/book-a-most-reasonable-death1.pdf
Italicized statements are my own.
10.1-How I became depressed
During my childhood, I was what you might call “philosophically spoiled.” That is to say that I had a more or less ideal childhood. My family was low-income, but thanks to food stamps, I always had food and shelter...My parents were divorced since my infancy, so I never knew my father...I excelled in school. I probably could have skipped several grades (one school almost let me skip four grades), but I was unable to for various reasons, mostly from moving around too often...Regarding friends, I had just a few wherever we lived. I was extremely arrogant as a kid especially regarding my intelligence, so I only surrounded myself with the top of my class, out of a desire not to associate myself with stupid people...My father as well as my step-father and step-brother (in my life during the ages 8-14) were abusive. My mom was hurt by financial stress. My siblings all had their own demons to deal with...My depression started out as just episodes which would last one to three months with about four to six month intervals. (rapid cycling bi-polar IMO)
Being the people pleaser I am, I ended up becoming a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in order to please that male role model I mentioned earlier...I eventually picked up new-age ideologies, namely those spit out by Rhonda Byrnes in her “The Secret” series.It wasn’t until the summer after my first year of college that I was able to rid myself of this folly. I had taken my first (and only) philosophy course, which gave me tools for finding criticisms in philosophical arguments...But I had nothing left. I didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. I learned about Descartes’ radical skepticism and didn’t know how to know anything with absolute certainty. (This can be a really hard philosophy for some people to digest - it makes the entire world feel like it is full of crap)
Concerning my depression, I still felt sad throughout all of this. And it didn’t help that the spring of that year was when I fell in love for the first time. It was with some French guy. With my new tentative philosophical methods which I would edit and build upon for the next few years, I eventually looked at value theory... I arrived to the conclusion that our desires push us to do things. In other words, people live not because they live for an end goal, but because they want to live in the first place. The only problem was that by my second year of college, I didn’t have that desire.
10.2 Emotional arguments
I have many reasons why I would rather die than live. Here is an extensive but non-exhaustive list:
To begin, life is hard.
I hate the human condition in society.
Winning the lottery wouldn’t even be good.
Life is also so dreadfully boring.
Another issue in the human condition is the human body.
I also hate sex.
I also despise the unreasonableness of human beings.
I remember every time I have made people cry.
Not only do I do immoral things and cause harm, but I also don’t do everything I can to stop it.
In addition to being bad for the environment and others around me, there are some ideas which if we accept, I am unfit to be a good person.
I confess that I am probably racist and misogynistic even without such extreme arguments.
I am willing to kill myself selfishly!
I do hate myself for being the immoral of the Earth that I am as well as for having the repulsive tendencies my body has, but I hate myself for other reasons, too. I am a perfectionist (“You don’t say!”
. Yet I fail so much in every aspect of life. He goes on to reflect on self-love and forgiveness and his struggles with both.
10.3 Philosophical reasons
Aside from the emotional arguments of the last section, I have philosophical ideas pertaining to life and death which lead me to prefer to die than to live.
Firstly, I am going to die anyway.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy life or its prospects, it is inauthentic of me to continue on living.
In chapter 7, I talked about the inherent meaninglessness of life (I actually think that life itself is outside the question of meaningfulness or meaninglessness inherently). Indeed, I don’t believe life is inherently meaningful.
I find that my lack of desire for life stems from my natural disposition. However, I also believe that mental illnesses are a part of one’s selfhood. And I have little doubt that my depression plays at least some part in my lack of desire to live. I’ll even grant for the sake of argument that my depression is the very root of my lack of desire for life.
I’m not saying I’m right. But in my condition, I am reasonable in following my dispositions just as much as a happy person is with following theirs.
I am a very strong skeptic (chapter 1), and as such I find myself unable to arrive at the knowledge I seek. This leads into a major point, that being that I do not wish to live a life in which some of my strongest and most basic desires cannot be fulfilled in life.
10.4 An ideal life
I already talked about my career plans if I were to remain alive, but there’s a lot more to life than working. There are enjoyable things like movies, books, shows, video games, friends, and relationships. So here are some things I would like to do in life that I couldn’t if I were dead.
I would like to play Kingdom Hearts 3, a game I’ve been waiting for over 10 years.I’d like to watch movies by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks. I want to read more and more philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. I want to learn a lot more languages than the 16 I have already learned (Japanese, Chinese, and then a lot of Romance andGermanic languages). I would like to learn chemistry, math, and physics (if I could,seeing as I struggled to understand AP physics despite getting a 4.0 in the class)...
As for romance, I don’t know. I do have a strong desire to find a nice man with whom I’d have a mutual love, but I fear it’s not enough...In the most ideal (but still realistic) conditions of this life, I would win the lottery.This way, I could recompensate all of my friends and family with money for having dealt with me for so long.
He goes on to describe his ideal life, and then points out all the ways it is fantastical or impossible.
Another way would be to argue with me and convince me that life is better than death, but so far none of the arguments against death or in favor of life have been all that promising to me. Still, I like to keep an open mind and am willing to change my views given better arguments, reasons, and evidence.
10.5 Why I lived for so long
If I really hate life as much as I’m giving on, then why haven’t I already died? Essentially two reasons kept me alive as long as they did these past few years: the desire to not be unreasonable and the desire to please others.
As for the desire to not hurt others, I came up with some ways to diminish the harm. First, I tried to get everyone to hate me...That wasn’t my only attempt. I also just tried to cut off all ties entirely. For weeksI stopped talking to people and hanging out with them....By talking about my desire for death and hatred of life, my hope was to desensitize people to the idea of me suiciding. This way if I did ever die by suicide, they would be understanding of my situation. I understood that the harm of just telling them would be great. Additionally, even if my plan were to succeed, my suicide wouldn’t be without harm. However, my thought process was thus: “Which would be worse? Me committing suicide without telling anyone and them just waking up one day to discover I’m dead with no warning or explanation just left in confused ignorance, OR me telling them and causing some initial harm to prepare them emotionally for a suicide which is likely going to happen anyway and me giving them tools to handle the situation emotionally and logically?”
In the end, my attempt to ease people into the idea of my suicide in order to diminish the harm was one of the greatest failures of my life! What a terrible fool I was!
10.6 So then why did I die?
Looking at my moral theory, I realized I couldn’t be rational in choosing to die if I wanted to be moral. After all, in order to be moral according to my theory, I would have to do whatever I can to minimize the harm that I do.
Looking at why I don’t like harming others, I found that my reasons are selfish. My desire to not hurt others stems from my desire to not be in pain...The second implication is this: in death I won’t be able to experience the pain of knowing I have harmed others by dying.
I have been able to stay alive for so long because I can tolerate this near stressless lifestyle I currently have. However, as my college career draws to its conclusion, I will need to get a job and work more than three times as hard and as often as I currently do.My life will be filled with stress from work, from financial issues and concerns, from my philosophical issues, from my emotional problems, and so on. Moreover, with 40+ hour work weeks and the need to do my own cooking, transportation, errand running, and the like, I will no longer have time to do the pleasurable activities I enjoy.
I choose suicide because the hard life of working is more painful to me than the thought of all the harm my suicide will cause to those I love. I still love them, but I care about my own well-being more. I admit that I am selfish.
10.7 Reasonableness and rationality of my suicide
He asks you to reflect with him on whether his suicide was rational or reasonable. At least read this section before opining on his decision as it offers his counter arguments in anticipation of what you might be thinking.
Starting with rationality, I don’t see how I could have likely been irrational in my decision. I chose the option which satisfied more desires as well as the option whose desires being satisfied was more important to me.
While it’s true that many my desires which cannot be fulfilled in life such as the desire for absolute knowledge and undistorted perception of reality, that doesn’t mean I cannot rationally die with these desires in mind.
As for the fact that I cannot feel relief in dying, I deny that this is what I desire.
There is one area in which I may not be rational by choosing suicide. I say I hate emotions, and I do. Moreover I say I want to rid myself of my emotions, which again I do.But this might be irrational. It certainly is contradictory to desire to not have emotions.
Some may say I am irrational because I don’t have enough knowledge to accurately weigh and understand the consequences of my choices (Cholbi, 286). This is a weak argument. If you doubt that I have an accurate understanding of what life entails,then even if I chose to live, I would be irrational under this contention.
And it wouldn’t make sense to say I’m irrational based on facing death which I fear naturally. I’ve never had an issue with death. What about reasonableness? Was I unreasonable in choosing suicide? You know what? Maybe! I admit that since I’m not that great at philosophy and certainly didn’t write a great book here, maybe my reasons are poor and I was unreasonable in committing suicide. However, I dare you to sit there and think that I was excessively unreasonable. I spent years developing my beliefs with an open mind.
I wrote an entire book after years of research in philosophical investigations. This book is a collection of my beliefs and perceptions and the justifications and reasons which came from my perceptions and led to my beliefs and conclusions.
P. 274 Method of Suicide
I was smart in my suicide... Ideally, I would die by inhaling a noble gas like helium in a bag covering my head.
However, this is a later resort because it isn’t too successful. I would rather practically choose a way that is probabilistic in lethality. I also want a method which others won’t have to clean up or see a disgusting scene... So I have decided to leave society to die. I will die in a secluded area where I don’t expect anyone to discover me.
I also choose drowning as a method. This is lethal, can hide my body well if I sink to the bottom of the water (with a weight attached to prevent my body from floating), and I can avoid the pain by taking sleeping medicine such that they will take effect shortly after I descend in the water.
As an extra precaution,I will strangle myself until I pass out so even if I gasp for breath, my lungs will not fill with water until I am unconscious so as to avoid the pain of drowning.
The best part is that I live in Michigan with very large lakes all around. No one will find me or even know where to look. This way, nobody has to worry about expensive funeral costs for me (I don’t want to cause financial harm either) and nobody has to see my dead body, which I imagine would be traumatizing for a lot of people.
I will time my death in such a way that nobody will see me enter the water and be suspicious. I will be very intelligent about this.I’m a tactician, or like to think of myself as one. So in the event that my plan fails,I have backups, and backups to those backups.
I will be prepared to die by hanging myself with knowledge of what knots are lethal, where to tie the rope, and how to make it probable that my face will not become engorged in blood afterwards. If that fails, I will use a noble gas bag.
I can then try drinking two bottles of soy sauce which could kill me due to the massive salt intake.
He goes on to describe several more options. The above offer the best clues to what may really have happened IMO
10.8 To those who love me
Firstly, to those who love me, I truly am sorry.
I find the assertion that I should accept myself particularly humorous. People can only handle having serious conversations with me (usually philosophical in nature) for a maximum of an hour or so. And when it comes to my depression and suicide, they quickly become overwhelmed. Here’s a particularly amusing story. I was discussing my suicidality with someone who studies philosophy himself and is probably better at it thanI am. He was prepared to call the police on me (he literally told me he was about to)because he was afraid that I would kill myself that night. But apparently he was so concerned about me staying alive that he couldn’t stand to talk to me anymore! What kind of twisted logic is that?
I wonder what you will think of me.
I must ask you not to feel guilty, if you do. It’s not your fault. Any thoughts like “If only I had said or done something, he would still be alive,” are misleading. I was too determined. There’s nothing you could have done to save me.
So I ask you to look at my death with the understanding that I am free. I am no longer in so much pain. I am no longer hurting. I am no longer full of desires I can never have fulfilled. I am no longer struggling for knowledge with a mind that is so full of doubts and uncertainties. I am no longer tortured by my thoughts and by the stresses of life. I am no longer controlled by my neurology just like I think everyone is. In that respect death is liberating...
10.9 This book, suicidology, and something optimistic
Well, we’ve come to the final section of this chapter. I hope someone reads it. I hope someone reads this book. But it’s reasonable to wonder why. After all, don’t I think nothing matters in the end?I do indeed think that. But as I state in chapter 7, I do have desires, and I want people to know about my ideas. I want to be understood. Moreover, I want this book to help people. Not only do I think this book can help people who are hurt by my death to cope, but I think that this book has potential elsewhere. If some of my arguments are indeed good, then they can be helpful for philosophers. If my ideas on suicide in particular are good, then maybe my book can help others who rationally and reasonably wish to commit suicide to be in a society which understands them and has more compassion for them.
This is an optimistic position, but that’s because it’s an ideal hope for this book,not an expectation. I don’t consider myself a martyr and I don’t think I have illusions of grandeur about my suicide. Actually, it would be surprising for me (if I were broughtback to life for example) to discover that my book became popular at all.
If a suicidologist is reading this, I want to make some things very clear. 1. I diedin April. However, I did not die because I have been feeling cheerful due to spring andfinally found the energy to die. I died in April because it’s just before the end of thesemester.
(I find this passage especially interesting, because he argues against studies using statistics to generalize an "epidemic", and does not want to become another one)
It has indeed been a misfortune that I was born. The pain I’ve causedhas been an even greater misfortune. I hope everybody finds peace. Even if they can’t, Isuppose it won’t matter, given enough time. And at least I won’t have to deal with itanymore. I’m free from all the pain. I’m happy for all the good things in my life though.I’m sorry everyone. I do love you. And you, Aang, I love you so much. I’m sorry wecouldn’t be together. I love you my brother, my friend, my twin, Aang.” I want my finalword to be his name. As I descend into death, I’ll be listening to pre-recordings of myfavorite quotes from him from the show. The last thing I hear will be his voice. I’ll smileas I take my last breath in relief. I’ll die happily in peace, hopeful that everything willturn out okay. I’m still the optimistic little kid who loves learning and laughing and intellectual subjects. But above all, I’m only human and am imperfect. I make mistakes,and I do immoral things. I’m sorry
The Aang he refers to here is of the Avatar anime. http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Aang
