RE: Anthony Bourdain, Dead At 61: "Commited" Suicide or "Death By" Suicide?
I reckon @builderofcastles touches on the reason suicide was necessarily made illegal: arkancide. Prior to much investigatory power being able to ascertain manners of death, dropping the old man so as to inherit, or remove an inconvenient curmudgeon in the way of 'progress' was a bit more easily covert.
Making it illegal didn't make it any more uncommon however.
The push to make suicidal efforts a mental health problem, which it usually isn't, as folks are ravaged not by insanity to the point of despair, but rapine reality. Folks that live in a fantasy land of their own making are generally immune to despair. Folks that realize the impossibility of battling the banksters that have seized their homes; their life's work, with unlawful frauds and scams, and are of sound mind do despair.
Suicide often is the result of such despair, which isn't a mental illness, it's a protest against being enslaved through fraud with no recourse. I suspect that it's almost as often arkancide, though. Some folks fight back against Goliath even though the odds are daunting, and David wins too often for Goliath to be comfortable with that, making arkancide the recommended solution.
If we wanna decrease suicide we need to hold fraudsters (banksters) accountable rather than letting them get away with their scams repeatedly.
@valued-customer
hm ...
If you look at the term mental illness in my language - German/ "shift something", "displace a thing" - literally translated, then the perception of the broad reality shifts to a focal point. The desire to take one's own life is a kind of concentrated ray of salvation of an unbearable and ultimately completely senseless existence.
Therefore, I would call it "mental focus on suffering".
I had suicidal thoughts once during a major depression. And I think that my perception of the world was distorted and one-sided at the time - I have a good comparison as it now lays in the past and my outlook on life broadened again, fortunately.
I had an experience that had awakened me so violently from my illusion that the world would be a safe place and should this also be, that I was so frightened that I shrunk together as if in a reflex and escaped any courage to live.
It tormented me for a long time that I was looking for people to blame for my condition. It was only when I began to realize that waking up to the fact that life means that I cannot expect to live through my existence completely unharmed that a greater peace set in.
To make it clear: my experience had to do with fear of death and the violence I experienced before. For many years this trauma haunted me and I have to tell you that your suggestion that there are people behind it who consciously stoke it or make it possible is not very helpful because it further promotes the illusion (I must be unharmed at any time under any circumstances) and makes it more difficult to let go of it.
Which does not mean that there aren't people with bad intentions. But I can stop to blame and focus on that.
It feeds a painful body. Like the analogy that if someone squashed your foot between a door, years later you still murmur the long healed bruise and define yourself as saying that it still hurts even though there is no open wound. The perpetrator is responsible for the moment he closes the door carelessly, but not for the years of self-torture that follow. I had to forgive myself for blaming me not having had the strength to escape from the situation.
Neither do I see myself as prey nor do I see others in this way.
I do not press you for details, and don't feel they would be helpful in better understanding your circumstances. I can appreciate your experiences, and would but note that they are singular, and unique to you. Others have experienced other things.
Some of those things are sadistic depredations. I am glad you have not had that impact your life. That doesn't mean no one has.
I have.
Squashing your foot in a door on purpose is one cruel act. Some people are trapped under the control of others that strive to daily commit cruel acts. This doesn't only create mental stress, it is an actual trap and promise of more to come, and if you cannot see how this can leave one with nothing but despair, then I am glad you cannot imagine more than you can bear.
You are availed of a free and easy mind about the world, and for you that enables you to find joy. This is good.
It isn't the solution to everyone's problems, and self-torture isn't the cause of them either.
From your comments here in this course, I have found that powerful people or bankers exploit people and that some subjugate others. Now that you are talking about a personal experience and sadism, it is very different to reading about fraud or enslavement.
In media cacophony, I often hear these terms and for me, they have therefore stepped out of the personal and gone into a general lament, which I also perceive through conversations with people as a kind of intensified expression of an existence perceived as exploitation. ... In my culture, my fellow human beings are not forced to do something by force of arms or the threat of torture. People force themselves to act because they have a loan on the house or the things they want to buy but cannot afford, which is contrary to their ethics, for example.
Indeed, the personal experiences are as dreadful as they are painful. We don't need to compare mine with yours or speculate which one might have been worse.
My light-hearted attitude is to be credited to the process of recovery. ..... My desperation from that time was so strong that I seriously thought of suicide. That should be enough to let you know that we both drank from that same cup.
If my comment was not helpful to you, maybe it was because I made a criticism ... which has prompted you to concretise a little - I much better understand you now. I want to leave you asking what the solution would be for your problem. Without expecting an answer.
I'll cut to your final question about a solution to the problem of slavery and torture.
I believe that physics is creating the solution by making freedom inevitable. Technology always empowers individuals more than groups, and technology that is now on the cutting edge inevitably becomes available to even the poorest in time.
50 years ago, no king, no pampered pasha, had a cell phone. Now, most homeless people scrounging in dumpsters for their meals do.
What is technology creating today? Weaponized drone armies, 3D printing at home, cryptocurrency, and much, much more. These technologies will enable civilians to prevent armies from subjugating them. We see militarized police in armored vehicles today raiding civilian homes with extreme violence all around the world.
That will no longer be possible.
When thugs can not murder us, take our money, or enslave us without being in danger of their lives, they won't. Then, we will be free of despots, and the despair they cause.
Thanks!
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-for-neighbours.pdf
... I was long thinking of an answer to you but nothing sounded right.
If you wouldn't have survived your own story, you wouldn't be here to confirm it. Same counts for me. The story of violence or trauma needn't dominate our lives. We need all our ingenuity to get out of our closet.
It does not seem appropriate to me to teach people to fear each other, except when the lesson corresponds to the above.
@valued-customer, call me sheltered, but I'd never even heard the term arkancide and not convinced suicide was just recently deemed illegal/not a crime. Am I missing something here?
I do find your flipped view on suicide and mental health very compelling and a new view for me that rings true. Would be interesting to read/hear reasons Bourdain gave for his suicide.
Arkancide is the notorious murder of inconvenient witnesses and staging the investigation to declare it suicide.
Almost all of us are missing not just something, but much that is contrary to the interests of our predators. This is the magic of the internet: you can just search via multiple search engines on any topic you have interest in and discover information that isn't deliberately imposed on us (propaganda) by those with intent to deceive.
Of course much information is intended to deceive. I find that the more money and effort that is spent to deliver information, the more likely it is intended to deceive.
Here's another term you may not be familiar with: the enemedia. There is an industry that is intended to keep people productive prey, and those information (news) sources owned by corporate interests are most of this industry.
Think for yourself, and drop back to first principles when considering matters. By following a chain of logic and sussing out independent sources of information to treat logically, you become much more difficult to fool, and prey on.
Thanks!
Thank you for explaining arkancide--on a quick Google and glance I was getting all Clinton crap ;)
And, I completely agree with you in regards to being predated on and bombarded with enemedia. I think we'll see things get much worse.
Oddly enough, I have great hope that it is already changing in our favor. The worse they make censorship and propaganda, the more incentive they give their prey to escape it. The millions of independent bloggers and journalists, of which you are one, are escape.
We will be free eventually (people generally, not me specifically). Physics is what makes technology possible, and when you look at what technology is possible, it is glaringly obvious that mass oppression will become impossible as people gain technological advantage they are yet unable to use.
I expect despair to be reduced as oppression is. It will get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.
Good points.
I am sure you're right about technology and I wouldn't be here if I didn't have some inkling of tech taking us in new and powerful directions, and at the same time, as a person who doesn't love learning new tech tricks my thoughts can lean towards fear that I'll be left by that boat.
And, as far as getting worse, I think about no power or Internet and then how to access crypto, or communities growing out of the box? I know there are probably technological ways around what could become a mass unplugging, but not sure I'm technologically skilled enough to navigate if something like this were to happen.
I fear I might sound terribly naive here, but also curious and elevated by your hope.
There aren't any good ways I know of for cryptocurrencies to remain useful without an electrical power grid, and the internet that makes possible. So, those aren't my focus, although nothing really is, TBQH.
Community is people. Start with the people around you, where you live now, and if, God forbid, there's a crisis or disaster, you'll already have a community around you. Usually our neighbors have very similar outlooks to ourselves, and commonalities that create numerous opportunities for mutual endeavors.
Seek to avoid controversy while remaining true to your principles, and you'll be amazed at who you can get along with. I have neighbors that abhor homosexuality, and neighbors that abhor homophobia. I can still build their decks, and they can still appreciate that service.
I live in an area with geological hazards, and should those arrive, it will be a catastrophe for me. It will be less of a catastrophe for we neighbors who already work together, as we will be able to work together then, too.
Einstein said something like 'I can't predict the weapons WWIII will be fought with, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.' Nothing is guaranteed, but people need each other. Help them, help yourself.
So you believe that, besides acts of murder made to look like suicides ("suicided"), suicide is the result of injustice and not mental illness?
As a rule, yes. People despair for reasons, not because they're demented, for the most part. When you speak to someone struggling with suicidal ideation, that's what they say, as well. Bad things have happened that they feel aren't possible to recover from.
The word injustice doesn't encapsulate the entirety of the issue. Injustice happens, and people suffer as a result. Injustice alone doesn't create despair. Societal inequities, corrupt government and institutions, and cruel people in positions of power turn injustice into despair by making recovery impossible, or ensuring that depredations are continued repeatedly.
When people are trapped in situations that are intolerable, then they despair.