Social and Economic Costs to Suicides
Before I begin, I assert that this brief post is meant to be completely satirical. Please do not take offense at anything I say here.
Everyone knows the mental costs of suicides--the faces of the devastated friends and relatives are enough of an indication. But what about the social costs? Many often don't connect the fact that those who attempt suicide are unsatisfied with the circumstances of their life, and that in a highly competitive school such as U.C. Berkeley, that discouragement is likely to be from the rigor of school. So when a poorly-performing student exits, the class curve goes up, making it more difficult for you to earn the grade you believe you deserve. Perhaps the increased difficulty may induce others to follow the same path, triggering a vicious cycle. But those are trivial compared to the other costs.
Who pays for the officers who prevent these things? The health workers who treat these people? And the custodians who clean the mess off the cement? The taxpayers do, for no productive purpose either.
Even suicidal thoughts themselves incur costs; the time, energy and concentration used to contemplate (obviously not too rationally) the balance of life and death cannot be used for more productive enterprises--say, studying for next week's CS or Stat midterm. So as you can see, there are not-so-obvious costs to suicides and suicidal thoughts that end up hurting everybody.
So please, please, please do not kill yourself. Don't kill me either for writing this.
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Comments
As satirical as it is... it
As satirical as it is... it is true. Taking care of someone who died is quite costly.
That was mean! Okay, I
That was mean! Okay, I know it's satire, so I won't kill you. :P When people start thinking about other people in that way... (paragraph 2) Oh wait, they kind of do! :(
It is very true that hurting oneself hurts other people. Does that mean that people are criminals for not taking care of themselves properly, or for harming themselves?
Well, in most cases, yes,
Well, in most cases, yes, although I'd much rather Osama go kill himself quietly in a cave somewhere than to plan massacres around the world.
Let me give another case: a debtor under massive liabilities loses her job. Distraught, she takes her own life. Who pays the debt? Society does. Who pays for her death? Her relatives and friends (emotionally and physically).
Suicide is an excuse,
Suicide is an excuse, really.
I don't debate that suicide
I don't debate that suicide is "the easy way out" of one's troubles, and possibly lacking in foresight, and hurts more people than solves problems, but will you all please try not to be so judgmental? You don't know the motivations, reasons, or situations that color people's actions. We are left behind to deal with the aftermath of suicides, but what the dead wanted in the first place was an escape. Have some compassion instead of contempt.
Escape for her is suffering
Escape for her is suffering for others. From an utilitarian standpoint, that was a selfishly-motivated desire.
there is no action one can
there is no action one can take that satisfies everyone. and we are all selfish.
Utilitarianism
Yes, there is.
Yes, I think rienv2 has a
Yes, I think rienv2 has a point. Suicide is highly stigmatized in this society (for some good reasons), but it is not an "easy way out" by any means. Someone who actually plans on going through with suicide has to think of their family members/friends/society's loss and of the fact that their plan is irreversible. It really does take a lot of thought and planning. I don't believe that any of us have come anywhere close to thinking about suicide's impact on other people as much as people who do commit suicide.
But, having gone through
But, having gone through such a process of deliberation and still making the wrong decision in the end--can we forgive them for that? Many people commit suicide to earn people's sympathies, but they often cause more pain than the little sympathy they may receive.
retard, people are past
retard, people are past caring what other people think of them when they commit suicide.
So why is that not their
So why is that not their fault?
People are responsible for
People are responsible for their actions, but to what extent I don't know. In my opinion, I think that we have no right to judge where most of the blame lies since we haven't been in their situation and don't know any of the details. Would you blame someone for committing suicide if they were in a Nazi concentration camp seeing humanity at its worst or being tortured? What about someone who's elderly and kills him/herself because they feel that they aren't of any use to society anymore, and that keeping them alive is just using up their family's (or government's) resources?
Life throws a person situations, but the only thing one can do is try to make the best decisions without complete knowledge of "what would happen if ____." We're all stuck in our world views and frame of reference.
Sometimes, people can be so depressed that the only thing they see is their situation; it couldn't possibly get better. An interesting study (somewhat related to this) that I heard about in psych last semester concluded that, if the stock market is going up, people in the US tend to predict that it will keep going up, whereas people in Asian cultures tend to predict that it will go down.
My original post was on the
My original post was on the costs of suicides by people with high potential and whose disappearance would cause much collateral damage, which describes the girl we saw well. Obviously when you're in the Nazi camps, you have lost all your friends and relatives to disease and war, and your only use in survival is to help the Nazi war machine, the circumstances are vastly different.
Like reinv2 says, people are
Like reinv2 says, people are selfish. Do you think people care about others when it comes to suicide? Cho Seung-Hui didn't. Neither did the Columbine killers. You commit suicide because you find no other means to live, and no real reason to live either. You can blame it on the person who commits suicide, but they won't really care.