The Philosophical Concept of Suicide as a Process Improvement Strategy

Before I begin to start talking about this, I already know there are some immediate responses to this that I'll hopefully get out of the way by addressing them first. It seems that no matter how hard you try to broach this subject, it always seems to fall into the same kind of responses, and honestly that's not really where I wanted to go with this. So let me get through some disclaimers right off the start to move this thought process forward.

First, this isn't a call for help or a warning or anything ridiculous like that. I don't need counseling or even "a friend". It's more a thought process that I've been analyzing for some time now, and honestly I haven't been able to figure out how to even attempt talking about it without someone turning it into an "issue" rather than a discussion.

I'll put the elephant right on the table, and the question to be asked is whether or not suicide can be seen as an actual positive mechanism for one's imposing choices for the future. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I honestly haven't come up with a lot of rationale for deciding against it. What I have discovered is that every time I have attempted to talk about it, I end up in a situation where either a therapist wants to commit you, or I find the responses to be somewhat hostile. (Bring it up on the Internet on a message board or in a chat area of a computer game, and you're likely to get a whole lot of people answering in an angry tone, actually goading you on to do it because somehow you've "bothered" them by bringing it up).

But here I am. My life really isn't going anywhere. I have a few friends, but that's about it. I don't date and haven't dated longer than...well, to be honest, I don't remember when the last time was. My job is really unimportant, and to be honest, I get the feeling sometimes that it's probably not going to last that long anyway with all the budget cuts and subsequent "need to justify positions" that goes on. I was hired on at the lowest pay grade I should have received, and I'm pretty much stuck there because I get the impression that HR thinks that people are lucky to be working, so why should they care? My writing careers is nonexistent, and I'm to the point now where I don't think it's ever going to happen. It's pretty much the only passion in my life, and when you have to treat your life goal as a "hobby" and people give you condescending smiles when you talk about your "career", well, you might get the idea of how that feels.

I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm just kind of not much of anything. I'm not important to anything or pretty much anybody. Nothing I do or don't do really makes a difference to anyone. If I was gone, no one would really be affected all that much, other than to think "oh yeah, him. Yeah, too bad he's gone. Wonder what's on TV tonight?"

To be honest, my life really doesn't have that much of a purpose. Oh sure, I could go the whole empowerment route and FIND a purpose, but that's never really worked for me. Living life has made me pretty cynical, and the more I've done things the more cynical I've become as more people have taken advantage of me, and I feel that my only real contribution to this planet is as a consumer of stuff to help enrich people who will get rich regardless of whether or not I'm here.

It's almost to the point where I'm more concerned with how and when I do it than whether or not I do it. Nothing's really worked to talk me out of it, and to be honest, nothing has really even tried. I keep thinking that there's going to be some significant moment where I walk outside and see the perfect sunrise and say, "okay, that makes sense now" but that never happens. I did see a really good movie once, but that just isn't the same.

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm the protagonist in Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes where I live in a world of sand that I can't escape, and even though the world around me looks like it might be interesting and fun, I just can't get there. I'm always stuck in the sand. Hell, I can't even get a car right now, which leaves me to having to rely on a very unreliable bus system just to get to work or the store, but of course, the bus doesn't go to the store, so I have to take a taxi just to get groceries, which then serves to knock down what little money I have even faster than it normally would.

So it leaves me wondering: Why not? I actually find myself looking more forward to sleeping at night than I do waking in the morning or doing anything else during the day. Someone once said that "the unexamined life is not worth living" but never really did analyze what happens after you examine that life and realize that there's really not anything there. Unfortunately, that Socrates never really did think all his arguments through. No wonder we don't hear much about him anymore these days.

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