I have often noticed that the "it gets better" crew, who dispense whatever little memes and then move on, have no skin in the game.
The reality might be much different if there were some accounting at the end. "It appears that this person continued to suffer another twenty-three years and then died joylessly. As such, you must spend the next twenty-three years in a miserable and unpleasant box. Oh, and you have to also endure people telling you that it is only temporary. Ta."
The unpleasant reality is that there are many situations which are untractable and the denial of their existence -- and the suffering inflicted -- largely serves to soothe those looking for a just world. We regularly call upon people to continue to be (and worse, be "up" about it) in circumstances where, were they occurring in some fuzzy animal, we would be moved to a grueling euthanasia with whatever rock came to hand.
Some situations are indeed intractable. That's why, for the physical ones, we have things like palliative care. I don't know what can be for psychological issues.
However, had you read the article, you would have noticed this short snippet:
> Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?,” published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later.
The question then becomes "What about those remaining 6%?"
Well, I don't know. Did they go through another, different crisis? Where they appropriately helped and supported following their first attempt?
And if nothing could actually be done for them, then we end up with the traditional trolley cart dilemma. 94% lives worth living saved vs 6% miserables lives.
Oh, I have seen that clip so many, many times. It's just about the first thing trotted out. I need not read that paragraph yet one more time, life is too long.
It ignores things like, "What number of those ninety-four just continued to be miserable?" They didn't kill themselves, but it doesn't mean that they were not still suffering. It might well mean that they were bludgeoned with the "just think of how devastating it will be for your family" bit until they submitted to a life of quiet desperation. It's not a measure of life being worth living at all.
Ask, rather than tell. We spend a tremendous amount of time telling, even yelling, over people who may say things we do not wish to hear. Rote responses appear on our lips and it is no coincidence that those responses are ideal for getting people out of our way, leaving them to puzzle over unanswerable questions like "How do you know it won't get better?" Nobody truly knows that, but would you bet on it? Bet on it enough to suffer consequences? We do not ask that, we say, "a permanent solution to a temporary problem."
The entire concept is surrounded by an interlocking complex of memes that very neatly steer us away from grappling with a thorny subject: the true suffering of others. That must be dismantled before we can begin to start gathering data.
Yes life is capable of fundamentally deeply sucking in ways most people are entirely oblivious to. There are things you can't unsee or unexperience. There are terrors that will never fully go away.
And unlike those fuzzy animals, you have the ability to meaningful adapt to them. You're equipped with a piece of hardware that makes an F35 look like a calculator. Even soldiers in the bleakest trenches of WWI had adaptation and survival mechanisms.
I have been struggling with depression for 10 years. Diagnosed and all. I was a wreck. A total wreck.
Now, I still don't know if I'm out of it. I don't' know that I ever will be. It's terrifying. I see patterns I wish were long gone creeping back all the time.
But I finally have lasting and enduring hope. And I've come to realize that all these times I wanted it all to end... I just wanted to stop suffering. At the time, death seemed to be the only way.
Litterature however seems to show most people who want to die actually just want to stop suffering. They simply don't see, or believe in, any other way than ending their lives.
Case in point, someone I know briefly worked at a palliative care facility, in Paris. The professor in charge there once told her something he had noticed, over the years.
Many people came in wanting to die. Probably most. We're talking people who had to literally carry their cancer tumor while taking a shower. Others weren't able to get up and walk at all.
However, once the whole medical goal switched from curing them to actually and honestly alleviating their pain as much as possible and making them comfortable, not a single one of them was in any hurry to end up their lives anymore.
Keeping in mind that these people still had their minds, or at least enough of it to appreciate being alive, I honestly think death, if it indeed shows to be the only solution for some, really isn't what most people in these situations actually want.
There are many more things that can be done, that most people not in the field cannot begin to imagine, to stop the pain and make whatever remains of their lives worth living, for them.
Euthanasia is cheaper. It's society's easy and inexpensive choice.
I am not qualified to say wether it should be allowed or not. But as a political choice, I really hope we do our best for these people before resorting to it.
I accept that many people have incurable illnesses which are either literally torturing them or slowly robbing them of everything they value.
The reason I am (slightly) against euthanasia despite this, is because I expect easy availability — to be clear, a culture where it is not even controversial rather than merely available lawfully — to also be world where it is easy for people who don’t fit that category being pressured into talking that path.
The reason I’m only slightly against is that I don’t feel confident in weighing the quantifiable decrease in suffering with the probability distribution of possible increases in needless death.
That, plus I recognise my argument is “that looks like a slippery slope”, where the real problem may well be that human behaviour isn’t what my imagination is telling me it is.
There is a difference between advocating for legalized euthanasia and advocating for a total and utter right to end one's own life at any point for any reason.
OP seemed to argue for the latter, and who you are replying to argued against the latter. Now you seem to say that they should not argue against the former, which they were not arguing against.
The problem is he jumped. He didn't have access to health professionals who will assess him before he could die. He wouldn't have jumped if he knew he could die in a more peaceful and controlled manner without shame. An euthanasia facility would have given him a second chance if it was properly maintained. They don't let you kill as you pass the door. They will make you wait, have you try things to help you before you could sign off the paper to die.
I don't see why it should be illegal. it's like being against addiction control centres.
> “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”