Suicide

Robin Williams and Frederick Nietzsche and Roberto Wissai

Writing the way as I've been doing prevents me from doing what Robin Williams just did to himself. If you start thinking of taking your own life, get a dog, adopt an orphan, or volunteer to help war refugees. Do whatever to bring peace to your tortured soul. But don't ever, ever think of killing yourself. Nietzsche didn't do it even though he had to live with pains for decades  brought on by syphilis. He eventually went mad because of the disease. He couldn't read or write anymore though occasionally he poignantly remarked to whoever who would listen that he did write books. Maybe the sufferings helped him have so many insights about humans. Freud himself said he learned a lot from Nietzsche. So did so many others. Only a stupid and ignorant pontificator chided me for admiring Nietzsche when he didn't know a thing about N. He pontificated that I must blaze my own path! He obviously didn't know that in thinking and the arts, influences are galore. Very rarely does any thinker or artist do anything in a vacuum. The whole human enterprises and cultural and scientific advances are built on what went before. I lost all respect for the pathetic pontificator because of his sheer ignorance and yet he loved to pontificate on just about anything. In terms of book knowledge, he is a twit and a nitwit and is not fit to hold my sandals and something else while I take a leak. 

Nietzsche had several penetrating remarks about suicide:

1. The thought of suicide has helped many pass through difficult nights.
2. If you could think of the why, you would come up with the how.
3. If you look into the abyss long enough, the abyss will look back at you.

In case you don't know about it yet, there is a gene in the brain that's directly connected with stress. If the stress is overwhelming, and the gene does not function well, the thought of suicide becomes a torturous obsession. And only suicide would bring the sufferer peace. That's why certain drugs have warnings that if thoughts of suicide arise as a consequence of taking the drugs, the patients must stop using the drugs at once and consult a doctor. Suicide has nothing to do with weak will, but everything with gene and stress. 

I know the subject and issue of suicide very well. It runs in the family (Hemingway and Wittgenstein, for example)  which is another proof that it is gene related. Most of the shock troops of ISIS have death wish and suicidal tendencies, making them fierce fighters. That's my own unsupported hypothesis. I dare not conduct a field research. I am not brave enough. 

If I am not mistaken, only Man knowingly embraces suicide. Mass drownings or falling off the cliff by lemmings or beachings by whales are a consequence of neurological disorders, not a conscious act of choice. But you could argue that when we conclude gene and severe stress are  responsible for human acts of suicide, then there must also be neurological disorder involved, and not an act of choice. But then I could argue back what about high risk behaviors like sky diving, cliff diving, bare hands rock climbing, race car driving, binge drinking, and drug taking, they cannot be all related to stress and gene. Aren't these conscious acts of choice and death wish behaviors?

By the way, contrary to what the suicide takers think, family members and close friends may grieve over your death for a while (months at most), but they will go on living as if nothing happened. Life is for the living, not the dead. It's stupid to commit suicide in order to punish the loved ones. Remember, the life you save must be your own. Nobody else would value your life as much as you do. That is a fact of life, and death. Nobody says living is easy, but then it takes wisdom to make it fun and worthwhile. It takes all of my 65 years of going through pain to arrive at these insights all by myself. Likewise, it takes wisdom and an understanding of ethology to realize that polygamy is good for society. That's why it has been practiced, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly for tens of thousands of years, if not longer. There are sound economic and biological reasons why human females are attracted to men of power and money (power and money tend to go hand in hand), just like in some mammal groupings (lions, wolves), dominant males have exclusive mating rights. Subordinate males would have to do so on the sly, otherwise they would risk severe punishments. Those humans who decry against the practice of polygamy in the name of equal rights and feminism are just plainly ignorant and don't know they are ignorant. 

Thus Spoke Wissai