Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, contemplating jumping off a bridge in It’s a Wonderful Life
2,300 words
I think about suicide about once a week. I don’t mean that I am doing any serious planning. Nor am I whiling away the hours spinning the cylinder on my revolver. It’s just that, in one way or another, suicide enters my mind on a regular basis as a possibility, as a question, or as a social phenomenon.
Lately I’ve been thinking about it as a result of some unwelcome news. I found out that two people I knew casually, both of whom lived in a southeastern city I used to call home, had taken what my mother used to call “the coward’s way out” (more on that appellation shortly). One of them chose a pretty unusual method: He drove his sportscar at high speed into the wall of an underground parking garage. The impact killed him instantly. I’m not sure how the other fellow ended it all, but the news was a shock to me. Although I barely knew him, he was a smart, good-looking, well-liked guy who seemed to have every reason to go on living. His distraught friends created a Webpage in his honor on which, in addition to praising him, they also frankly expressed the pain and bewilderment his suicide had caused them.
These weren’t my first suicides. In the same southeastern city, I knew a man – universally loved and full of humor and good will – who shot himself after his wife died of cancer. And there was another acquaintance, just down the road, who locked himself in his room, swallowed the barrel of a Mauser machine pistol, and blew out the back of his head. His roommates didn’t find him for several days.
I went to junior high with a girl, of whom I was quite fond, who shot herself about a year after my family had moved to another city. Reportedly, following a trivial argument with her parents, she had marched upstairs to their bedroom and shot herself with her father’s revolver (which he thought he had successfully concealed in a dresser drawer). Plus, as I’ve reported in another essay, my grandfather killed himself when I was eight years old. My parents told me at the time that he’d had a heart attack, and I only found out the truth when I was in my thirties. When I confronted my father with what I’d discovered, he answered (with the gallows humor that was typical of him), “Well, he shot himself in the heart.” (And indeed he had: with a shotgun, pulling the trigger with his big toe.)
Oddly enough, however, what really got me thinking about suicide in recent days was the news about the death of the 22-year-old son of actress Deborah Rush, whose work I’ve always enjoyed. She played the stepmother on Strangers with Candy, a “cult series” which is a guilty pleasure of mine. Rush married the son of Walter Cronkite and together they had two children, both boys. One of these, Peter, committed suicide in his dorm room just a few days before graduating from Colby College. The news made The New York Times, People magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and other news outlets. On its Website, Colby published heartfelt recollections from Peter Cronkite’s many friends – none of whom seemed to be able to shed any light on why this poor kid would take his own life. Everyone described him as happy, busy, and outgoing. (The suicide occurred in 2015, but I only recently learned about it.)
This is one of the big, bewildering things about suicide – especially when it’s the young pulling the trigger. Many of these cases are frankly inexplicable. And such cases seem to be increasingly common.
Only a few times in my life have I ever thought seriously about committing suicide. It was always – no surprise here – when I was very depressed and entertaining the idea that maybe everything would be better if I’d never been born. Only once did I come really close: For a few minutes, more than a decade ago, I lay in bed with the barrel of a vintage Second World War-era Walther P38 pressed against my head, the hammer cocked and my finger on the trigger. (If I’m going to go, I had reasoned, I’m going to use the very best.) In a moment, I’ll reveal why I’m still here to tell the tale.
Now, lest you jump to the conclusion that there is something wrong with me, I think that such thoughts are perfectly normal – for a person such as myself. I have longed believed that all highly intelligent, thoughtful people have contemplated suicide at some point in their lives, probably more than once. I doubt, however, that I will ever act on such thoughts (for reasons I shall also reveal anon). So – please – don’t post anything in the comments section trying to talk me in off the ledge. There is really no need.
The reason the intelligent and the thoughtful consider suicide ought to be very obvious: They see more of what is wrong with the world, and with life in general. My readers are discerning people, and they know that presently there is more wrong with the world than right (and perhaps it has always been so). We are living in the inverted world, where everything is ass backwards. Everything vile is celebrated and everything noble is attacked and despised. I need hardly compile examples, as my readers are far too familiar with what I mean. I have actually attempted on occasion to list all the things that are falling apart in our Western world. The experience is overwhelming and a guaranteed recipe for depression (and possibly suicidal thoughts). Is it any wonder that so many feel so hopeless? And, to be more specific, is it any wonder that so many white men feel this way, and that their thoughts turn to ending it all? For suicide in the West is primarily a white male phenomenon. As to the youngsters who take their own lives, who can blame them for wanting to opt out of the world their parents and grandparents have made?
When you sum everything up, it almost seems like the burden of proof is on the man who recommends we not choose suicide. So, let’s examine the case against.
As I mentioned earlier, my mother always described suicide as “the coward’s way out.” I recently acquired the CD release of an old LP treasure of mine from childhood: Disney’s The Haunted Mansion. This record was released to commemorate the ride at Disneyworld (which I visited when I was seven or so). At one point on our spooky tour of the Mansion, we find a corpse with a noose around his neck, dangling from a chandelier. Quoth Disney’s raven: “He chose the coward’s way out! The coward’s way out!” (I suspect this would be deemed too scary – and moralistic – for today’s kids.) This interpretation of suicide is quite old, but is there any truth to it?
I imagine so. Certainly, there are cases of people who have committed suicide over problems they could have solved, with a little tenacity, or feelings they could have overcome. My grandfather committed suicide over financial troubles, and I’ve always wondered if it was because he couldn’t bear to face my grandmother and tell her the truth (she had ice in her veins, you see). But consider some other examples. If a captured spy commits suicide rather than reveal secrets to the enemy under torture, this is hardly an act of cowardice. I’ve always imagined that I would kill myself (eventually) if I were ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Again, this is not cowardice. I am simply unwilling to allow myself to reach a point where I have lost my mind and my dignity and have become a burden to others.
Consider also the suicide of Dominique Venner in 2013. This was, again, hardly an act of a coward who could not face up to the state of the world or the state of his health. It was the act of a patriot who – in addition to being 78 years old and ailing – “was trying to awaken the people of France” (quoting Marine Le Pen). On the other hand, I do certainly think that if one of our twenty-something Counter-Currents readers committed suicide over despair at “the way things are,” this would be senseless. And it does smack of cowardice (and self-pity). Why not stick around and fight the way the things are? (This is a point to which I’ll return in a moment.) In general, however, “the coward’s way out” is far too simplistic a generalization about suicide.
Some philosopher – I cannot remember who it was – once argued that the choice of suicide rests on a bizarre sort of contradiction. In choosing suicide, one is really acting out of a love of life. One behaves as if one wants to exchange a bad situation for a better one. It is as if one says, “I will be better if I just kill myself.” The “as if” is crucially important here because, of course, if anyone thought this way consciously and explicitly, they would never go through with the act. Needless to say, it is ridiculous to think that you are healing yourself, helping yourself, or making your life, situation, or experience “better” through suicide. Quite obviously, suicide puts an end to all life and experience (for you, at least). Nevertheless, it really does seem as if some people are choosing suicide as a form of self-improvement.
And here is another philosophical take: The novelist Walker Percy argued somewhere that the contemplation of suicide can be liberating. Consider: If you know that you are perfectly capable of going through with the act of taking your own life – of annihilating yourself – then how can anything else in life phase you? You have already faced up to the fact of your own death – indeed, you have established that causing your own death is a viable option for you. If you are capable of this sort of choice, then surely you are capable of facing whatever challenges life throws at you. This way of looking at things not only shows that those thoughts of suicide intelligent and thoughtful people often have are not without utility, but also serves as an argument against suicide (at least in certain circumstances). Again, if I can face up to – even choose – my own death, then surely I can handle living. It’s a clever argument, but it has never been decisive in my own thinking about suicide.
One of my Facebook friends shared a meme that read, “Suicide doesn’t end the pain, it just passes it on.” This is a bit cloying, but in fact it is quite true. In a great many cases, it is hard to sympathize with a man who kills himself, because the act just seems incredibly selfish. Once, years ago, I flew into San Francisco, and my friends (who lived in Berkeley) were more than an hour late picking me up. Traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge had been completely halted by police because some man was threatening to jump (and was eventually talked down). “What a selfish bastard!” I thought. And I’m sure those were the thoughts of everyone else affected. Whatever this man’s problems were, he didn’t seem to give a damn that he was impacting the lives of thousands of commuters.
But this kind of self-centered self-pity, and disregard of others, is characteristic of many suicides. Indeed, all of the cases of suicide I discussed earlier – those that have touched my own life in some way – were cases where the suicide was unnecessary, even inexplicable, and caused tremendous, avoidable pain to those who were left behind. This is one of the primary reasons I didn’t pull the trigger that day when I had the P38 pressed against my head: I knew that my death would hurt too many people. I couldn’t do that to them – and when so many stand to be hurt so badly, suicide seems like a callous and selfish choice.
There is a further reason I have not chosen suicide (and would not choose it): I just have too much to live for – too much to do. My life is filled with meaning, and it comes from the conviction that I devote myself to things that are of vital importance. I am speaking, of course, about my devotion to the cause that brings my readers to this Website: the cause of saving our race and our culture. If they are lost, then all is lost. (I am assuming I don’t need to explain what I mean by this; if you require an explanation, you can find it here.) The realization of our predicament imposes an enormous obligation on us – on those of us who are awake. Given the enormity of our plight, I realize that my own personal problems are meaningless. And I realize that I must work for this cause, without ceasing. I realize that I may not “retire” – and that suicide would be an unforgiveable dereliction of duty.
I hate to sound like an existentialist, but if your life lacks meaning, then make it meaningful. If you despair at the state of the world, then fight those forces that threaten to destroy your spirit. If your convictions are mine, then lift yourself out of your petty preoccupations through devotion – in whatever way you are able – to the only cause really worth fighting for in the world today. All are welcome and all are needed. Until we have won, no one has the right to opt out, by suicide or by any other means.
Of course, once we have won, you can do whatever you like.
23 Comments
(I remember the day several years ago when I signed up for Counter-Currents. I arrived here through Google search, and spent a couple of hours clicking around. I was astonished by what I saw but remained uncommited. Then I clicked on a link that took me to a Jef Costello article, and I started reading. At about 2 paragraphs down the text I stopped, searched for the site’s RSS link and stuck it into my feed reader. Online marketing people call this kind of thing a “conversion”.)
In certain situations choosing death brings dishonor – it’s selfish, or the coward’s way out. In other situations choosing life brings dishonor, when it entails debasement or compromise with evil. So honor is the pivot around which all arguments for and against suicide revolve. Choose honor, problem solved. (The problem of suicide. Not the problem of honor.)
I’m glad I brought you here! Please stick around, no matter what.
Suicide requires courage. It is never an act of cowardice. Irrationality, maybe.
It is a thought provoking issue and one that is difficult to assess with rationality when it is an action that is so often undertaken when an individual is at their most irrational.
I read that a large number of suicides are drunk at the time, if they’d have fallen asleep an hour earlier they’d more than likely avoid adding to the statistics.
Excellent paper. We don’t know all the “Laws of the universe,” and not knowing them, *we really don’t know* what happens to someone *after* he commits suicide. Maybe it’s *not* just the end, like oblivion. The Catholic Church (of which I am not a member) maintains that people who commit suicide go to Hell. This could be true, nevertheless. (Just because a stupid person says something, that doesn’t make it untrue!)
Many people who try to kill themselves report that they are extremely glad they didn’t succeed.
Anyone who is depressed should tell his doctor. There are many effective anti-depressants on the market, and your primary care physician could prescribe them, you probably don’t even need to see a shrink. To all the people who read this: We need you!
Very good post; I’m in full agreement about the importance of living with a sense of purpose and meaning that is beyond one’s self. It is the only way to avoid the black hole of nihilism.
As I see it, approaches to the existential condition (the absurdity of mortal sentient existence) can be split between Heroic Pessimism (Nietzsche, Camus, Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy) and Non-Heroic Pessimism (Schopenhauer; anti-natalists like David Benatar & Thomas Ligotti). Both sides have strong arguments.
Too long to go into here, but I find the philosophical position of anti-natalism to be a formidable one. One can’t just dismiss its arguments out of hand. IMO, a major philosophical piece needs to be written which examines & critiques anti-natalist arguments (in the widest, most general sense of philosophical assumputions & logical consistency), and then also counters with a more pointed, WN perspective (vis-à-vis evolutionary sociology), the WN angle really being a phenotype of basic human in-group preferences.
Durkheim talked about the “collective effervescence” that gives our lives meaning. The mission of the Dissident Right is one such form of this, and is likely a primary one for many CC readers (as Jef notes.)
WHAT THE FUTURE PORTENDS —
One irony of improved medical science is that we are all living longer and not dying of heart attacks and such, which inadvertently means more of us will live long enough to say hello to Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Now, in all likelihood, Alzheimer’s will be conquered within 50 years time, but short of that, or if it (like the ravages of cancer) cannot be eradicated, then I expect more liberal views of euthanasia to emerge in these end-of-life contexts.
Similarly, if/when gene tech eventually gets to the point where we can choose immortality (or, similarly, elect to have our children born immortal, with non-aging cells and the like), then the specter of suicide will be thrust upon us all. Why? Because the prospect of living forever goes against our entire evolutionary biological structure. Our entire way-of-being, of enframing things, works against the background knowledge that we will someday die, that our time is limited. The arc of life, its ultimate telos, is towards death. In fact, it is the brute fact of imminent death which provides life with its value (life being the concatenation of things + experiences + ideas + time, processed through a subjective value-ordering schema.)
It is the finitude of life, not its infinitude, that provides us with meaning in our day-to-day lives. In ordinary language, this day-to-day sort of ‘meaning’ is predicated on establishing the relative value of things. Both consciously and largely unconsciously, we prioritize things, often within a context of time constraint. I prefer A over C, but B over A. So, we make and operate under implicit lists. I look at the rows of Great Novels on my bookshelf. I see a lesser Chandler novel and the The Brothers Karamazov. From the perspective of “These are the books I need to read before I die”, I prioritize the reading of The Brothers Karamazov as more important than the lesser Chandler novel. If I were immortal, the need for this prioritization would largely be moot.
The elements of Culture that are worth a damn often consist of man attempting to make a mark, create a great work of art, write a great book, compose a great song; to influence people and ‘live on’ after his death (a form of cultural ‘immortality’ one could say.) This is related to our hard-wired biological urge to have kids, to reproduce a version of ourselves and carry our genes into the future.
But for any one individual to be able to live forever… this strikes me as a horror show. In ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’ (1973), Bernard Williams points out the extreme boredom that would necessarily ensue if one could live forever. Whether it’s living 200 years, or 2000 years, eventually human consciousness (as it exists) would find such a prolonged existence insufferable. (In William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, some of the rich elites, the only ones in society with tech-based immortality, eventually off themselves for such reasons.)
Only in some hypothesized transhumanism might consciousness be modified/adapted/tinkered with to be happy and content with the prospect of immortality, but that is doubtful if, like me, you side with the New Mysterian view of consciousness (Colin McGinn, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers) over the prevailing materialist/functionalist, “brain is meat & consciousness is an epiphenomenon” types like Daniel Dennett. I used to be an uber-optimistic proponent of transhumanism, but I’m not today. Of course, I vacillate every few years between the New Mysterian vs. Materialist views, which really dictates how I perceive these abstract questions.
Today, I feel that, in the end, there is really no way to ‘make rational’ the sheer irrational absurdity that is sentient existence. Now, this doesn’t diminish my energy and commitment towards the WN cause; in fact it may even strengthen it, if only to make it a better world for tomorrow’s white children, whose future is currently under siege. That being said, when pressed on it, I have to concur with Macbeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Durkheim discusses collective effervescence in Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), a foundational text in sociology of religion. If you Google “Durkheim effervescence” or “collective effervescence”, you’ll find a ton of articles on it.
RE deep ecology’s Scandinavian roots (which sounds very interesting): I just did some searching on it, and there’s a collection of essays titled Wisdom in the Open Air: The Norwegian Roots of Deep Ecology, which begins with Peter Wessel Zapffe’s essay “The Last Messiah” (1933). Zappfe was a seminal anti-natalist writer and this was his most influential essay.
I had the wrong link in my first reply.
Durkheim discusses collective effervescence in Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), a foundational text in sociology of religion. If you Google “Durkheim effervescence” or “collective effervescence”, you’ll find a ton of articles on it.
RE deep ecology’s Scandinavian roots (which sounds very interesting): I just did some searching on it, and there’s a collection of essays titled Wisdom in the Open Air: The Norwegian Roots of Deep Ecology, which begins with Peter Wessel Zapffe’s essay “The Last Messiah” (1933). Zappfe was a seminal anti-natalist writer and this was his most influential essay.
” I have to concur with Macbeth.”
Macbeth utters this mournful dirge only after learning of his wife’s suicide. Then hearing that the enemy has been sighted, his mood immediately changes: ” Arm, arm and out …Ring the alarum bell. Blow wind, come wrack, At least we’ll die with harness on our back.”
Macbeth, Act 5. scene 5.
Pessimistic 19th-C philosopher Eduard Von Hartmann thought that life sucks, there is no afterlife, and no hope that science will improve things. Conclusion: we should all top ourselves.
He didn’t mean individual suicide but that the human race would opt for a collective drinking of the Kool-Aid when they finally recognized how right he was. (He meant the civilized races. That left an interesting problem: what to do about the aboriginal races? Well, they would have to be exterminated by the enlightened ones first. Cute, huh?)
Problem. Wouldn’t nature via evolutionary pressure just give rise to another intelligent, sentient species? Solution: we have to eliminate ALL life on the planet, not just Man.
OK, but what about life on other worlds, other star systems? Tricky right? Von Hartmann’s final solution was that we should stick around until scientists had worked out how to annihilate the entire universe.
How a 19th-C thinker imagined science would ever accomplish that goal I have no idea but I recall that when the Large Hadron Collider was investigating the Higgs boson there were scare stories in the tabloids about the physicists inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow us all up. No, we were reassured, the energies used in the investigation were too small. But doesn’t that suggest that some future mad scientist could finally achieve Von Hartmann’s sweet dream?
I’ve thought about it abstractly more recently. Got dna results and I’m only about 3/4 white (the rest mostly native). Makes me realize that I will always be between worlds. Can’t relate to the sheel-tier people, older folks just look down on me, too white for non-whites, but too “spicy” for whites. I am a mongrel with a deep solidarity with this movement and a great horror at the possibility of white extinction, but realistically I will probably never have people in my life with these views; stuck in Clownworld…
But I must fight, I must prepare for the worst, so at least I may help my pure-bred brothers defeat our destruction.
The gods envy humans, Achilles said, because the gods cannot die.
Indeed.
And as Seneca said
‘sometimes even to live is an act of courage’.
Here´s a practical suggestion: in WN, suicide is considered as cowardice because you´re supposed to use your readiness to die for a direct confrontation with the enemy -> so here a suggestion for those who don´t have the nerve to go to die in direct confrontation with the enemy: commit social suicide instead (first) : you can always start posting all explicit WN positions over the social media (pro-White, against White Genocide, there are only two genders, don´t use artifical gender-pronouns, jews copntrol the media etc.). The system will see to kill you, i.e. to remove necessary resources for life (job, bank account, drivers´ license etc etc.), no worries, you will die: but you exposed the enemy first, you forced his hand to show his anti-constitutional, anti-freedom, anti-decmocracy behavior.
So if you want to die but don´t have the nerve to die as a warrior, there is something useful and valuable you can do for the cause even without direct physical fight.
By my estimate half the us population is on some sort of legal or illegal drug to get through life. IMHO that’s a type of suicide too.
I thought about suicide as at tall and skinny teen with a bad complexion. I started lifting weights at 18, put on 20 lbs. and looked like a football player. Even so, after that a few times in my twenties I thought about pulling the trigger. Rejection by a girl with whom I was in love, etc. Crap like that.
Now that I’m much older, and fighting my weight like everyone else, I cling to life and value every minute I have left. Based on my health (good) and my family history (long lived people) I think I have another twenty productive years and I intend to make the most of them. Now that I have figured out how the world works, why pull the trigger? I intend to make the most of my hard won wisdom and insight.
Fight. Fight. Goddamn it, FIGHT!
Rather than the expression of high intelligence, I personally think that suicide is the expression of major depressive disorder (a partially inherited disease with little link to intelligence). Have you thought about trying transcranial magnetic therapy, Jeff? It worked for me with no negative side effects, and I was possibly even more cynical than you about psychiatry before trying it: it cannot be question of placebo.
As to the qualification of suicide as a coward’s way out, the statement sounds unnecessarily callous and cruel, but that’s exactly what someone who has never experienced debilitating clinical depression would think.
An interesting article. I have enough connections, but will not bore people with them.
That said, I am posting to recommend a short work by the superinr French existentialist, of course I mean Albert Camus.
His (relatively) short essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, has (or is) a powerful argument against suicide. Strongly recommended.
Suicide is murder, are you really the person you want to kill first?
Suicide is a violation of dharma, for which you will be punished in the hereafter.
God gave you a race to finish, and some may only limp to the finish line, it doesn’t matter. But do not quit.
A recent article titled “What’s Wrong With White Men?” touched on the nihilistic nature of White men, and their disproportionate rates of suicide when compared to non-Whites. The articles states that White men have a predisposed need for meaning, in which the status quo neglects. Therefore, creating a vacuum for nihilism within the White male’s psyche…
https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2018/07/whats-wrong-with-white-men.html
“Deeply lost in the night. Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night.
All around people are asleep. It’s just play-acting, an innocent self-deception that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets;
in reality, they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly.
And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by burnishing a branded stick from the brushwood pile beside you.
Why are you watching?
Someone must watch, it is said.
Someone must be there.”
Yes yes, I know, (((Kafka))), but even a broken clock….