[diMaggio]

I might repeat a concept or two already mentioned. I was just typing up my personal view regarding the topic-question. I hope you don't mind.
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First off: There is no universal right and wrong. The universe doesn't care about human conventions.
Also it depends on what kind of right and wrong we're talking about here.
There's the right and wrong defined by a group of people and then there's the right and wrong as defined by an individual.

So if you're asking yourself if an action is "right", you can either ask yourself how this action is considered by any particular group, or you can ask yourself if you think it's "right".
In the context of the group it doesn't matter if what it defines as "right" is the most correct way of measuring actions, because what the group thinks is right IS the definition of "right" (for actions within the group).
I'm not saying there might not be an underlying, good reason behind the group's decision, but just that you needn't think any further if you're weighing your actions against the group's definition of what is right.
Either your actions fall within the group's "rightness", or they don't.

Now if you're trying to decide for yourself if an action is right, then it'll be a lot harder to establish.
Because what I consider to be right doesn't necessarily have to be the same as what you'd consider to be right.
And my definition isn't any more correct than yours and vice versa.

The only reason why e.g. a rapist and murderer doesn't get his way, even though he might think his actions are right, is just because the larger group (society) might've reached the consensus that it's not right.
And thus they enforce their definition of "right" on the rapist and murderer.
If there were a community of rapists and murderers and you had an individual amongst them who thought raping and murdering is wrong and who tried to stop them from doing so, then they (murderers and rapists) would enforce their will on him. No difference really.*

So what is right and what is wrong ultimately lies in the eye of the beholder.
It only becomes a potential problem if you're living within a group that has come to another consensus. Otherwise is doesn't matter to anyone but yourself.

*Of course raping and murdering wouldn't really sustain life for very long and such a civilisation would die off pretty quickly.
So it stands to reason that only if a majority of people are against "anti-life behaviour" will they survive and their sense of this kind of "right and wrong" with them.
Therefore, it's not that most people don't murder other people because it's universally "right", but because humanity wouldn't continue to exist otherwise. It happens to be a trait that (unsurprisingly) sustains life, whereas murdering doesn't. Ergo most people who survive think murder is wrong.

Is it right to kill yourself?
From the standpoint of group A: No
From the standpoint of group B: Yes
.
.
.
From your standpoint: ?
From my standpoint: There is no right or wrong, it's MY life. I decide at any given moment. And at the moment I can't conceive that I'd ever want to stop my stream of mind.

But as others have said: You better be sure about your decision, especially the terminal one, as that's obviously a one-way street. You can always live a little more and see if it might get better in a way, but you can't ever die just a "little" and then get back from that. Once you're game over, it stays over.
Me personally, I wouldn't kill myself, because being dead is final and I can never change my mind, not even after a million years. ( Yep, not a believer in any kind of unverifiable afterlife. Why risk it? That sounds like a pretty bad bet to me. But I digress. :P )
Being alive though means you can do anything you're able to. And sooner or later you'll still die, so why end it even sooner? You'll never know how things can/will change and what you might forego otherwise.
So I think my view is pretty practical: Continue drinking from the bottle, or just empty the bottle into the sink now? I don't want to waste the contents of the bottle, so I'll keep drinking, no matter what.

Now, if you'd ask me: why drink at all if it's going to be empty sooner or later anyways?
Well that's something else and has to do with finding your own purpose in life.
But that's another topic.^^

[followthehippos]

	Originally Posted by Loneliness To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You guys are wonderful..

Yes, quite insightful aye? Helpful too, right? ..

[Loneliness]

	Originally Posted by diMaggio To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Continue drinking from the bottle, or just empty the bottle into the sink now?

The drink is horrible.

[diMaggio]

	Originally Posted by Loneliness To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The drink is horrible.

Then you have to change the drink. The drink might change by itself by fortunate circumstances, but that isn't a guarantee.

It's kind of like with evolution. It's not nature actively having her fingers in how biological life progresses, but a passive process of unsuited forms of life just dying off.
Therefore evolution takes a looooooong time, whereas active interventions are much faster. Just look at humans and technology.

Or a better analogy yet: If you aimlessly drift along with your ship in the big sea of life you might end up on a nice shore, but it's absolutely no guarantee and surely not that likely. The reason for this is that the number of shores that fits within our human parameters of "a nice shore" is a lot smaller than the ones that don't.
Therefore, to arrive at such a shore you have to take control of the helm and actively steer the ship to such a shore.
It might not be easy and you might have to fight fierce storms and battle with other ships along the way. But if you have a purpose, a destination, which you want to reach; if you're determined and can perservere, then you WILL reach that shore sooner or later.

When you finally weathered the difficulties of arriving there you'll be a little bit more hardened and have valuable experience for reaching the next shore you've set your eyes on.

Never let the fire go out, if it's small, rekindle it. If you don't know how, then research and reflection is the way to go.
The key here is to take hold of the steering wheel; to look out to the sea with a sense of determination and to perservere, no matter what.
All that you need to reach out with your hand and touch the wheel, is an initial spark.
If you didn't have it yet, you might just lack information, knowledge or understanding.
Fortunately that can be helped by research, reflection and introspection.

Just take some hours and ask yourself why you do what you do, why you don't do what you don't do. It sounds silly but asking oneself such simple questions is like going around the foundation of your house and checking if everything is as stable as it should be.
Why do you continue to live? Why didn't you kill yourself already? What is it about life that you like? Why do you like these things? How would a life look that you'd like?
Just ask youself these questions and break them down to ever smaller parts, so as to get to the lower-most layer of your mind. Then you can find out about your real motivations, your real principles of life. Rebuild your foundation with this kind of reflection (dosed with a good amount of fresh input, i.e. reading up on new information).
Once rebuilt you can see more clearly what you really want and then you'll be able to determine both an abstract, perennial purpose for your life which defines your day-to-day principles of life and which gets you out of bed in the morning, and one or more concrete purposes which can be actualized by actively working towards them; something that lies in the future and can be achieved/reached.

K, I'm not really good with translating my thoughts accurately, but I hope this was understandable enough.
And sorry for any kind of sudden tl;dr I might've induced due to the length of my ramblings.
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[Autumnleaf]

	Originally Posted by Loneliness To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Why is it worth to live? I would like you to answer this one too.

Two reasons I can think of.

1. Failed suicide attempts aren't pretty or fun to live with. There are lots of very ugly screwed up people who tried and failed to kill themselves.

2. You don't know what happens to you after you do it. Maybe all the religious and karma ideas are silly. We don't know they are wrong and they almost universally say bad things happen to souls that come from suicide people.

[Frays]

I am probably reiterating what others have said, but in the grand convention of things, "right" and "wrong" are human concepts and not absolute.

Otherwise, "right" and "wrong" are relative.

I am going to address the answer to you personally, because I think the general ideas of "right" and "wrong" have been defined already.

"Why is it wrong to kill yourself? And why is it worth it to live?"

It's not, and it depends.

Nobody can tell you why your life is worth living for you. Nobody, but yourself, has experienced your life and no matter how similar lives can be, experience is not comparable. Nobody else has ever lived your life - worth is value, and value is relative to the person; as such, nobody will be able to tell you exactly *why*. The only person who can determine what the "why's" are for his life is the person himself, because only he has the answers.

Everyone will have a different answer to "why" they think their own life is worth living.

[diMaggio]

	Originally Posted by Autumnleaf To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	[...] 2. You don't know what happens to you after you do it. Maybe all the religious and karma ideas are silly. We don't know they are wrong and they almost universally say bad things happen to souls that come from suicide people.

My take on the afterlife (esp. heaven):
They say that after death you can get to heaven.
The problem is, that heaven is much more desirable than living one's mortal life.
Therefore it could be assumed that people would think: Why bother living if there's an eternal heaven waiting for me?
So the danger of promising people a glorious eternal afterlife is people trying to kill themselves in order to get there immediately.

For this reason we had to come up with a clause to prevent people from stupidly doing that (i.e. suicide) in great numbers, or else we would run out of people pretty fast.
How could we both promise a glorious eternal afterlife AND prevent people from taking a shortcut to heaven at the same time?
Oh, I know how! Let's just tell them that it's a sin to commit suicide and that it would land them in hell instead!
And since eternal torture and pain in hell is waaaay more undesirable than any problems in their mortal life, they'll think twice before committing suicide.
Problem solved.
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[Autumnleaf]

Originally Posted by diMaggio To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

My take on the afterlife (esp. heaven): They say that after death you can get to heaven. The problem is, that heaven is much more desirable than living one's mortal life. Therefore it could be assumed that people would think: Why bother living if there's an eternal heaven waiting for me? So the danger of promising people a glorious eternal afterlife is people trying to kill themselves in order to get there immediately. For this reason we had to come up with a clause to prevent people from stupidly doing that (i.e. suicide) in great numbers, or else we would run out of people pretty fast. How could we both promise a glorious eternal afterlife AND prevent people from taking a shortcut to heaven at the same time? Oh, I know how! Let's just tell them that it's a sin to commit suicide and that it would land them in hell instead! And since eternal torture and pain in hell is waaaay more undesirable than any problems in their mortal life, they'll think twice before committing suicide. Problem solved. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It could be that religions around the world came up with the same solution. It could also be that the same God that they all pray to isn't pleased with suicide. We don't know.

[Nikonman]

A very good friend of mine killed himself last week. I am shocked and deeply saddened by his death, and particularly that he took his own life. No one knows why, other than depression. He was great guy, well liked throughout his small community and highly admired by his peers. He was, however, alone. He had mentioned to me a few times that he simply could not find a good match in his community. I don't know how much, if any, that his lack of a mate played a role in his suicide. I do know I wish I could just shake him right now. And I wish I'd talked to him more. We live a couple of hours apart, so we seldom saw each other after grad school and did not speak by phone much over recent years. But I can still hear his laugh like it was yesterday, and I know from talking to mutual friends that he has left a whole community aching, wondering what the hell happened and what they could have done differently.

I don't have any problem with someone picking suicide over a painful but certain death in the near future. Someone suffering from terminal cancer, for example. But for someone like my friend, I have a very hard time understanding it and feel like it is a selfish act that will impact others for years to come. My friend's nephews, for example, were very close to him and it may take them years to deal with his suicide.

I've read articles about survivors of suicide attempts, and the vast majority said they regretted it, literally within seconds of the attempt. They just did not know what else to do at that point in their lives, so they pulled the trigger, jumped off the bridge or slit their wrists. It was eye-opening to me to read that so many of them regretted their attempt, not regret that they failed, but that they ever attempted suicide.

I'm hurting over my friend's suicide. I'm sure it is substantially worse for his nephews, parents and siblings. For an incredibly good guy, he inflicted a lot of pain on those who loved him after he pulled that trigger.

[Loneliness]

Originally Posted by Nikonman To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

A very good friend of mine killed himself last week. I am shocked and deeply saddened by his death, and particularly that he took his own life. No one knows why, other than depression. He was great guy, well liked throughout his small community and highly admired by his peers. He was, however, alone. He had mentioned to me a few times that he simply could not find a good match in his community. I don't know how much, if any, that his lack of a mate played a role in his suicide. I do know I wish I could just shake him right now. And I wish I'd talked to him more. We live a couple of hours apart, so we seldom saw each other after grad school and did not speak by phone much over recent years. But I can still hear his laugh like it was yesterday, and I know from talking to mutual friends that he has left a whole community aching, wondering what the hell happened and what they could have done differently. I don't have any problem with someone picking suicide over a painful but certain death in the near future. Someone suffering from terminal cancer, for example. But for someone like my friend, I have a very hard time understanding it and feel like it is a selfish act that will impact others for years to come. My friend's nephews, for example, were very close to him and it may take them years to deal with his suicide. I've read articles about survivors of suicide attempts, and the vast majority said they regretted it, literally within seconds of the attempt. They just did not know what else to do at that point in their lives, so they pulled the trigger, jumped off the bridge or slit their wrists. It was eye-opening to me to read that so many of them regretted their attempt, not regret that they failed, but that they ever attempted suicide. I'm hurting over my friend's suicide. I'm sure it is substantially worse for his nephews, parents and siblings. For an incredibly good guy, he inflicted a lot of pain on those who loved him after he pulled that trigger.

I'm sorry about your friend.

[deconspire]

	Originally Posted by Nikonman To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I'm hurting over my friend's suicide. I'm sure it is substantially worse for his nephews, parents and siblings. For an incredibly good guy, he inflicted a lot of pain on those who loved him after he pulled that trigger.

This is why I said it is selfish, OP.

Shit...if I committed suicide today, I would hurt a couple people on this very forum, and they don't even know me that well. I imagine you would too.

[Lilie]

Suicide is illogical.

I have been suicidally depressed in the past. I can honestly say that the main reason I didn't go through with it was the mess. People have posted about it sarcastically (?) but I was genuinely concerned. I also had a cat that I didn't want to abandon. For these reasons after two weeks of being drunk all the time and wishing I were dead, I went on anti-depressants instead of attempting suicide.

It also helped to realize that my thinking was distorted, meaning not functioning as normal. Being drunk all the time was not normal for me. Crying a lot was not normal. I couldn't focus the way I knew I used to be able to. I couldn't logic the feelings away, but I could logic myself into taking the recommended actions which (to no one's surprise but mine) were quite effective in making me not want to kill myself any more.

[Loneliness]

I didn't use anything for 28 hours already. Not even nicotine. Nothing really changed, except that now i'm also dizzy.

[TheBigPicture]

Happiness is the only intrinsically good thing (i.e. good in and of itself).

An ethical view should be one that promotes good, or happiness.

Suicide eliminates all potential of being happy.

Therefore, suicide is wrong.

[Loneliness]

	Originally Posted by TheBigPicture To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Happiness is the only intrinsically good thing (i.e. good in and of itself). An ethical view should be one that promotes good, or happiness. Suicide eliminates all potential of being happy. Therefore, suicide is wrong.

Could you please define happiness?

[Lilie]

	Originally Posted by Loneliness To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I didn't use anything for 28 hours already. Not even nicotine. Nothing really changed, except that now i'm also dizzy.

That's a start. Now go to the doctor and get some of the good stuff. Quit wallowing in all this philosophical weewaw and focus on practical things like showering and putting on relatively clean clothes.

Yeah, when you're thinking deep dark thoughts you feel completely rational, and there is certainly truth in what you're feeling, but it isn't the whole truth. Get yourself back in balance.

[Loneliness]

Ok, so it is now 2 days and 5 hours as I'm completely sober. I had a lot of time to think about what everyone has written here, to get some of the grip back and to open my mind a bit. Some people even messaged me in private, which was really nice of you guys. INTJ forum is full of great people.

Now i do understand that suicide isn't the best thing to do, though occasionally it might not seem this way. If someone has suicidal toughts, at first they should take some rest, clean his/her own mind and, even more importantly, his/her own body. A lot of things from our surroundings affect our inner world and our emotional state. Understanding what exactly does the negative effect is the key to stop the madness in our heads.

Why this happened to me? Ehh... Long story short: I'm not doing well in university, most likely going to drop out this semester. My parents didn't expect that. I didn't expect that. Nobody knows what is going to happen with my life right now. I don't even know what i'm supposed to do in this world, all this mess made me feel really worthless. Furthermore, i am going to get this fine of ~1500$, because i were studying in free place, and if i drop out, i get to pay for what i've studied already. My parents don't have that much, and i don't have anything at all. There is 6 months from the day i get dropped out to pay the fine. I have never worked before. I don't even know how to get a job, to be honest. I have no idea how this is going to end.

Everyone is mad on me, i'm mad on myself. Information systems was not for me, now i understand that i totally hate computers. But something has to be done, i don't know, maybe i should go to some other country since things aren't going really well in eastern Europe. Or simply try to get a job here, ehh... don't even know where to begin.

Well, at least i'm not using anything and i'm not thinking how to splash myself without any chance to fail at it, anymore. But something has to be done...

[Polymath20]

	Originally Posted by deconspire To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This is why I said it is selfish, OP. Shit...if I committed suicide today, I would hurt a couple people on this very forum, and they don't even know me that well. I imagine you would too.

But if someone is suffering that much, isn't it selfish of everyone else to expect them to put up with it for our sakes?

[deckard]

I personally have had many ailments and deep suffering in my personal life. Years long, but I know I've been happy before so (for me anyway) those less frequent moments of happiness which do emerge are worth it. I also keep that dream alive that I may one day emerge from the fog with consistency.

When Mike Wallace passed away, they spoke about his open admission of dealing with depression which helped a lot of people at the time to remove the stigma. One quote of his about suicide makes good sense for me, "It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem". Difficult to believe when depression seems to be never ending. But at any given moment your life could change. Life goes that way. Misfortune, and then fortune... maybe misfortune again but the strength of endurance pays off.

I think those who have gone through it can offer great insight and wisdom because it doesn't come from a place of just parroting pop psychology and good will towards your fellow man. It's genuinely discovered via an arduous journey into life's meaning. When you find that seed of worth, it never really leaves you. It takes strong root and you don't take for granted the depth of understanding.