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I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and y
by maxklein 16y ago
I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that.
No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be somewhere that will put you within a new world.
- maeon3 16y agoThat's actually a great idea, because I think suicide has a "good of the collective" component to it. If you get rejected by your peers too much, ostracized and made to feel like a burden, your mind comes to the counter intuitive conclusion that the best way to ensure survival of your tribe is to die. Transplanting to an environment where your knowledge, ability and assets make you the most valuable and looked-up to person in the community might reverse feelings of rejection, ostracism and burden. This guy sounds like he has been rejected and ostracized for everything he did. How ostracism causes depression in the laboratory. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-pain-of-exclusion http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-pain-of... Ostracism (parents, girlfriend, job) causes depression, advanced depression causes suicide.
- sp332 16y ago"Most valuable person in a community"? Xenophobia is pretty strong, especially in places with few resources or under oppression. Not many such places would welcome a meddling know-it-all outsider.
- Alex3917 16y agoThat's interesting. One of my friends has a theory of a "social discard program" that she's been blogging a lot about recently. It's basically just noodling along the same lines: http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/proposed-demotediscard-program.html http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/proposed-demotedis... http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/demotepromote-or-discard-program-theory.html http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/demotepromote-or-d... http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/good-nutrition-to-beat-discard-program.html http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/good-nutrition-to-... http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-theory-about-why-im-sensitive-to.html http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-theory-about-w... http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-trigger-discard-program.html http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-trigger-disca... Sorry for posting so many links, but taken as a whole it's a very provocative train of thought.
- 2oi03i9fhujcnd 16y agoOh wow that sounds great. Need a first customer? Can you now explain to me how that helps me deal with the guilt of my friends dying there? Thanks.
- 2oi03i9fhujcnd 16y agoDown vote all you want, but it goes to show how we treat people with mental illness. Hey, someone has it worse than you, so suck it up. Well let's disprove this path mathematically. YC would like that. I will prove by contradiction. 1. maxklein's assertion is that someone has it worse than you so you shouldn't kill yourself. 2. That means the person with the worst life in the world CAN kill himself. 3. Following that, the new worst life person can kill himself. 4. Then a new person. This can continue until one person is left on the earth. Does he kill himself? There are different ways life can be bad. Living in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Congo is perhaps one way.
- skore 16y agoNo, that is not at all what he said. Actually, nobody said that. The assertion is that when you consider suicide, you have your reasons and those reasons are a product of your environment. A chance to see yourself in a completely new environment, for instance in a desperate area of the world where human help - any help - is needed can give you a whole new experience and give you the nudge you need to re-evaluate yourself. There is no kill-yourself-if math here. It's about giving people time off from their (perceived) issues to think.
- 2oi03i9fhujcnd 16y agoI disagree completely with what you said. It trivializes the personal pain that depressed people feel. But let's explore your reasoning further: Can you please explain to me how sending Bill Zeller to a war-torn country would have helped him deal with the sexual abuse that he experienced?
- maxklein 16y ago
- lookACamel 16y agoNice idea but don't you think others would abuse the system?
- maxklein 16y agoThat's why it's to Iraq. Not many westerners will go to Iraq unless they are suicidal.
- Detrus 16y agoYea this is basically the system suicide bombers are in. Only there, the point is to make the suicide useful for political goals, here it is to make miserable life useful for said goals.
- alsomike 16y agoSo giving suicidal people lots of opportunities to harm themselves? Something doesn't add up there.
- gonk 16y agoI've advocated this for depression, too .. if you think you are truly depressed, then get the hell out of your environment, and go somewhere else, completely and utterly different, immediately. It works.
- daimyoyo 16y agoI don't post comments disagreeing with people but I'll make an exception here. This is possibly the most shortsighted idea I've ever heard. Suicidal people need a venue to discuss their issues without stress or judgement, not to be relocated to a warzone. Suicide is a real problem and as someone who has been through the darkness of those thoughts let me say this idea is completely wrong and should be relegated to trolling or satire.
- maxklein 16y agoThere are many venues for suicidal people to discuss their issues, and people are still committing suicide everyday. This is not to replace anything existing, it's just to reduce the number and address those who are currently not being helped by the systems you talk of.
- kripssmart 16y agogood. But I will say open this registration for everyone (in turns maybe)! Let everyone understand where they are and where the "world" is!