I read that the police were extinguishing the guy who set himself on fire yesterday only two minutes after it began. Obviously, the guy did not want to live. Putting out the fire so quickly does not ease his suffering and would only increase it if he were to live. As long as nothing else is at risk of catching fire perhaps it would be best to stay away. What do you think?
That’s not the question here. It’s about intention, not your reaction.
Anyway, the equivalent here would be rather jumping after the guy to rescue him 2min after he jumped. You may endanger yourself and you might rescue a half-braindead shell of a person.
Don’t kid yourself, besides talking him out of jumping, nobody would do anything.
There’s thousands of cases of people putting themselves in danger to try to save suicidal people, including jumping into deep bodies of water.
However, my point was on intention, someone committing suicide isn’t right in the head so to say “well they did it on purpose so we shouldn’t help” is silly.
Again, that’s not my point.
But again anyway, it’s also silly to assume they’re not right in the head. You don’t know their situation. And it’s even sillier to assume that I implied helping them would be wrong. Helping them while endangering yourself and making the situation for the other guy even worse is just stupid.
Sane people don’t try to kill themselves
You can be sane and depressed. People also opt for assisted suicide if in a lot of pain or with a low quality of life.
Depression is by definition a mental illness.
Does it make you not sane?
The exact definition of sanity is a cultural choice.
Not true
Also many suicide failures have reportedly had second thought even right after they attempted, such as on the way off the bridge. All we can do is help them if possible, so that if there was regret they might be able to recover their life. The self immolation is a tough example because it’s true that survival means a long road of pain, but I don’t think we should try and draw lines to determine who should and shouldn’t be saved (again, if possible). I’d also rather be hated by them for trying to help than to think that I could have done something but chose an easier route of inaction by mental justification.
It’s not intention. It’s the expected quality of life afterwards. I work with kids who had no desire to die when they fell into a pool, choked on something, etc. Sometimes…
Think again: Your own action is all that you can decide upon.
Later you can try to judge and to grumble and to smartass, but then you cannot change things anymore with that.