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/lit/ - Literature

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10523441 No.10523441 [Reply] [Original]

Books/authors/philosophers on suicide. I'm weighing it really heavy right now and want to read the best thoughts on it.

>> No.10523455

Hegesias of Cyrene

>> No.10523459

>>10523455
>Hegesias of Cyrene
Should I read death by starvation?

>> No.10523465

Most philosophers talk about it at some point. I wish I could kill myself too, but apparently all three major schools of morality agree it would be wrong for me.

If you want to read a generic get well book, read Suicide: The Forever Decision. That's what they made me read the last time I seriously hurt myself. Otherwise just read whatever philosophy you find interesting and you're sure to come across the suicide question.

>> No.10523470

Suicide specifically or just pessimistic worldviews in general?

>> No.10523472

>>10523465
I like reading Schopenhauer and I feel like i should probably be killing myself or live in a buddhist/catholic monastery

>> No.10523475

If I was genuinely considering suicide, I would go on a road trip and basically fuck around and see/experience new things vs. sitting in my room reading.

>> No.10523480

>>10523472

Do the second then. Preferably Buddhist if you like Schopes.

>> No.10523481

>>10523475
Retard

>> No.10523485

>>10523470
Anything about reasons for or against suicide. I've read enough Schopy for pessimistic world views

>> No.10523492

>>10523475
It’s funny how people seem to think that things like anxiety and depression just disappear once you become suicidal. I fucking wish.

>> No.10523497

>>10523475
hate this meme

>> No.10523506

>>10523441
Simon Critchley - notes on suicide

>> No.10523513

Also, how do you guys feel about the constant nagging of the will to pursue your desires and never feeling satisfied when you do. I just feel like this is a stupid never ending cycle that I just don't care to be apart of anymore.

>> No.10523516

>>10523497
>>10523481
>>10523492
>lives a depressing lifestyle which encourages depression which results in a depressing lifestyle
>"I'm too depressed to do anything" - but I'll sit at home and live a life of slothful comfort and play vidya games, shitpost online etc under the guise of muh depression

>> No.10523528

>>10523513
Do heroin.

>> No.10523531

>>10523516
You've never been depressed have you?

>> No.10523532

>>10523516
Who are you quoting?

>> No.10523533

>>10523513
i wish i had desires in the first place

>> No.10523536

>>10523533
I mean once you get to this point you stop having those desires but it feels like that was the only point when you are so depressed you have anhedonia

>> No.10523545

>>10523516
Stop acting like a genuine nigger.

If you haven't experienced depression don't talk about it like you are a voice of authority

>> No.10523547

>>10523531
No, I am a man and not a manchild snowflake faggot that was coddled by mommy just a little too much and allowed to live in the basement while everyone else worked and went about their lives and I just sat on the computer all night playing video games and lumbering upstairs to eat microwaved food and fall asleep at 8 am on my filthy bed, bemoaning my fate of being a poor white physically-able man who is too sensitive to go on in this painful world which only caters to 90% of my wishes by virtue of my family, which I've successfully trained to walk on eggshells in my presence and accept my leech behavior under the threat of my suicide being on their hands for daring to suggest I would feel better if I "got out more" and "got a job" when they know damn well I do't want to do any such thing

>> No.10523554

>>10523545
>Snowflake talk: the posting

>> No.10523560

>>10523547
>everyone who is depressed is some strawman meme i just made up

You spend too much time here, you're the one that's coming across as a sheltered manchild

>> No.10523562

>>10523545
>>10523547
>>10523554
jesus can we stop why get this worked up

>> No.10523576

camus- myth of sisyphus

>> No.10523650

>>10523576
Does it get deeper than just pretend Sisyphus is happy?

>> No.10523667

>>10523475
Fuck you

>> No.10523678

>>10523441
Read about buddhism. The Perfect gave up his life when he attained enlightenment.

>> No.10523700

>>10523475
>dude if you're suicidal, just blow a bunch of money doing bullshit and you'll feel better!

part of the reason people are suicidal is because they are forced to live in a shitty world where getting money is relatively hard and that system grinds people into dust. so yeah, "do things that require money" is solid advice if you have a million dollars to give to every suicidal person faggot. taking a plane to bucharest, snorting coke off a random whore's tits, and reading shitty fiction in a cafe becomes no longer fun the exact moment your bank account his zero and now you have to live the shit life you had, except you've seriously endangered yourself financially now. let alone ruined whatever job and obligations you have back at home. check your priv

>> No.10523754

>>10523562
It's /lit/, a lot of people here are like this.

>> No.10523765

>>10523700
>you need a million dollars to drive a shitty car
>you need a million dollars to hitch hike
kek

>> No.10523781
File: 79 KB, 500x474, 1470489333668.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10523781

>>10523441

You definitely want to read Emil Cioran. Be ready for inspiring and thoughtful celebrations of the void such as:

“There are people who are destined to taste only the poison in things, for whom any surprise is a painful surprise and any experience a new occasion for torture. if someone were to say to me that such suffering has subjective reasons, related to the individual's particular makeup, i would then ask; is there an objective criterion for evaluating suffering? who can say with precision that my neighbor suffers more than i do or that jesus suffered more than all of us? there is no objective standard because suffering cannot be measured according to the external stimulation or local irritation of the organism, but only as it is felt and reflected in consciousness. alas, from this point of view, any hierarchy is out of the question. each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and unlimited. how much would we diminish our own personal suffering if we were to compare it to all the world's sufferings until now, to the most horrifying agonies and the most complicated tortures, the most cruel deaths and the most painful betrayals, all the lepers, all those burned alive or starved to death? nobody is comforted in his sufferings by the thought that we are all mortals, nor does anybody who suffers really find comfort in the past or present suffering of others. because in this organically insufficient and fragmentary world, the individual is set to live fully, wishing to make of his own existence an absolute.”

>> No.10523792

>>10523475

Depression is like losing the sense of smell and taste during a flu, nothing has any savor, and this goes on for months on end. Tourism, in particular, is completely meaningless and boring, you could see the Great Wall of China with your own eyes, under depression you'd be unimpressed. Not to mention the lethargy phase of depression, which makes getting up alone a heavy burden.

>> No.10523805

>>10523781
Never got too deep into him. What's this from?

>> No.10523808

>>10523765
daily reminder that the vast majority of americans likely have less than $1k in cash, so yes, doing those things isn't actually very feasible when maintaining a shitty beater car from craigslist can run over $1k in a couple months. also, if people who were suicidal could just Be Urself across the countryside, making the money they need to survive and being a carefree fairy person, which is hardly even realistic for a well adjusted individual these days, they likely would not be suicidal in the first place. suicide and mental illness in general can be largely blamed on the oppressive nature of industrial society.

*tips letter bomb*

>> No.10523827

>>10523808
91% of American households have a car and 70% have credit cards. If you are going to kill yourself, you can easily accrue debt to live your remaining days on an adventure.

>> No.10523839

>>10523650
Ask why Sisyphus is happy.

>> No.10523845

>>10523475
I've never had depression nor suicidal thoughts and even I know you don't know what you're talking about.

>> No.10523926
File: 247 KB, 700x1059, Berardi_Heroes-84f10ecf1266ba6a874291e9cb693568.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10523926

>> No.10523955

>>10523827
When you're suicidal there's no such thing as an adventure, how are you not getting this. A lot of life's pleasure is predicated on the anticipation of the future, if you're going to die to tomorrow suddenly the Eiffel Tower becomes a lot less appealing. There are exceptions of course, but most suicidal people also experience anhedonia.

>> No.10523995
File: 54 KB, 427x562, albertcamus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10523995

>>10523441
Suicide is a logical answer to a fundamentally irrational existence. Here's my recommended reading.
>Albert Camus (particularly the Myth of Sisyphus)
>Soren Kierkegaard
>Friedrich Nietzsche
>Edmund Husserl
>Marcus Aurelius
>Thomas Aquinas
>Manuel de Pedrolo

>> No.10524173

>>10523475
I did this and ended up trying to kill myself in a hotel room in 'beautiful' rome

>> No.10524243

I think if you want to consider suicide, there's more broad topics to take into consideration other than suicide that deserve more attention that suicide itself. You're choosing life over death, and to really think about what death is and to really think about what life is the only way to make the choice in a way that it would possibly be a good or smart decision. As far as death goes, probably the most famous philosophy about death from Montaigne's essay "That to philosophize is to learn how to die."
On life, there is not as much of a stock response. Many have written about the good life vs. the bad life. This seems to suggest that life in itself isn't either good or bad, but it depends how it is lived. To me, Aristotle and Plato in The Republic and The Nicomachean ethics, give some of the most nuanced descriptions of the good life vs. the bad life, and most modern writings I have found fell short of these ideas. Without becoming a dogmatic Platonist or Aristotelian, I think both of these can give a reasonably satisfying intellectual picture of what a good life and a bad life would consist of.
It might sound kind of foreign to suggest the republic to someone who is suicidal, but I think the fact that you want to read about suicide makes you want to work out some kind of conclusion and make sense of the world. Systematic virtue ethics like that presented in the republic and the Aristotle's ethics is certainly no final word on the absolute guide to good or bad life, but to speak for myself, those books have clarified life in a way that was satisfying enough to deal with the suicidal thoughts I've had.
At least in my experience, part of what I've felt as depression has had significant overlap with confusion, and I've never really stopped being kind of confused about the world and what's going on in it, but a bit of intellectual work definitely feels like the world were like a distant sign I had to read, I at least have some glasses on to read it, even if I haven't really decoded what the sign says.

>> No.10524247

>>10523441
Just do it already, loser

>> No.10524275

>>10524243
One more thing to add. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned anhedonia. That's a very serious condition which I was personally acquainted with at the time that I was having suicidal thoughts. The problem with anhedonia is that it is very convincing in telling whoever has it that pleasure doesn't exist. The fact that a person has no mental conception to base the meaning of a word or phrase like "happiness" or "goodness" or a "good life" definitely makes it challenging to convince them that those are not meaningless phrases. But there are decent enough medical solutions to anhedonia that are well enough known, for a person deal with that specific problem, even if not their depression as a whole. That specific problem is a good one to identify and try to figure out how to take care of.

>> No.10524314

>>10523528
This is unironically better advice than >>10523475
I've done a lot of travelling and I've done a lot of drugs and I can tell you which helped me more regarding depression. Just don't make it a crutch permanently which isn't actually that hard to do if you have the slightest bit of self control

>> No.10525608

Anyone read Stoner? Would it help?

>> No.10525645

>>10524243
Nichomaen Ethics is self-improvement done right. Reading philosophy usually leads to way more questions and confusions than clarity, but not that book.

>> No.10526481

>>10523475
>consider suicide

>> No.10527089

>>10525608
I find it unlikely that any one book would legitimately help a truly suicidal person. Having said that, Stoner is a pretty solid examination of why life is worth living even if said life can be called a failure by most metrics.

>> No.10527098

>>10523827

Yeah, but if you survive you're fucked.

>> No.10527102

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MajfZIyHP8U

First in a three video lecture examining the question of suicide. The 23 videos that precede it discuss death in a myriad of ways. I'd recommend the entire course but the suicide videos specifically are pretty solid. Hopefully can provide a logical framework within which to base your consideration of suicide.

>> No.10527109

>>10523441
Read the Bible and dont do it. Good luck.

>> No.10527673

>>10523475
I wish you were considering suicide because this post is awful
Do you not know that when people get depressed they generally don't get out of bed?

>> No.10529252

>>10523441
David Benatar - The Human Predicament

Remember OP that once you're dead you can't feel bad about the decision nor miss out on any possible experiences you could have had, there are literally no downsides from the first-person perspective if you get over the fear of doing it, even though continuing your life could possibly be considered a better option in a sense. Disregard all that fucking noise about suicide hotlines and whatnot and draw your own conclusions about whether continued existence is worth it, there's lots of literature on value theory, existentialism and well-being if you want protips.

>> No.10529259

>>10523475
>dude just have fun lmao

slaughter of the normies when?

>> No.10529275
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10529275

>>10523513
If this post was deliberately made to evoke a recommendation to look into Buddhism it couldn't have been more well crafted.

>> No.10530471

>>10523547
t. 14 year old

>> No.10530550

>>10524275
What are the medical solutions to anhedonia?

>> No.10530561
File: 33 KB, 390x577, voJK2WN72dDgTR8ckRWraDnTZeed1C1gL9VWh9Kn5vxu5N1iIMmrkyndr6KENdKClxeAOX47yZetOZFsmY8RsQ.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10530561

This is worth reading if you can find it.
The only available version I could find is in Chinese:
https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteManualOfSuicideChinese

>> No.10530571

>>10523547
You may not be depressed but you definitely have issues, that are a lot less endearing

>> No.10530580

>>10523547
Btfo

>> No.10530653

>>10523465
Not contemporary philosophers, really.

>> No.10530659

>>10523441
>10523441
Myth of Sisyphus

>> No.10530680

>>10530571
Learn to use the comma, bro.

>> No.10530685

>>10523492
oh please cry me a river. everybody and their fucking hamster has anxiety and depression. get over it. overcome it. stop being a fucking bitch. it's not that hard. in most cases, you don't even need medication. you just need the right attitude, establish good habits, have goals and work to achieve them. and exercise. goddammit stop being a faggot and be somebody

>> No.10530688
File: 109 KB, 550x380, Schopenhauer.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10530688

>>10523441

Schopenhauer will set you right

>> No.10530705

>>10527089
>tfw your life is even worse than Stoner's

I s'pose it makes you appreciate a lot of simple things others overlook and take for granted...

>> No.10530706

>>10523839

Because he's delusional

>> No.10530743
File: 1.82 MB, 320x256, 1515285647234.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10530743

>>10523547
>Even though I have no idea what Im talking about my straw man is definetly correct
Ironically it seems like you've been spending way much time here. Go outside or talk to real people with real mental illnesses.

>> No.10530780

>>10523475
this is the "let them eat cake" of depression logic.

>> No.10530811

>>10523441
don't be a fucking retard, and don't listen to bullshit "be yourself" tier advice. Serious problems need serious reactions, that means self medicating. Get yourself some amphetamine (adderall) and optionally some xanax. Don't be stupid and take too much, just enough to boost your mood and give you enough energy to say "I'm feeling good today" Remeber that this is just a crutch and the euphoria will eventually fade, so as soon as you pop that first pill you also have to use your new motivation to start exercising, finding a job, practicing social skills (begin with strangers, like cashiers), and being mindful of your thoughts.

>> No.10530839

>>10523441

David Benatar discusses it in the Human Predicament.

It's not about suicide per se but you might find the Book of Ecclesiastes relevant as well.

>> No.10530843

>>10523475
This isn't a good call. First of all, most depressed people can't do it. Secondly, they'd likely burn away their future to ensure their suicide.

>> No.10530845

>>10523547
What is your favorite book?

>> No.10530855

>>10523547

This may or may not be true, but even if true it isn't necessarily an argument against suicide.

>> No.10530865

>>10523475
Wow anon, you must be a psychologist. You get and A+ for today.

>> No.10530937

>>10523475

If you were genuinely considering suicide you wouldn't think like this any more

>> No.10531028

bro break it down.
Truly break it down.
What are your feelings?
>Thoughts, and perceptions.
What are your thoughts?
>"i do not want to exist in the next moment."
What are your perceptions?
>"An unknown feeling; death, or something no human can understand, must be better than the current situation, or feelings that I felt in the past and this current moment."
What is it truly that is causing you this problem? Why do you feel that not living is better than living? I often faced this question, Why am I living? For what am I living? and when i was younger the occasional curiosity of
What does death feel like? What is unconsciousness? And these questions are still valid and unanswered! I cannot tell you exactly WHY I am living, I cannot tell you exactly WHAT FOR I am living, nor can i tell you the answer to other questions.
But what I can tell you is that the patterns which you have formed have caused you to feel this way. (OH LOOK ANON THINKS HE'S A PSYCHIATRIST.)
A giant change in behavior, will change your thoughts. And I know, I was there, I used to read shit on how to make yourself feel better, how to get motivated, and I read it, I understood why, I even half ass tried to do the things I read, but until I was doing things because I wanted to do them, With the thought of ME, and "This is what I WANT to do, not because I read it and people told me it will make me feel better, or someone told me it will make me feel better", that is when i started to feel better about things. When you convince yourself that the habits you have formed are effecting your consciousness negatively, then you will be able to make yourself feel better.
Think of yourself as a Bowling ball on a trampoline right now. You are sunk close to the ground. IF you do not touch the bowling ball or no other force touches the bowling ball, where will the bowling ball go? no where
IF you push the bowling ball towards the outside, where will the bowling ball go? Toward the outside.
Fight your inner inertia to stay in the same sadness you have been feeling, and fight to push yourself out of the pit you are in.

>> No.10531047

>>10531028
Some patterns I am trying to form to make myself better, (which i have actually not done very well at but hey, as long as you try, little by little you will get better)
1.Start exercising
this will help you get energy, and can prove to yourself that you are motivated enough and committed toward yourself
2.Stop Masturbating
https://yourbrainonporn.com/ <-- very long read, mostly you are getting dopamine for no reason, nothing will satisfy you.
3. Keep your living area clean
A cluttered house is a cluttered mind.
4. Keep yourself busy
idle hands make poor decisions, and lack of activity can keep your brain bored, and too much stimulus can make your brain frazzled
5. Watch what you put into your body
What you eat can effect your mood, it can effect everything about your body, eat healthy drink PURIFIED water
6. Associate with Successful happy people
It is said that you are the sum of the 5 people you are around most
7.Meditate
This will provide you with a time to introspect, as well as a break for your brain

i am writing this down not only too share but also for me so I know what goals I am working for. I want TO ACHIEVEEVEVEV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>> No.10531133

>>10527102
you're trying to be helpful but you're not. i suggest you kill yourself

>> No.10531183
File: 59 KB, 800x400, the_clear_pill.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10531183

>>10523441
The final redpill (the clear pill):
>psychologists will not help with your depression
>pills will not work
>futile attempts to "get your life together" will fail
>cognitive ability will decrease over time
>motivation will also decrease
>you will eventually stop masturbating/playing vidya at the cost of losing all desire
>police will find your 25 yo malnourished corpse wrapped up in a sleeping bag

>> No.10531295

>>10523441
https://youtu.be/6nVBNfFaKTw
Stop being depressed

>> No.10531320

who else hasn't killed himself because he fears eternal torture in hell ?
no way you can prove it does or it doesn't exist but the idea of forever terrifies me
eternal happiness in heaven would be terrible too,but a bit less than eternal suffering
why can't something end.why is there the possibility of existence and consciousness even after your physical death?