From: small.caltech.edu!sathi (Narayana Sateesh Pillai)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.kerala
Subject: Re: reply to 342
Date: 17 Dec 1992 05:05:46 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: small.caltech.edu
Originator: sathi@small

In article <1992Dec16.130541.1@icbr.ufl.edu>  writes:
> this is in resonse to the sadness spelt out in Micheals' post
> regarding the death of his room mate.
> While I can agree that the finality of death is in itself very
> difficult to accept and assimilate,I can not agree to the advice on
> not contemplating suicide.
> Ones' life is ones' own , to live and share with others if one
> so chooses.The bottomline being an acceptance of the resposibility
> of accepting of ones' decisions.....

	I have to disgree here. Suicide, from a very distant perspective,
seems to be just someone's random choosing. NOT!!!!!
	Suicide can be considered as a disease. A person may be prone
to suicide if he has suicidal tendencies (Read the book Psychology of
the Mind - forgot the author, but I can look it up if you want). This
has to do with the biochemical make up of the person's brain. 
Neurotransmitters and receptacles and all that stuff. In short, suicide 
may not be one's one choosing at all, but a dysfunction.
	Now there are people who can be driven to suicide by extreme
depression or emotional stress. If it is not a tendency, but a stressful
situation, a person can be talked out of suicide. And believe me, there is
nothing romantic in suicide ( as we may be lead to believe by movies or
drama or even the title theme from the series "MASH" - the title
theme being "Suicide is Painless"). In either case (the disease or the 
stress) it can be helped. In the case of disease, you need medical
attention. In the other case, you need a caring companion.
	I don't blame Michael at all for what happened. But I do
think that his friend did want to talk to him. I can only blame his 
friend for not being open about it. But it's not his fault. Indians in
general are not very open about their feelings. And in this respect,
i would even go to the extent of agreeing with Michael for what the
parents thought. That shows what they were worried about.
	In this particular case, I strongly believe that the person did
not have a suicidal tendency (else Michael would have known about it
before - assuming he knew the person for a long enough time). To me,
the person seems to have been an introvert. So much that he did not feel
comfortable about talking things over with Michael (who appears to me
as an extrovert). The person might have thought about something on
the way to the office, stress being caused by a particular problem
that had accumulated over a period of time. Sure, he could have been
preparing for a seminar, that's what he said he was doing, and maybe
he was - when he was not otherwise pre-occupied with some inner struggle.
There might have been many things which could have caused it.
	The whole point here is this: suicide in this case, was because
the person felt he was against the wall. He thought it was an easy
way out. He might have chosen it, but perhaps he did think wrong (i.e.
that suicide was the only way out). In which case, the suicide was 
wrong.
	People don't chose to die, like they would chose a car. They
do it out of stress. And stress CAN be relieved. If suicide is an
inherent tendency (the disease), then again, medical help is available.
	And suicide is wrong (in my opinion of course), not because of
what the other people have to suffer, but because I can always think
of a non-trivial solution (i.e. a non-suicidal solution) to life's
problems. Life is not that serious at all. 

TATA!
Sateesh
-- 
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