There's been a lot of hubbub over at BBC news online recently about suicide in modern Britain. Today they have provided us with the stat that suicide is the second most lethal killer of men aged between 17 and 34, after road accidents. That shocked me actually. In a good way though. I didn't realise so few young men were being killed on the road so it's encouraging.
They say that we should do something so that we can save the "mental health" of these people. What does that even mean? There is no such thing as mental health as far as I'm concerned. We have beliefs and desires. It is our duty as individuals to satisfy our desires according to our beliefs. It is our duty as a society to allow people to do whatever the hell they want that doesn't significantly negatively affect other people (using the subjective value of the other people to determine whether that's the case). Everything that people do is a product of their beliefs and desires. Suicides are no exception. Why should we stop people from killing themselves when that is clearly what they want and they aren't hurting anybody else sufficiently to ban it? Obviously suicide does hurt people, but that is why I included the "significantly" clause above. Obviously I should be allowed to hurt somebody emotionally or fail to open a door for somebody in public. These are negative things I could do to other people. But it would be worse to ban me from doing them. The only hurt that comes from a suicide is of an emotional kind anyway.
Plus I would say that there is a correlation between the amount of pain you feel at somebody you know killing themselves and the amount of pain you deserve to feel as a result of said suicide. While people should be allowed to kill themselves, it is clearly a pointless and stupid thing to do, and so those who are close to suiciders are obliged to help them out to some extent. If your child kills themself then I think you should rightfully feel ashamed at having not brought them up adequately, i.e. to have a life that's even worth living. The average parents of suiciders must be worse than average parents of serial killers I suspect.
Now I would endorse some kind of social policy that would reduce the amount of suicides amonsgt young males, but I think the reasons they kill themselves have MASSIVE positive benefits on society, and if we changed them then we would probably be a 3rd world country. I remember talking to a taxi driver who was one of the last people to have to do national service in the UK. He told me the story of how one of the recruits killed themselves because they couldn't bear to be there anymore, even though it was a finite amount of time and there were no real prospects of war breaking out. I asked him if he thought we should bring back national service and he was very adamant that we should. Of course there would be more suicides but overall expected utility would increase. Now I would endorse a policy that would decrease suicides in the country without opposite worse effects, but I don't think there is such a policy. I'm not absolutely committed to that claim: I just think it's quite unlikely and would probably entail some delusive tactics, which for somebody interested in epistemology is always a negative (but not TOO negative).
Also, people who want to kill themselves are idiots. Nobody's life really sucks so much that death is the only answer. I suspect the quality of life of the average suicider in the UK is greater than about 90% of the rest of the humans on this planet, who mostly seem to think that life is a pretty good thing. We're also better off without these people. If they don't even want to contribute to their own lives then they're hardly likely to contribute to ours if we artificially preserved them. Most suicide "attempts" are just cries for attention without any intention of actual suicide. We've got to the point now where people can simulate the desire for suicide just for sympathy and charity they don't deserve. People who attempt suicide and fail should be executed in my opinion. At least then we won't have any timewasting emos using suicide as an excuse to think they are deep at the expense of the taxpayer.
