In response to my complaints of suffering, a few have suggested that I simply kill myself. While suicide may ultimately prove to be a viable solution to the problem of suffering given the right laws, privileges, and cultural sympathies, I will show that suffering by itself does not form a sufficient basis to commit suicide, even if one plans the act. For aside from the fallibility, grotesque nature, and excruciating pain of currently used methods, including the risk of getting caught by police, there are a number of social dangers and dilemmas bound up with the act of suicide. Many of these dangers and dilemmas concern the welfare of others, and I may choose to stay alive on rational bases even when I ultimately wish to be relieved of suffering. These bases are the subject of my essay, and I will number them from one to five: learned knowledge, the Anthropic Principle, eternal recurrence, social planning dilemmas, and the desire to improve society.

My decision to remain alive does not prove that I enjoy being alive or that I deserve to suffer. On the contrary, these bases create a powerful compulsion in me to remain alive despite suffering, a compulsion for which the actions of others are largely to blame and to which I might even feel subject as a victim of cruelty.

1. Learned knowledge

In my decision to live, I must counterbalance my suffering with the possible utility of my learned knowledge and accept that if I committed suicide, someone else would have to start over from the beginning in order to acquire this knowledge and put it to use in the way that I hope to. This applies, in my case, to my newfound knowledge of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and of the writings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. In the act of suicide, this knowledge would be lost and would have to be re-learned.

2. The Anthropic Principle

“If one can be conscious, one will be conscious” -- there may perhaps be an element of mystical truth to this saying. In the act of suicide, I would merely leave someone else to deal with the problems of the world, who, in the act of suicide, would leave someone else, and so on, possibly ad infinitum in a continuous and unending sequence of unfortunate, suffering individuals.

3. Eternal recurrence

Similarly, if the universe could meaningfully be said to be reborn again and again for the rest of eternity, then I could easily end up being born again as myself, only to commit suicide again in a never-ending cycle of births and suicides in which I would be forever trapped.

4. Social planning dilemmas

If I were suicidal and I saw someone being threatened, would I ignore the person in danger and simply commit suicide, or would I first rescue that person and then commit suicide? In the act of suicide, I would have to accept that bad things could be done to others in my absence. When the likelihood for such actions is high, I may choose to stay alive in order to prevent them.

5. The desire to improve society

Finally, the presence of cultural trends, attitudes, and beliefs I find either unacceptable or in need of improvement can collectively function as strong motivators to keep me alive in suffering. Christianity used as a lie, psychiatric maltreatment, the widespread use of faulty proverbs and sophisms (including Rapist's Fallacies), the general lack of empathy in certain subsets of the American population, mean-looking cars (misleadingly titled 'muscle cars'), NEMA-enforced sad plug outlets, Machiavellianism, oppressive laws, and the torture of the less attractive are only a few examples.


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